Buildings around the world are getting taller. Since the year 2000, global skyscraper construction has increased by 402%. Cities like Dubai are home to nearly 1000 high-rise buildings, and New York’s vibrant luxury real estate market has shown no signs of slowing down, with more high-rise additions slated to be added to its already towering skyline. There’s good in this – high-rises create much-needed space in already dense cities and can reduce urban sprawl in city centres, allowing for better preservation of natural areas.
Winston Churchill once said: "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." This quote almost seems written specifically for the architecture design firm Kwong von Glinow. Alison von Glinow and Lap Chi Kwong are married and partners in practice. For the last couple years, they’ve been designing and building their own live/work building in a northern neighborhood of Chicago called Edgewater. A model of the house lived in their dining room for months as they conceived of the house, making daily changes until it was constructed and they could move in. They shaped the design, now it shapes them. In this video, Kwong von Glinow takes us through this building — called the Ardmore House — and they explain how they designed it, what it’s like to live in, and how it has shaped their work since.
By definition, architecture and urban planning operate within a certain degree of indeterminacy, using present context to find viable answers for an unknown future. As a result, design is a constant search for a balance between prescribing and taking a step back to make room for alternate yet unforeseeable scenarios. Uncertainty is an inherent condition in present-day society, and recent rapid social, economic, and even environmental changes prompt a closer look at how architecture can incorporate indeterminacy. The following reviews some precedents and contemporary examples that programmatically operate with indeterminacy, highlighting several strategies for designing for uncertainty and change.