Archinect - Features

NEXT SERIES: Media Specialist Wanted

2013-04-10T11:59:00-04:00

In architectural media, what it used to be "there is no such thing as bad publicity" in the prime print years, has turned into "puffery is the only publicity" in the age of social media and infinite promotion. There might be some flickers of hope here and there for intelligent criticism, but media in general might as well be one big love fest for the positive thinking which is explained in Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. The quantity is the key word here and it is counted by thumb up style likes..

Fishing for Architecture with John Lurie

2013-01-16T13:20:00-05:00

I became familiar with the work of John Lurie in mid 80's when a friend put in a cassette tape during an intoxicating balmy night on Aegean coast of Turkey with meandering sounds of Lounge Lizards mixing into the starry skies above. Since then, I have listened to more of his music, watched the films and became aware of his fascinating artistic output. Due to his illness, suffering from Lyme disease, John Lurie had to refocus his artful existence doing paintings which are no less expressive and heartfelt than his masterful work in other forms. I had an opportunity to ask him to talk with me about architecture and this conversation resulted over a few days of messaging in cyber space. By the end, we became somewhat friends and so far have been checking in with each other on a daily basis. He is a rare, multi-talented artist for sure. And I really believe he knows more about architecture than he thinks.

Manhattanisms : RAM(s) vs. REM

2012-08-14T20:00:00-04:00

by Alexander Maymind & Matthew Persinger

(published in Pidgin Magazine: Issue 11, Princeton University School of Architecture, p. 208-219.)

“In other words, it’s Stern’s commonness as opposed to his rarity, that makes his work so significant.” - Mark Jarzombek[1]

“Pretending histories left and right, its contents are dynamic yet stagnant, recycled or multiplied as in cloning: forms search for function like hermit crabs looking for a vacant shell . . .” - Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace[2]

UpStarts: FreelandBuck

2012-08-13T09:00:00-04:00

FreelandBuck is an architectural design practice based in New York and Los Angeles affiliated with Yale School of Architecture, Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) and Woodbury University. The office focuses on research and design, exploring the overlap between academia and practice.

This interview has been conducted via series of e-mail exchanges between Orhan Ayyüce, David Freeland and Brennan Buck on July 31 - August 6, 2012. After initial answers by David and Brennan, the responses were attributed to FreelandBuck.

Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center

2012-05-22T17:46:00-04:00

(Published in One: Twelve Issue 4, April 2012.)

Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University has been typically understood through its relationship to and manipulation of then-current postmodern trends within architectural discourse. While the discussion about the building has been host to a plethora of theoretical issues (ranging from the historicity of quotation, to new forms of monumentality, to contemporary modes of estrangement, to architecture-as-collage, etc.) it seems that today certain shifts have caused the work to move to the fringe of current debates.

Tadao Ando Interview: 20 Minutes with a Master

2012-04-23T20:10:00-04:00

I can easily point to Tadao Ando's work as one of my earliest sources of inspiration, pulling me toward a life embedded in architecture. The powerful simplicity of his forms has always seemed to me, to represent an understanding far greater than that of the built environment alone. A few weeks ago, we had a rare opportunity to meet and talk with the master, thanks to a generous offer from Cal Poly Pomona and Axel Schmitzberger, during Ando's brief visit to Los Angeles to collect his 2012 Richard Neutra Award. So, Orhan, Alex, Kaori and I headed out to Neutra's VDL House in Silver Lake, on a chilly afternoon in late March, for a brief, yet memorable, chat.

NEXT SERIES: FASTER PUSSYCAT CITY

2012-03-21T15:23:00-04:00

I used to be more intrigued by the voodoo goat head in New Orleans, but lately, cities designed in few charrette hours became more of a curiosity.

I like the ones that twirl but I even developed a particular taste for those 20 ft. square ones on pedestals attended by architecture students, their teachers, bartenders and by others who go to pecha kucha parties.

Playing instant cities on plywood trays are easy, fast and you get to meet a lot of people. This activity is usually done with creative types who like cultural districts full of galleries and sidewalk cafes where trend followers wait on the line to get eggs Benedict with fresh urban farmed herbs in weekend mornings.

