Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
In 1991, the American Institute of Architects called him, quite simply, “the greatest American architect of all time.” Over his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) completed more than 500 architectural works; many of them are considered masterpieces. Thanks to the wide dissemination of his designs and his many years spent teaching at the school he founded, few architects in history can claim to have inspired more young people into joining the architecture profession.
One of the most enigmatic and underappreciated architects of the 20th century, Carlo Scarpa (June 2, 1906 – November 28, 1978) is best known for his instinctive approach to materials, combining time-honored crafts with modern manufacturing processes. In a 1996 documentary directed by Murray Grigor, Egle Trincanato, the President of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia for whom Scarpa renovated a Venetian palace in 1963, described how "above all, he was exceptionally skillful in knowing how to combine a base material with a precious one."
Arguably the leading name of a generation of internationally high-profile British architects, Norman Foster (born 1 June 1935)—or to give him his full title Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank of Reddish, OM, HonFREng—gained recognition as early as the 1970s as a key architect in the high-tech movement, which continues to have a profound impact on architecture as we know it today.
Led by Jacques Herzog (born 19 April 1950) and Pierre de Meuron (born 8 May 1950), most descriptions of Herzog & de Meuron projects are almost paradoxical: in one paragraph they will be praised for their dedication to tradition and vernacular forms, in the next for their thoroughly modern innovation. However, in the hands of Herzog & de Meuron this is no paradox, as the internationally renowned architectural duo combine tradition and innovation in such a way that the two elements actually enhance each other.
ArchDaily is happy to announce our Media Partnership with @Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019! Throughout 2019 we will be sharing stories, interviews, and content related to the Triennale, which this year revolves around the theme of Degrowth. The interview below introduces Degrowth in the context of practice today - and hints at how this radical idea could irreversibly change how we value architectural production.
The world faces some significant challenges. The UN climate change report, which explained that we may have just 12 years and need “unprecedented changes” to avoid devastating effects from climate change, was released into a world that seemed to be plenty busy processing other things, such as rising economic inequality, increasingly partisan politics, escalating conflicts, and refugee crises, to name a few.
This article was originally published on September 28, 2013. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Hospital buildings, with their high standards of hygiene and efficiency, are a restrictive brief for architects, who all too often end up designing uninspiring corridors of patient rooms constructed from a limited palette of materials. However, this was not the case in Bertrand Goldberg's 1975 Prentice Women's Hospital. The hospital is the best example of a series of Goldberg-designed medical facilities, which all adhere to a similar form: a tower containing rooms for patient care, placed atop a rectilinear plinth containing the hospital's other functions.
Read on for more about this masterwork of humanist brutalism...
Architecture is art, but art vastly contaminated by many other things. Contaminated in the best sense of the word—fed, fertilized by many things.
– Renzo Piano
Italian architect Renzo Piano (born 14 September 1937) is known for his delicate and refined approach to building, deployed in museums and other buildings around the world. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1998, the Pritzker Jury compared him to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Brunelleschi, highlighting "his intellectual curiosity and problem-solving techniques as broad and far ranging as those earlier masters of his native land."
Known as Chicago's "Father of Skyscrapers," Louis Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) foreshadowed modernism with his famous phrase "form follows function." Sullivan was an architectural prodigy even as a young man, graduating high school and beginning his studies at MIT when he was just 16. After just a year of study he dropped out of MIT, and by the time he was just 24 he had joined forces with Dankmar Adler as a full partner of Adler and Sullivan.
A skyscraper in Guiyang, China, has attracted headlines thanks to a daring water feature built into its facade. On one side, the 121-meter (397-foot) tall Liebian Building in Guiyang, China, features a spectacular waterfall, providing a dramatic spectacle from the plaza below. At 108-meters (350-feet), the waterfall is among the tallest artificial waterfalls in the world—and easily the largest artificial waterfall located in an urban area, with other record breakers being artificial additions to river and canal networks.
When learning about architecture, there is no replacement for practical experience: seeing how materials can be joined together, how structural elements respond to the stresses placed upon them, or how construction techniques can alter the finished project. For this reason, it is a good idea to give students a chance for some hands-on experience building real structures—something that, due to budgetary constraints and the academic culture of many architecture schools, has sadly been uncommon in the past.
However, in recent years, this culture has started to shift, with increasing numbers of architecture schools finding ways for students to be involved in construction projects, from small, temporary interventions and pavilions, to larger permanent buildings. In order to show the excellent work that can be done in an educational context, for the fourth time ArchDaily is calling on students and professors to submit the design-build projects they have completed in the past year. As always, we're teaming up with all of ArchDaily en Español, ArchDaily Brasil, and ArchDaily China, in the hope that we can present the best work from students worldwide to a worldwide audience. Read on to find out how you can take part.
