UNStudio y BIG invierten en la plataforma de diseño virtual SpaceForm. Image Cortesía de UN Studio
From NFTs and the Metaverse to the productive advantages of real-time rendering, this year offers a tremendous opportunity to discuss the latest trends in architectural visualization. To this end, we opened the debate to our readers around these questions: How much can we learn from other related industries like cinema, video games, and industrial design? How can architecture contribute to and advance the world of visualization?
After reading and compiling all the comments received—from construction professionals, students, and architecture enthusiasts alike—we agree that as technological advancements continue, the future of architectural visualization will likely be more democratic, liberal, and decentralized. Below, we share the most frequent viewpoints from our readers.
When defining the aesthetic of a space, whether interior or exterior, architects and interior designers should first ask themselves what the needs of its future inhabitants are or will be. Dialogue with users is essential to establishing the style of these spaces, which shapes their physical environment through composition, color, form, and furniture.
To wholly document a survey on the state of French forests, the wood industry, and forestry R&D, François Leclercq and Paul Laigle, from the architecture and urban planning practice Leclercq Associés, are in collaboration with architecture editor Michèle Leloup and photographer Cyrille Weiner.
The Wood That Makes Our Cities explores the environmental, economic, industrial, and technical challenges involved in the use of wood for large structures and urban architecture and assesses the future of wood construction. The book retraces the practice’s twenty years of experience with wood construction through five of its projects, featuring contributions by historians, researchers, manufacturers, timber producers, and forestry specialists.
Architecture, with all its practitioners, academics, and theorists, have long been exploring utopic ideas with hopes of turning them into something concrete for the sake of a better world. But as the world heads towards an even greater polarization than it currently has, the architecture practice found itself having to adapt to the current systems of the planet, constrained by its ever-growing conditions. Slowly, practitioners realized that utopia can not truly be seen as the ideal solution, and needed to be readapted or morphed with other concepts for it to actually work. DETAIL's latest monograph BIG. Architecture and Construction Details / BIG. Architektur und Baudetails, a rapport between BIG’s imaginative, unbuilt utopias and functional, built architecture, explores 20 projects from the firm's workshop.
Being square sucks! At least, that's what the trends of 2022 tell us. The report carried out by Pinterest points out the curved design as the future of decoration, whether in objects or even from architecture. For that reason, we looked for Brazilian residential projects that trace curved walls in their designs. The reasons are the most varied and the results offer a unique composition: as an architectural party, to contrast with the orthogonality of other walls or to create unique spaces.
Western aesthetics is based on the mathematical analysis of an object's formal structure, using classical beauty laws such as balance, symmetry, and the golden mean. Eastern aesthetics differ in that, as it emphasizes intuitive experience, such as "white space" in traditional Chinese painting, through emotional communication with the "imagery" to produce a certain "Conception." The contrast between reality and emptiness allows the viewer's imagination and feelings to flourish, allowing them to realize "showing the breadth of heaven and earth even in a square inch place."
America’s housing crisis is a longstanding problem. But recent reports of private hedge funds buying up detached houses and townhouses is likely to make an already difficult situation even worse. When hedge funds purchase such properties, those homes are not likely to come back on the real estate market. They are gone for now—and probably for the long term.
https://www.archdaily.com/983096/how-private-equity-is-making-the-housing-crisis-even-worseR. John Anderson
Berlin is a city defined by an eclectic mix of style and a rich history. It's built environment has been dramatically shaped by a series of municipal construction programs, and in turn, a past of extensive demolition, planned residential areas, and diverse new cultural projects. Combined with influences across Europe, Berlin's contemporary architecture showcases new ideas on building concepts, forms and facades.
Open BIM is an acronym referring to Open Building Information Modeling and is a universal approach to the collaborative design, realization, and operation of buildings based on open standards and workflows. It is an initiative of buildingSMART and is supported by many leading software vendors in the building industry.
It defines methods for the object-oriented description of buildings using open data formats that facilitate integrated project delivery. Open BIM provides a common language for the exchange of information within a multidisciplinary project team.
In the history of architecture the concept of beauty has always been linked to different factors that represent, mainly, the values of society in a given period. The zeitgeist is certainly crucial to these definitions, so something that was once considered beautiful in the past is likely to be given another connotation nowadays. In this sense, aesthetic preferences in architecture seem to be linked to symbolic references implicit in the construction itself and in its relation with the world. They are preferences that express convictions, ideologies and positions, as well as moral, religious, political feelings and, of course, class status symbols.
Founded in 2014, PROJECT Profile Architecture is an internationally recognized design and research collective. Currently, the team consists of over a dozen members, with studios in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Its founders, Chang Ke and Li Wenhan, graduated from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, respectively. Registered architects in the Netherlands, they practiced for several years at major design firms in Europe and China. As specialists in urban renewal and public architecture, the core philosophy of PROJECT Profile Architecture is built on "demand as context, resistance as driver, and innovation as inquiry." PROJECT Profile Architecture seeks to break the boundaries of design, crossing the limits of scale and category to define each design commission as an integrated, comprehensive "PROJECT." The firm focuses on the unique parameters of each PROJECT, strategically proposing tailored solutions and exploring new spatial programs and typologies—particularly those emerging from civil society. By connecting design with real life, they activate and channel the vitality generated by these new models, aiming to contribute to contemporary urban and rural spatial design.