Working out of the Box: Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp

2012-03-16T13:30:00-04:00

If you haven't heard of Pinterest yet, you don't get online much. Pinterest, Silicon Valley's latest darling, has skyrocketed in popularity due to its dead-simple concept and beautiful execution. It's a website (and app) that allows members to collect and share their favorite images, directly from websites, organizing them in "boards". Other members can then follow users or the theme-specific boards, providing a never-ending daily dose of eye-candy for the visually inspired.

Evan Sharp, co-founder and lead designer of Pinterest, started up Pinterest shortly after studying architecture at Columbia's GSAPP. To learn more about his transition from architecture to web super-stardom, Evan and I had a chat.

Are you an architect working out of the box? Do you know of someone that has changed careers and has an interesting story to share? If you would like to suggest an (ex-)architect, please send us a message.

Amateur Architecture: A New Vernacular?

2012-03-11T20:20:00-04:00

Wang Shu may be a surprising choice for this year’s Pritzker Prize, but it’s an excellent one, and well-deserved. In recent years the Pritzker Committee has gravitated towards architects who produce work with an innate understanding of place, allowing their ties to local culture to infuse their work. The choice of Wang Shu (and, by extension, of Amateur Architecture and partner Lu Wenyu) continues this trend: his work is as culturally-sensitive and contextually responsive as it is aesthetically stunning.

Top 10 Design Initiatives to Watch in 2012—for the public good

2011-12-27T14:34:00-05:00

By John Cary

Last week’s Top 10 Design Milestones of 2011, published here at Archinect, highlighted advances in design for the public good by profiling leading organizations from IDEO.org and Mass Design Group to individuals like Jeanne Gang and Michael Kimmelman. As we round out this year and usher in the next, it feels important to also look towards the future—though, of course, looking back is always easier than looking forward.

With that in mind, this is not an exercise in trend spotting, but rather a simple meditation on initiatives poised to advance the field, and how they can be scaled up, refined, tweaked, borrowed, and leveraged. None of the following is entirely new; some are a long time in the making, while others are testing new directions. Some initiatives also evade mention, either because they’re not yet public or because they haven’t yet been dreamed up. One thing is for certain: the bar is higher than ever, even—and perhaps especially—for design efforts that c...

Top 10 Design Milestones of 2011—for the public good

2011-12-22T12:16:00-05:00

By John Cary

‘Tis the season for gift guides, year-end donation appeals, and lots and lots of lists. Among others, we saw a few standout designers among Forbes’s “30 Under 30” list earlier this week, and it’s hard to disagree with most of Alissa Walker’s picks in her annual GOOD design year-in-review list, which is always worth a read.

The following list, by contrast, favors people, places, and projects that advance the notion of design for the public good. It profiles built projects, new sources of funding, powerful public voices, nonprofit start-ups, and web-based ventures. Lists like this are never comprehensive; this one, for its part, seeks to showcase how design can and is making the world a better place, if not directly transforming people’s experiences and lives.

Looking forward, stay tuned for a companion list of the “Top 10 Design Initiatives Worth Watching in 2012,” right here at Archinect.

Op-Ed: an Open house?

2011-06-21T19:18:00-04:00

Written by Nick Axel

The recent project of Open house by Droog with Diller Scofidio + Renfro is refreshing in the sense that it engages a pervasive condition and experience of the built environment that often goes unthought. The idea of envisioning a ‘future suburbia’ has strongly provoked the attention of architects and the non-architect, better known as the resident. The content of the project has to this date contained a one day event that included a seminar taking place in New York City, polemical installations within the archetypal suburb of Levittown, New York, visionary representations of a potential life in suburbia (1), and a host of online journalism. Open house uses traditional architectural conventions as provocative mediums in order to communicate, what I would like to show, a much deeper and significant concept that is at the root of the project. By employing the potentiality of a service economy, Open house fundamentally works on an ideological level that seeks to...

