AD Interviews: The Latest Architecture and News

During our last trip to Beijing we had the opportunity to visit Li Xiaodong at his recently opened extension for the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University. Li Xiaodong has become recognized worldwide thanks to his recent projects in rural China, which are deeply connected with the landscape and local community and use a mix of traditional and contemporary techniques.

His built works are strongly connected with his academic research. As a professor at Tsinghua University he has focused on understanding Chinese architecture, co-authoring publications such as “Form Making in Traditional Chinese Architecture” and “Chinese Conception of Space." His research has led him to develop a unique style, which he calls a “new regionalism," focusing on how the local can deal with the global in this era.

During the Mextropoli Festival in Mexico City, we had the chance to sit down with Martha Thorne, the Vice Dean of the IE School of Architecture and Design, and the Executive Director of the Pritzker Prize, who spoke with us about some of the challenges currently facing architecture education.

"When there is globalization in any field there’s the danger that every place becomes similar, or in this case the danger that schools can become similar or standardized, all trying to approach architecture and the academics of architecture in the same way,” she explained. “I think what’s really interesting is to try to look at schools and see how they try to differentiate themselves.”

Earlier this month, during the award ceremony for the 2015 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture-Mies van der Rohe Award, we had the opportunity to speak with winners Barozzi / Veiga, who won for their Philharmonic Hall Szczecin. We asked Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga, founders of the eponymous, Barcelon-based firm, about their project and their office.

The architects describe the process of incorporating and filtering many influences to arrive at the final design for the Philharmonic Hall, emphasizing that they strove to "create a quality" that transforms from day to night. Learn more about the project by watching the video above, and see what the jury had to say after the break.

At the ARKIMEET event in Istanbul, Turkey, we had the chance to catch up with Nanne de Ru, a co-founder of Powerhouse Company and the current director at The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture.

“I think architectural thinking is quite often about how to manage complexity,  how to manage the complexity of different stakeholders -- an architect is a mediator between those different demands.  And politics operates quite often in similar ways,” he said on the connection between architecture and politics. “I think what politics and architecture have in common is the need for strategy and for thinking and to design strategies."

Check out some of Powerhouse Company’s designs below and watch the full video above to see what else de Ru has to say about politics, empathy and education in architecture.

Inside the Wood Pavilion at this year's AIA Convention, we had the chance to chat with Benton Johnson of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) about SOM’s research on using wood for highrise buildings. Although wood is a sustainable and efficient material, it hasn’t entered the world of skyscraper construction yet. However, through their Timber Tower Research Project, SOM has come up with a structural system for skyscrapers that uses mass timber as the main structural material and consequently minimizes the building’s carbon footprint.

“Architects should focus on using wood for these types of structures because we do think of it as the way of the future. Energy and resources are just going to become more and more important going forward, and mass timber technology has no way to go but up,” Johnson explains.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been an invaluable technological advancement for the architecture, engineering, construction and building management industries. But for people who don’t use it on a daily basis, BIM can seem overwhelming. This animated video breaks BIM down in layman’s terms explaining what it is, how it works and what the benefits of using it are.

Read on after the break to learn more about BIM and our interview with Viktor Várkonyi, the CFO of Graphisoft, one of the frontrunners in BIM development.

Speaking from the newly-opened Istanbul practice of Copenhagen-based Henning Larsen Architects, Anne Marie Galmstrup describes her scandinavian design process in the context of her role as Principal-in-Charge of projects in Turkey. "Architecture is about space and about interaction between people," Galmstrup says, asking "How does it work here? How is it different in this cultural environment or in that climate?" Galmstrup discusses the atmosphere in Turkey, and how to engage young architects. Henning Larsen has hosted a series of "Imagination Schools," two-week workshops set in the middle east charged with overcoming regional design challenges, and Galmstrup has been instrumental in the orchestration of these and many more projects over her ten year tenure at Henning Larsen.

Award-winning African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré is renowned for his cross-cultural approach to architecture. Although his office, Kéré Architecture, is based in Berlin, many of his projects are carried out in his native West African country Burkina Faso, where he is known for incorporating local materials and talent into his designs.

Spanish firm Ensamble Studio has always captivated me with the high level of experimentation found in their built works. Their construction processes are unique, and their projects elegantly explore the tension between structure, matter and space with impeccable technical execution--as seen at the award-winning Hemeroscopium House’s delicately balanced intersected prefab elements.

From the small Truffle in the Mediterranean coast, to the delicate roof of the Cervantes Theater in Mexico City, their work is always reinterpreting materials. The Cervantes Theater roof, for example, stands elegantly between projects by FR-EE and Chipperfield, marking the location of an underground venue below through a carefully balanced steel structure. From certain angles, though, one sees a laminar structure that lets light pass through.

The firm is based in Madrid, and is directed by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa, together with Javier Cuesta. Antón is currently full-professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT.

In this interview Antón tells us that architecture is part science, part poetry, and that Ensamble has found success by treating their practice as a laboratory, academy and consultancy company. Read the full transcript after the break.

After taking a hiatus while the new FRAC Centre was being built, ArchiLab has returned for its ninth edition. The lab started as an opportunity to question the practice of the architect, the diversification of the field, and the new urban challenges of our changing, globalized world. Founded by Marie-Ange Brayer (Director of the FRAC) & Frédéric Migayrou (Deputy Director of the MNAM-Centre Pompidou), it has shaped the architectural debate and served as a launch platform for many architects.

During the opening of the new FRAC Centre in Orléans, France, we had the chance to interview architect Brendan MacFarlane, one of the founders of the Paris-based firm Jakob + MacFarlane (the architects behind the building).

Aires Mateus - founded by brothers and partners, Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus - is an acclaimed contemporary practice that upholds the strong tradition of Portuguese architecture. We recently had the chance to interview one of the partners: Francisco Aires Mateus.