Interview: The Latest Architecture and News

How do we want to live? Should we lean towards a turbulent metropolitan life with an all-inclusive advantage, or should we favor the composed suburban life with sufficient services? What if architects and urbanists were able to implement some of these all-inclusive services into disregarded areas of the suburbs? In the latest installment of PLANE—SITE’s short video series of the Time-Space-Existence exhibition, Louise Braverman Architect, a New York-based firm, explores the utopic and dynamic vision of the future of suburbs, and how Hyperloop technology could breathe a new life into these often overlooked places.

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Juhani Pallasmaa Interview: Art and Architecture from Louisiana Channel on Vimeo.

In this video from the Louisiana Channel, Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa expounds on his view of the importance of art and architecture. In order to begin to understand this relationship, Pallasmaa stresses the importance of literature and self-construction, along with understanding the history and culture of a place.

Videos

Louisiana Channel has released a new video interview with acclaimed architect Daniel Libeskind, in which he retraces the story behind his architectural career. In the interview, Libeskind unravels his view of architecture, and the architectural profession, drawing comparisons between architecture and music, while reflecting on the adherence to legislation and inherent optimistic outlook required to practice architecture.

In the 30-minute in-depth interview, Libeskind guides observers through his childhood, the roots of his architectural career, and reflects upon his most noted schemes, including the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the World Trade Center Masterplan in New York.

Spanish architect Anna Puigjaner has revealed how she is applying her “Kitchenless” housing typology within her own projects in a recent interview with Metropolis Magazine as one of their 2018 Game Changers. After receiving funding from the Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize for her controversial proposition in 2016 (after which ArchDaily published an interview with her), Puigjaner talks about the time she spent traveling the world and visiting the many different cultures that share her idea of communal cooking, adding that millennials are more inclined to co-habit or share resources.

The kitchen is the most provocative part of the house. It has been used as a political tool for a long time, to the point that nowadays we can’t accept living without a kitchen.

While Moshe Safdie may be more well known for the bold forms defining his portfolio of built projects—ranging from the National Gallery of Canada and the horizontal Raffles City Chongqing to the iconic Habitat 67—the architect considers his unbuilt works as important, if not more. Safdie ponders the role of these projects and more in PLANE-SITE’s latest addition to the series Time-Space-Existence.

“Lightness and transparency are very close friends. You start from something and then you take off, you take off, you take off... And at a certain point you have to stop taking off, otherwise, everything falls down. If you do this you find that there’s a kind of beauty there. It’s a beauty that is profound, it’s not cosmetic.”

In this video by Luis Fernández-Galiano, Italian architect Renzo Piano talks about his path to finding beauty in lightness and transparency. This clip is a part of a full documentary and interactive booklet series by Fundación arquia and produced by White Horse.

Early on in my career I had to decide between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.

Frank Lloyd Wright is the household name of architects in the United States, with stories of his ego as widespread as his prolific work. Watching Frank Lloyd Wright at 83 years old is not your typical history lesson. The interview aired on NBC Chicago in 1958 and captures Frank Lloyd Wright telling stories to Hugh Downs about his education, early career with Louis Sullivan, an inspiration for Taliesin and Taliesin West and his own innovations in architecture (let's just say this question didn't get a humble response).

India’s renowned architect Anupama Kundoo has experimented with locally sourced materials to develop Wall House and others for non-profit organizations to minimise impact in the construction process whilst maintaining the connection to the community. She tells us how she integrates hybrid technologies into the building, a response to the growing segregation in India and developing countries.

During an interview with Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias, Pritzker Prize laureate Eduardo Souto de Moura spoke to Ana Sousa Dias about his path through the Fine Arts School, his work alongside Noé Diniz and Álvaro Siza, and his consolidated international career – which he says has given him projects, but not pleasure.

"If I have to do 30 projects, there are three that give me joy and 27 that don't. I'm tired of it. It doesn't annoy me arguing when the assumption is intelligible, but when only time and money matters, it can get ugly. Respecting elections and economically have big profits," said Souto de Moura. 

"It's quite evident that you're prepared to abandon traditional ways of sitting," Bernard Keeffe exclaims as he collapses into a bright yellow beanbag in Norman Foster's home. "For years," he continues, "people have thought that if they sat down they would have to sit on a chair, but now you have demonstrated that this is not necessary!" In this lengthy 1971 interview with Lord Foster, drawn from the archives of Thames TV, Keeffe questions the practice's early hi-tech approach to architecture in the context of a landscape in which buildings were becoming "ever more complicated."

Architecture, as both a profession and the built environment, currently finds itself at a crossroads in trying to adapt to a world in constant flux. Cities and its people face continuous socio-economic, political and environmental change on a daily basis, prompting a necessary rethink in the evolution of sustainable urbanization. With a focus on housing, society and cultural heritage, RIBA’s International Conference, Change in the City, aims to offer insight into the “New Urban Agenda” and how architects can play an interdisciplinary role in future urban development.

Speaking in an interview ahead of the conference, Norman Foster is a strong advocate for a careful consideration of what aspects of urban life need to be prioritized when designing cities of the future. For an increasingly global society, Foster stresses the need for architecture to surpass buildings and tackle its greatest obstacle – global warming, honing in on its roots and factors involved to create viable urban solutions.

Now in its 20^th year, Berlin-based firm TOPOTEK 1 has been an enterprising player in the field of landscape architecture and public design, with a portfolio of projects that emphasize the social and formal roles that landscape assumes within built work. Largely responsible for the firm’s success this far is the man at the helm, Martin Rein-Cano, who has served as one of the founding partners since 1996.

Founded in 1996 by Buenos Aires-born Martin Rein-Cano, TOPOTEK 1 has quickly developed a reputation as a multidisciplinary landscape architecture firm, focussing on the re-contextualization of objects and spaces and the interdisciplinary approaches to design, framed within contemporary cultural and societal discourse.

The award-winning Berlin-based firm has completed a range of public spaces, from sports complexes and gardens to public squares and international installations. Significant projects include the green rooftop Railway Cover in Munich, Zurich’s hybrid Heerenschürli Sports Complex and the German Embassy in Warsaw. The firm has also recently completed the Schöningen Spears Research and Recreation Centre near Hannover, working with contrasting typologies of the open meadow and the dense forest on a historic site.

WOHA's first exhibition in Latin America, Garden City Mega City: WOHA's Urban Ecosystems presents over two decades of WOHA's international designs. With its inauguration at the Museum of the City of Mexico during the MEXTRÓPOLI International Festival of Architecture and City, the exhibition proposes the introduction of biodiversity and lively public spaces into vertical, climate-sensitive highrises within megalopolises.

The exhibition features sixteen intricate architectural models, an immersive video installation and large-scale drawings and images that show WOHA's proposals for vertical communities in the tropical megacities. PLANE-SITE documented the exhibition's opening along with the points of view of various MEXTRÓPOLI contributors and city officials.