PROJECT Profile Architecture provides full-process design consulting services ranging from programming, architecture, landscape, and interiors to furniture, product design, signage systems, and construction consulting. Instead of treating design as isolated cases, they use the concept of the "PROJECT" to transform design into a continuous, research-driven system with a creative core. They are committed to exploring architectural research and practice rooted in China's current socio-political landscape. The firm operates through a collaborative, research-oriented methodology where all design staff participate in project discussions and decision-making. Viewing design as a form of collective intelligence, they uncover new ideal mechanisms within reality through diverse perspectives. Integrating localized practice with civic engagement defines their current trajectory. By balancing small-to-medium-scale bespoke commissions with large-scale public architecture competition entries, PROJECT Profile Architecture strives to carve out a viable path for a localized professional architectural practice—one that bridges market demands and academic inquiry. Now, we warmly invite you to join us and forge this path together.
Whether in a compact studio in Hong Kong or in a Michelin-starred restaurant, kitchen design requires special attention in order to make the act of preparing food a pleasant experience; with adequate space for all necessary functions and without the need for useless movements. The theory of the “golden triangle” or “kitchen work triangle” was conceived 100 years ago but remains valid and helpful in the definition of layouts and the organization of functions. Basically, the three main elements of the kitchen should be located at each end of the triangle: the sink, the refrigerator and the stove, with their respective functions in cleaning, storage and cooking. According to its principles, each side of the triangle must be between 1.20 and 2.70 meters long, and the perimeter should not be less than 3.96 meters or more than 8 meters.
Of course, it is not always possible to have the ideal dimensions and proportions to implement this type of kitchen, especially when we take into account the increasingly lean dimensions of contemporary environments. Nevertheless, there are various ways of making everyday operations more efficient even in tight kitchens. Below is a selection of items and products that can increase the space and efficiency of kitchens, without having to add even one square meter to them, straight from the comprehensive Architonic catalog.
Immense fame, especially when left behind by a deceased artist, may lead to a hierarchal understanding of their legacy—leading one aspect to overshadow other crucial dimensions of their life and oeuvre. Brooklyn-born Jean-Michel Basquiat’s meteoric recognition as an artist and a cultural influence throughout the 1980s led to his energetic mind-map-like paintings being acquired widely by museums and private collections alike, in addition to being mass-marketed in a variety of products, such as fast-fashion clothing and New York-related souvenir items. Basquiat: King Pleasure, a new exhibition organized by Jean-Michel’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, breaks down the myth surrounding the late artist’s legendary rise from the gritty streets of 1980s New York to a rarely-achieved artistic success.
When approaching the process of recycling building materials, there are a number of obstacles to achieving a comprehensive and effective result. First, careless demolition can make the process very complex, as products with different recycling products are often mixed. In addition, not all materials can be efficiently recycled or processed, as many still need expensive or overly complex processes. But the construction industry, being a huge contributor to waste production and greenhouse gas emissions, has also developed multiple new technologies to improve its practices. This is the case of the WOOL2LOOP project, which seeks to solve one of the biggest challenges in applying a circular approach to construction and demolition waste.
Historically associated with factories and industrial buildings in general, exposed building services have increasingly been adopted in other typologies in recent years, including residential architecture. Conduits, plumbing, and other elements used in building systems—long relegated to the background, concealed behind walls and ceilings—can actually serve as key features of an architectural concept.
Throughout the years, bathrooms have been viewed as purely functional spaces strictly programmed for hygiene and privacy. Becoming smaller and more practical, the utilitarian, space-saving shower stall has often been considered the norm, pushing the bathtub into obsolescence or as an additional luxury for those with extra space (and money). Recently, however, as lifestyle changes driven by the pandemic have placed wellness as a top priority, the notion of the bathroom as a sanctuary has really taken hold. Contemporary bathrooms have thus been reimagined, shifting towards open spaces of relaxation, comfort and recuperation. And tubs – with their inherent meditative nature – have returned to the spotlight.
On a warm, hazy Sunday afternoon, Nairobi's concrete tenements tower over the city's shanties (or “slums”). Men and women hang laundry from roofs and balconies — making the buildings look like a patchwork quilt, a mosaic of fabric.
Cities with disabilities are those that present spaces and environments that impede or make it difficult for citizens to access, participate and interact, regardless of any loss or abnormality related to their psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function. I invite readers to, with me, change the focus of the approach on disabilities, transferring to cities and built environments the inability to meet in a dignified and effective way the diversity of abilities and capacities inherent to human beings.
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