PS1 YAP 2011 Wrap-up

2011-06-13T14:30:00-04:00

With the winning PS1 entry by Interboro Partners being installed right now, Archinect takes a moment to catch up with Formlessfinder, winner of the Peoples' Choice Award, to talk about the how and the why of innovative architecture.

NEXT SERIES: ARCHITECTURE JURY, A Factual and Fictional Manual

2011-05-31T16:53:46-04:00

To spectators, the architecture jury critics might mean deities if they don't know they are not. In fact, some students know this but it is a best kept secret so they can stand back and watch the divine comedy folding out on the first rows of their presentation. Not all students take criticism personally although it is hard not to.

Most architecture schools are the continuation of the traditional model, design studios taught by people who are, if you say so, spatial experts. In general, architecture education is defined by how to draw and produce space. Most people in the world can say something about buildings. Naturally, architects use a unique vocabulary to control and develop their craft.

I was asked if I would write a piece on architectural juries. After thinking about it for a few hours I came up with this idea of subjectively stereotyping the people who sit in front of the presentations and say 'wise' things about student projects. I hope this will help the audience and...

MIT, Going FAST After 150 Years

2011-05-06T12:08:00-04:00

In 2011 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrates the 150th anniversary of its founding, an occasion marked with 150 consecutive days of activities commemorating its long history of technology innovation. The most prominent of the exhibits, performances and symposia making up the celebration is the Festival of Art, Science and Technology (FAST), a series of events meant to highlight the institute’s often overlooked tradition in the arts. Organized as a six-part series of events spanning three months, FAST offers the public direct access to a body of work that transcends art as a means of representation to instead becomes an agent of social and technological exploration. On May 7th and 8th FAST culminates in the FAST Light festival, an open house showcasing a number of installation projects by both faculty and staff.

Review: Central Park at Playa Vista by Michael Maltzan Architects

2011-04-27T14:27:00-04:00

Placed near the east end of continuously expanding Playa Vista, a mixed use development with the marketing strategies and lifestyles of loosely called New Urbanist or thereabouts genre, the newly opened “Central Park“ could be described with the words of my film maker friend as a “designer park,” meant semi ironically and with an admiration for its talented layout and realization.

Architecture in the Givenness - Toward the Difficult Whole Again: Part 2

2011-04-26T22:06:00-04:00

Our education is based upon the Classical education. An architect is a mason who has learned Latin. Modern architects seem, however, more likely to have mastered Esperanto.

Adolf Loos, “Grundsätzliches von Adolf Loos,” Adolf Loos (Vienna: 1930), p. 17.

In our world of powerful stimuli and the often irresponsible, commercially motivated love of experimentation for its own sake, there is a great deal that does not establish real communication. For intoxication alone cannot insure lasting communication.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful (UK: 1970), p. 51.

The art of building has been transformed into a business of self-display and promotion through the design and construction of figurative motifs, making it an object of consumption.

David Leatherbarrow, The Roots of Architectural Invention, (UK: 1993), p.1.

Architecture in the Givenness - Toward the Difficult Whole Again: Part 1

2011-04-08T12:46:07-04:00

UpStarts: 5468796 Architecture

2010-10-26T20:19:00-04:00

by William Galloway

Sometimes it is possible to catch a group of people who are literally taking their first steps towards something interesting. If luck is on your side you can find out what they are thinking about - before hindsight settles in and the interesting things have become normal, and the answers to questions are all pre-digested. If the timing is right it is possible to learn a bit about what it is like to be an up-start.

Coy Howard Interview

2010-10-12T16:20:00-04:00

Coy Howard’s Ellen and Jay McCafferty House in San Pedro was built in 1980, just around the pivotal, transforming times in California architecture. This is when experimentation with form and materials inspired the whole generation of architects as fresh ideas were beaming from Los Angeles. Group of young architects led by Frank Gehry were making buildings with plywood and drywall but were doing them outrageously. It quickly caught on by the students as most of the group were teaching architecture in UCLA and newly opened SCI-Arc.

