The old adage "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" (it's stupid etc.), loses some of its impact when architecture becomes the backdrop for both music, and dancing. Ever since video killed the radio star, famous houses, quirky spaces, and history's great buildings have provided beautiful, unique and dramatic settings for music videos of all types. So which of 2017s music videos have capitalized on the wonderful world of architecture?
Douglas Barnhard, the owner of the home decor company Sourgrassbuilt, designs and builds birdhouses. Built out of repurposed materials, his designs are inspired by mid-century modernism and pay homage to the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Joseph Eichler and the Bauhaus School in Germany yet mix with Barnhard's experience of the rich surf and skate scene in Santa Cruz.
Sustainability. A word that, for many of us, has been driven into our minds from the very start of our careers as architects. We have a responsibility to the planet and future generations to design buildings that are socially conscious—from solar panels to triple-glazed windows, we have tried it all.
Ultimately, whether our designs are sustainable comes down to the early decisions we make for the building, with our choice of materials having a huge effect on the overall carbon footprint. With new technologies come new ways of incorporating abundantly found materials into the skin of the building that could reduce the building's embodied energy and enhance the structure's properties.
In this article, we have compiled a list of 8 familiar materials that you wouldn't initially associate with sustainability but which you might consider for your next design.
The new year is almost here, and Richard Meier & Partners has four international projects that will be coming to fruition. These new multi-use building designs play with light, transparency, and volume as well as respond to their varying urban context.
Last week marked the opening of Canada’s first ever funicular in downtown Edmonton, a cable-mechanized incline elevator aimed at making the city’s largest green space more accessible.
Publically funded, the $24million project features the 100 Street Funicular to transport mobility aids, strollers, and bikes, as well as a generous staircase for walking, running and lounging. Concrete sitting blocks are dispersed up the 170 steps from a promenade at the bottom. Visitors can walk along the promenade to a lookout point or ascend the stairs or funicular to the raised lookout for extensive views of the river valley.
At one of the last remaining waterfront sites in Manhattan, the topping out of a luxury, five-acre, three tower mega-structure dubbed Waterline Square marks the end of a 25-year process for the 77-acre Riverside South Master Plan. Each of the three towers has been conceptualized by a different architect, with One Waterline Square by Richard Meier & Partners Architects, Two Waterline Square by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) and Three Waterline Square by Viñoly Architects. The towers were developed concurrently, but each reflects the vision of its architect, contributing to a harmonious complex while still remaining distinct.
Bee Breeders have announced the winners of the Construction Container Facelift architecture competition. The competition jury received a wide range of work, but selected proposals which were based on a realistic implementation of a novel solution, maintaining the inherent durability and functionality of the shipping containers versus altering them strictly for aesthetics.
Architects are people of great taste, who enjoy the finer things in life – especially when it comes to pens. The saying goes: ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, but inevitably we find ourselves judging an architect by their choice of pen. It’s easy to do when your colleague decides to grab the nearest biro to sketch a quick diagram, leaving you to squirm as you sit and watch it indent the paper.
Pens are powerful tools for architects, that harness our thoughts and ideas into potential three-dimensional structures. In the age of the digital world, pens have become sacred, grounding us back to the simple pleasure of drawing to begin the creative process. After years of trying and testing all the different writing instruments out there, we eventually find the one which can say a lot more about ourselves than you may think.
The clever Italian artist, Federico Babina is at it again, and this time he's taking us around the world in 21 animated illustrations. Hear the ringing of Big Ben, sirens in New York, seagulls of Amsterdam, and Havana drums as you find yourself adding to your travel bucket list. You'll have to watch this animation more than once to catch all of the details Babina captures about an entire city culture in one illustration. Or view each illustration individually below.
Unbeknown to many, cork is something of a dark horse when it comes to the environment—a model of a sustainable industry and building material. By its very nature, cork is both recyclable and renewable, as it is the only tree that regenerates its bark, while harvesting that bark causes the tree no harm.
