In the midst of a pandemic that has already affected 184 countries and infected more than a million people around the world, we seek to cover all topics that relate the coronavirus within architecture and space, and ways to make social distancing less painful.
From the famous Kitchen Debate between Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon to the popularity of Henry Ford within the USSR, the hundreds of factories designed by Detroit engineer Albert Kahn for Soviet Russia, and skyscrapers erected in Moscow, the Cold War had a peculiar side to it, that is the Russian fascination with American culture and technology.
In this article, we tap into how AI could be augmenting, changing design processes, and how architects and other professionals are responding and incorporating these technological advancements into their design work. What kind of innovation can AI bring to this industry, and what has been experimented with so far? This selection of projects can help form an opinion on the architectural application of AI.
In honor of International Women’s Day celebrated on March 8, it’s important to reflect upon and acknowledge the progress that women across all design professions have made over the last several years. From more women being appointed to leadership roles in prominent academic institutions around the world, Jeanne Gang being named to Time 100’s Most Influential People in 2019, the all-female team of Counterspace being awarded the design of the Serpentine Pavilion in London, and the first female practice winning the prestigious Pritzker Prize only a few days ago, more women in architecture are gaining the recognition that they deserve in this traditionally male-dominated profession.
Rotation, displacement, and interleaving of blocks are some of the options that enable the diversity of raw brick patterns in architecture. The shape of these elements, usually used for the construction of walls, has been explored in a creative way to compose facades of residential buildings, representing the formal identity of the building itself and its relationship with its context.
Halloween. A day plagued by ghost, ghouls, and goblins. Historically, on All Hallows' Evening, many believed that spirits could return to the earthly world. On this frightful occasion, we’re highlighting phantoms from the beyond that have entered the architectural realm. Below, 13 hellish projects and their supernatural counterparts. Scroll down if you dare.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
This summer the federal government released an astonishing statistic: 87% of American homes are now equipped with air conditioning. Since the world is getting undeniably warmer, I suppose this isn’t all that surprising, but keep in mind that robust number of mechanically cooled homes include residences in some fairly temperate climates. So my question is a simple one: When did air conditioning in the U.S. became a requirement, rather than an add-on?
Opening on July 5th, “Architecture Speaks: The Language of MVRDV” will provide an immersive, diverse, multimedia experience for visitors to the Tyrolean Architecture Center (aut) in Innsbruck, Austria. The exhibition centers around a spatial intervention of 4 towers constructed inside the aut’s Adambräu Building, a former brewhouse. Each tower embodies a word that represents key concepts in MVRDV’s designs: stack, pixel, village, and activator. “Architecture Speaks” aims to present the concepts in an approachable, engaging manner, with the colorful towers enhanced by images, text, models, drawings, videos, audio, and interactive elements to present MVRDV’s projects.
In the Negev Desert of Israel, SAGA Space Architects are collaborating with D-MARS to build a Mars Lab Habitat that will simulate the conditions of living in a confined space on the hazardous surface of the red planet. The laboratory structure they’ve designed is an addition to D-MARS' existing Mars simulation habitat and will be part of a larger experiment. This habitat will serve as a prototype for a longer mission scheduled for 2020.
Fifty years have passed since the publication of influential landscape architect Ian McHarg’s book, Design With Nature in 1969. Throughout the United States, an environmental movement was taking place, into the center of which McHarg’s book was thrust. The 1970s and ‘80s were a time of much landmark legislation surrounding ecological concerns, and McHarg argued that landscape architecture alone was able to integrate all the disparate fields involved.
In their new student housing project, Walshe's Yard, Urban Agency has placed incredible importance on blending the building into its context while also providing a high quality of living for students. Located in Carlow, Ireland, the building is situated on the threshold between the looser urban periphery and the denser historic center of the town. The 3800 square meter project will include 125 bedspaces arranged into 32 “student houses” of either 3, 6, or 8 students, plus graduate studios on the top floor.
Etienne-Louis Boullée, though regarded as one of the most visionary and influential architects in French neoclassicism, saw none of his most extraordinary designs come to life. Throughout the late 1700s Boullée taught, theorized, and practiced architecture in a characteristic style consisting of geometric forms on an enormous scale, an excision of unnecessary ornamentation, and repetition of columns and other similar elements.
Now is your chance to build a house of cards from cards of houses with the Kickstarter campaign for the updated second edition of SCALA Architecture Playing Cards. "Arquitectura a Contrapelo", an architecture and design team based in Seville, Spain, are hoping to release a sequel to their previous successful deck of architecture-themed cards. The new edition keeps the collection current with additions of the most relevant contemporary architecture, as well as providing some upgrades and improvements from the previous deck.
Competing in this year’s 15th annual Multi Comfort Student Contest, Saint-Gobain had over 2,200 students from 199 universities worldwide. The final was narrowed down to 60 competing teams from 34 countries, all of whom traveled to Milan to present their designs to an international panel of experts from the Municipality of Milan. This year’s brief was to design a project to rehabilitate and reconnect the urban area around Crescenzago subway station in Milan in line with the city’s #milano2030 development plan. The competition also focuses on Saint-Gobain’s concept of Multi Comfort: thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort, as well as good indoor air quality.
Drawing as an architectural tool serves not only as a means of communication, but through drawing we can also gain a deeper understanding of the subject. To this purpose, Alessandro Luporino has created the Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture. The series of beautiful and evocative illustrations serve as companions for the book “Dictionary of Architecture,” by Nikolaus Pevsner, John Fleming, and Hugh Honor.
As a firm which has already won major awards, worked on culturally significant projects on a large scale, and generally achieved substantial success and recognition in just over 10 years, SO-IL seem to straddle a line between being an “emerging” and an “established” practice. Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu founded SO-IL (Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu) in 2008 and have since gained a reputation for modern, clean-lined designs, but often with a unique material twist.
This article was made in partnership with Design Indaba, a website and annual festival that uncovers innovation for good. Click here to learn more about the annual event.
It took a few years and multiple failed career attempts for renowned minimalist designer John Pawson to truly enter the world of architecture. Though he’d cultivated an interest in design from a young age, he’d initially shied away due to his beliefs that he needed to be good at math and that design was an innate skill rather than something that could be taught.
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