UpStarts: LAN Architecture

2010-01-07T11:04:00-05:00

Coordinating schedules with Benoit Jallon and Umberto Napolitano of LAN [Local Architecture Network] Architecture is hard. They’re busy. Which is just about the best adjective you can wish upon these founders of an (almost) eight-year-old practice. Well, that, and “happy” — specifically with the projects keeping them chained to the drawing board. Oh, but we’ll get to the topic of architectural hedonism yet, believe me.

UpStarts: MAPT

2009-10-27T13:16:00-04:00

MAPT, a Danish architecture practice several months shy of its fifth birthday, leaves an intricate trail of breadcrumbs behind its projects. It's not easy retracing the steps between a realized MAPT idea and its inception. The firm's works are often products of an ongoing "mad science," after all— years of lab experiments, workshops, lectures, installations, tests, and trial runs.

UpStarts: Ball-Nogues Studio

2009-09-25T14:45:00-04:00

I arrive at Ball-Nogues Studio in downtown Los Angeles ten minutes early. Benjamin Ball is still on the phone with a client, which I take as a green-light to snoop around the office — a spacious room decked with suspended shapes and colorful projects-in-progress. Against one wall, a small library points to the ‘reference medley’ Ball and partner Gaston Nogues bring to their practice. Art and architecture represent in the titles, of course, but no less so than, say, Constructivist theater. I find this fitting for a young design and fabrication firm whose varied projects give way to many hyphenations: “architecturally-integrated”; “digitally-hand-crafted”; “lightly-weighty.”

UpStarts: SUPERPOOL

2009-09-15T14:46:00-04:00

Selva Gürdoğan, Architect (born 1979, Turkey. 2003 graduate from Sci-Arc, USA) and Gregers Tang Thomsen, Architect (born 1974, Denmark. 2003 graduate from Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark) founded Superpool in Istanbul in 2006. They met at Rem Koolhaas’ studio Office for Metropolitan Architecture - OMA - in 2003, where they worked until establishing Superpool.

Captain Concept - Archinect Interviews Michael Jantzen

2009-09-04T14:50:34-04:00

The artist and designer Michael Jantzen has added another structure to the surreal panorama made of his alternative-energy social and living spaces. This latest addition —Sun Rays Pavilion — is an oblique gathering area made of 12 precast concrete columns towering 150 feet tall. The Pavilion’s flat roof, as it were, faces south. Glazed with photovoltaic film, the structure generates its own electricity, with some to spare — providing the local power grid with surplus energy. Large glass sections and doors keep the space ventilated.

As it is with such projects, there are no production plans. Not yet, anyway. Nevertheless, in the fantastical landscape where many of Jantzen’s concepts reside, Sun Rays Pavilion serves its purpose: it is a gathering space, after all, visited in no small part by bloggers and magazine readers; it further broaches exactly those questions and concerns Jantzen hoped it would. Besides, as Jantzen tells me, the fate of a realized structure may be even harde...

UpStarts: Lyn Rice Architects

2008-09-29T16:00:00-04:00

The one thing you will not find in school--or even on Architecture Registration Exams--is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

Eric Owen Moss: Untitled

2008-04-16T15:08:00-04:00

I went to Culver City the day before my interview with Eric Owen Moss. I needed to see what the architect was doing or done, and why it got attention.
EOM Architects’ business campus commissioned by Samitaur Development is easy to write off as architect gone mad.
The place is like the architect's personal laboratory of what I call, ‘gestural architecture,’ perhaps reactively.

The Pink Project

2007-12-03T07:25:00-05:00

While filming on a set in New Orleans, actor Brad Pitt became seduced by the powerful image of a pink-clad CGI house within the lush Louisiana surroundings. He saw the pink structure as a metaphor, representing the future of renewed housing for those displaced by the recent disasters.

UpStarts: WORKac

2007-09-18T18:30:00-04:00

UpStarts: Plasma Studio

2007-01-22T15:00:00-05:00

The one thing you will not find in school—or even on Architecture Registration Exams—is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts are a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.