At the Moscow Urban Forum, Rem Koolhaas spoke to Vladimir Pozner about his life and work, including how he has been influenced by Russian architecture. The pair discuss how the city of Moscow has evolved and the role that it currently has in the world. The event was originally streamed live on YouTube, meaning you can watch the recording of the discussion above.
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The Lakhta Center, a 400,000-square-meter complex which includes Europe's tallest skyscraper, is approaching completion in St Petersburg. Designed by RMJM (authoring team led by Tony Kettle), the complex provides a new landmark in the northwest of the city—an area on the coastline of the Gulf of Finland which has seen significant development in recent years with the completion of the St Petersburg Stadium, a passenger seaport, and a number of park spaces including the Park of the 300th Anniversary of Saint Petersburg.
The centerpiece of the development, the 462-meter-tall Lakhta Center Tower, is not only the tallest building in Europe, but also the first supertall skyscraper in St Petersburg, the world's second-tallest twisting skyscraper after the Shanghai Tower, and the world's northernmost skyscraper.
VTN Architects has released their design for the Chic-Land Hotel currently under construction in Da Nang, Vietnam. Located opposite the beach, the site offers excellent views to the east—but is constrained by the fact that it is only 15 meters wide. With this in mind, the designers opted for a 21-story building, offering 129 rooms with balconies shaded by a cascade of plants.
This morning, planning permission was awarded for the construction of 100 Leadenhall Street, an SOM-designed skyscraper in the eastern cluster of skyscrapers in the City of London. At 263.4 meters tall, the building will be the third tallest in the cluster, trailing only 1 Undershaft (305 meters), which is approved but yet to begin construction, and 22 Bishopsgate (278 meters), which is currently under construction. The Shard, at 310 meters, is also nearby on the south of the river.
Architecture can give you a headache. That sentence probably doesn't sound surprising for anyone who has dealt with the stress of practicing or studying architecture but, increasingly, psychologists are beginning to understand that you don't need to work on architectural designs for buildings to cause you pain. In an interesting article published by The Conversation, Arnold J Wilkins, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Essex, discusses how discomfort, headaches, and even migraines can be caused or exacerbated by simply looking at certain visual stimuli—with the straight lines and repetitive patterns of urban environments singled out as the main culprit.
In what has to be one of the most spectacular collisions of high fashion and architecture, fashion designer Guo Pei has tapped into the "immutable" qualities of Gothic buildings with a series of outfits inspired by vaults, spires, flying buttresses, and elaborate window tracery. According to Vogue, the Chinese designer described her work as "a dialogue between the human body and spatial dimension," while Pei's own Facebook post explained her Fall 2018 collection with just a short phrase: "Time flows unhurriedly, while architecture stands immutably."
Many of the designs in Pei's collection seem to have been conceived as architectural structures in themselves, projecting outwards from the body to create striking church-like forms. Converting the rigid stone structures of the Gothic style into fabrics designed to hang from the human body is clearly a challenging technical feat, and proves extremely satisfying for architecture-obsessed onlookers when achieved with the audacity brought to her work by Pei.
The 2018 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Frida Escobedo, was unveiled today in London's Hyde Park. Escobedo's design, which fuses elements typical to Mexican architecture with local London references, features a courtyard enclosed by two rectangular volumes constructed from cement roof tiles. These tiles are stacked to form a celosia, a type of wall common to Mexican architecture which is permeable, allowing ventilation and views to the other side.
A month after Kanye West announced his intention to open an architecture venture, at the time named Yeezy Home, off the back of his fashion brand, it seems we may have the first glimpse of the type of buildings the rapper is hoping to create. Yesterday Jalil Peraza, a previous collaborator with West's design company DONDA and designer of the "Face Modules" pop-up retail concept, posted two images to his Instagram showing a building render alongside the caption "Low income housing scheme, made of prefabricated concrete in collaboration with Petra Kustrin, Jalil Peraza, Kanye West, Nejc Skufca."
.jpg?1442216412 "Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Image © Nic Lehoux")
.jpg?1442215764 "Menil Collection. Image © D Jules Gianakos")
.jpg?1531410888 "© Kamil Nureev Courtesy of Lakhta Center Multifunctional Complex")
.jpg?1531410936 "© Stanislav Zaburdaev Courtesy of Lakhta Center Multifunctional Complex")
.jpg?1531409203 "Courtesy of Lakhta Center Multifunctional Complex")
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