Cork has been sneaking its way into our buildings for many years now; due to its hard-wearing properties it can be found, for example, in the checkerboard flooring of the Library of Congress. Even NASA has been wise to cork's light weight and insulation capacity, using it as an insulator for their space shuttles.
The Prada Double Club Miami / (c) Casey Kelbaugh. Image Courtesy of Fondazione Prada
As part of Art Basel in Miami Beach, a modern and contemporary art fair that highlights galleries and the newest developments in the visual arts, Carsten Höller created an installation piece for the Fondazione Prada. The installation, “The Prada Double Club Miami” is only open for a few days as part of Art Basel and is a fully-functioning nightclub.
Scandinavian firm, White Arkitekter, working closely with urban developers Citu, have designed the masterplan for the new Climate Innovation District in Leeds, in the United Kingdom. A central brownfield site in the city will be developed and converted into a sustainable, resilient, mixed-use neighborhood of more than 500 apartments and homes.
Villa Malaparte, Adalberto Libera's modern Italian classic, is featured as the backdrop in Saint Lauren's spring 2018 campaign starring modern English classic, Kate Moss. The video for the campaign, directed by Nathalie Canguilhem, positions Moss on the dramatic and monumental steps of the villa, an architectural promenade that seems to lead directly to the sky.
7017: 5,000-Year Geologic Axonometric Projection (12,000’ H x 12,000’ W x 9,500’ D) . Image Courtesy of Arch Out Loud
Architectural research initiative, arch out loud, have released winners for their international competition to design a landmark for a nuclear waste site in New Mexico. As part of the brief, participants were required to design a timeless piece of architecture that could stand for 10,000 years to warn future generations of the unstable by-products of nuclear weapon production that are buried 2,150 feet beneath the surface.
In the competition, many entrants engaged with the local geology of the site where the waste isolation pilot plant (WIPP) is situated for the landmark that would withstand millenniums. Testbed, the winner of the competition, proposed ex-situ mineral sequestration by reacting olivine or basalt with carbon dioxide to form inert and solid carbonate material to capture the gas, that would act as an ‘artificial tree.' The other proposals questioned the site and the underlying issues regarding human involvement with nuclear activities and the consequences, designing structures that heavily juxtaposed the natural landscape.
Architect and illustrator, Marta Vilarinho de Freitas has yet again enchanted us with her intricate drawings of cities in thin-line-pen on paper. The Portuguese architect has been exercising her passion in drawing through a series of drawings entitled, Cities and Memory - the Architecture and the City.
Fascinated by cities, Marta’s illustrations express her connection with architecture while still capturing the romantic and qualitative aspects of each city, its patterns, colors, atmosphere, and light.
Marta Vilarinho de Freitas combines fantasy with detailed accuracy in her compositions of stacked building facades, roof pitches, plans and sections along with elements distinct to the city depicted such as Dutch windmills, boats, books, and instruments.The process of creating these drawings is cyclical in that they continue to inform Marta of the spirit of each city as she draws each art piece.
South Australian artist, Joshua Smith has created yet another true-to-life miniature, a locksmith shop in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The miniature was created for an exhibition at the Arcade Art Gallery in Kaohsiung called, ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ as part of the Streets of Taiwan festival. Miniaturist Joshua Smith selected the shop by using google maps, with supplemental reference photos taken by the gallery -- Joshua has not been to Taiwan, let alone the shop itself.
French photographer Laurent Kronental’s latest photo series, “Les Yeux des Tours” views of Paris, are framed by the quirky windows of the Tours Aillaud, and by the subtle differences in which the spaces around them are inhabited. Kronental considers the towers as some of the most spectacular of the Grands Ensembles built in the post-war economic boom in France. For him, photographing these buildings was a form of nostalgia, a way of satisfying a deep sense of childhood wonder and curiosity that fostered in him as a young boy perceiving them from the nearby business and shopping center "La Défense," questioning the lives of the people who live there.
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