via Flickr. User: Sam Valadi, Licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Zambian Government through the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zambia to the United Nations invites eligible consulting firms (consultants) to indicate their interest in providing consulting services for the proposed rehabilitation works of the official residence situated in Scarsdale, New York.
Courtesy of Media by Matteo de Mayda/ Courtesy of 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, The laboratory of the Future
For the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Nordic Countries Pavilion, representing Finland, Norway, and Sweden, will showcase Girjegumpi, an itinerant collective library project initiated by architect and artist Joar Nango. For over fifteen years, Joar Nango has been assembling an archive of books and materials exploring Indigenous Sámi architecture and design, traditional building knowledge, activism, and decoloniality. The Girjegumpi first opened to the public in 2018, becoming a welcoming space for gathering and promoting the Indigenous culture. In 2023, the library will travel to Venice, where it will be presented in the Nordic Countries Pavilion, designed by Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn.
Through shapes, colors, and the elements on their facades, many architects have sought to bring a sense of movement to works that are otherwise physically static. Santiago Calatrava, Jean Nouvel, and Frank Gehry are only a few of the masters who managed to provide a dynamic effect to motionless structures, highlighting the work in context using formal strategies borrowed from the plastic arts. In other cases, however, architects have also opted for physically kinetic structures that could bring a unique aesthetic or functional dimension to the work.
For much of the world, this past year was spent within the confines of our homes, undoubtedly blurring the lines between our public, professional, and private lives and transforming our living spaces into places of work and productivity. This transformation of spaces and how they are used is nothing new in the world of architecture as countless spaces take on various roles beyond what they were originally designed for--a fact reflected in their layout, design, and the materials used within them.
A defining feature of the architecture of the Swahili Coast—apart from its coral stone buildings and mangrove poles used to elaborate those structures—is undoubtedly the ornamented door so commonly found across this coastal area. Richly decorated, and historically often layered with meaning, these doors, apart from serving the more utilitarian function of an entrance, were also signifiers of status and wealth. From this Swahili Coast to the Arabian Peninsula, these doors of the coast are very much markers of their location, representative of trade and migration.