Tag: design-futures | ArchDaily

From Design Fiction to Design Futures: The Changing Role of Architecture in Cultural Production

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:30:00 +0000

When Archigram published their fanatical vision for pneumatic cities and walking megastructures in the 1960s, they seemed to be designing buildings. Beneath the surface, the avant-gardeists were pushing culture through radical alternatives to lifestyles and forms of organizing in the city. Laboratories found themselves between the lines of copy on Domus or Casabella magazines, propositions doubling as blueprints for the civilizations to come. From Gropius's Bauhaus in 1919 to Arcosanti's desert experiments in the 1970s, architecture operated as a form of cultural prophecy. Built form was the argument. The drawing was the vision. Today, we live in a world that remarkably resembles what the starchitects of the 1900s imagined - modular construction, interconnected digital cities, and automated systems. Yet contemporary architecture rarely proposes culture with the same totalizing confidence.

From Prototype to Progress: How Small-Scale Sustainable Housing Models Are Shaping Our Future

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 05 May 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Traditional building development follows a risky model - design, build at full scale, and hope everything works as planned. Sustainable housing prototypes flip this script by creating functioning micro-versions of larger visions. This methodical approach allows designers to experiment with new materials, technologies, and systems without the enormous financial and environmental risks associated with full-scale development. Sustainable building prototypes serve as compact laboratories where theories can be tested before wider implementation.

The Future of Work: Sentient Workplaces for Employee Wellbeing

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Imagine stepping into an environment that fully understands you, knows your habits, and actively works to support your wellbeing as an occupant. Air quality might be monitored and managed, and occupant circadian rhythms might be tracked to suggest ideal states of productivity. Workplace designers have been considering occupant wellbeing and health in their designs for offices of the future. Hypothesizing what time ahead may contain, there is a strong case to be made for sentient architecture and interior design being disruptive forces in how we interact with our work environments.

Scarpa + Brooks Explore How Architecture Can Shape Memory

Jack McManus — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Why do we remember buildings, locations, and experiences? Even a place visited in our childhood can conjure emotions that make an impact on us through the memories they create. Angela Brooks and Larry Scarpa explain that the work of Brooks + Scarpa Architects aspires to make a lasting impression out of even a brief encounter. “We try to leave something behind,” says Scarpa, “something ingrained in people’s memory that sticks with them.”

Eva Franch i Gilabert on the Meaning of Architecture

Yiling Shen — Sun, 27 May 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Architecture isn’t just about big names and big buildings but about all kinds of social practices.