Archinect - Features

Working out of the Box: Larraine Henning

2013-05-23T11:03:00-04:00

Working out of the Box is a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths.

In this installment, we're talking with Larraine Henning. Larraine graduated with a Master in Architecture degree, but has opted for a non-traditional career as a nomadic, independent designer / illustrator / photographer. Larraine is currently seeking funding for A Practical Guide to Squatting on Indiegogo.

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.

The Ego and the Architect

2013-05-20T09:36:00-04:00

A few weeks ago, I witnessed an interaction that I imagine most people in the design industry experience numerous times both in school AND professional life. What transpired was this: a few junior architects were pinning up carefully composed drawings, renderings, and sketches for a client meeting. Under a tight budget and time constraint, the amount of thought, options, and exploration on the wall felt vital and impressive. As the last drawing was being pinned, a visiting architect from a different office briefly stepped into the room, looked at the wall for about thirty seconds, and quickly claimed “Oh, I built this building in the 90’s…”

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..

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 3, São Paulo, Rotterdam and Beyond

2013-01-30T17:09:00-05:00

Continuation of Orhan Ayyüce's interview with George Brugmans, Executive Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR).

Previously: PART 1, Making City and PART 2, Arnavutköy, Istanbul

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 2, Arnavutköy, Istanbul

2013-01-28T15:15:00-05:00

Continuation of Orhan Ayyüce's interview with George Brugmans, Executive Director of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR).

Previously: PART 1, Making City

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 1, Making City

2013-01-23T17:42:00-05:00

“I do not believe in throwing good stuff away. Every IABR edition builds on earlier editions. We refocus, change perspective, pick up new elements; we re-use and reconfigure, and then we scramble and stir. Compared to most other Biennales, we’re poor and small, so we have to be smart, not waste what we have, choose our battles, break rules, find shortcuts, work with good people, make friends and truly commit ourselves.” - George Brugmans

IABR, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam is the most engaged urban Biennale in the world. Supported by the Dutch Government, the city of Rotterdam, the municipalities where the IABR runs test sites and the collaborators from NGO's, this urban biennale continues to discuss, engage, make, critique and invent solutions for pressing problems regarding the present and the future of the cities in this so called urban century with rapidly growing megalopolises and populations.
IABR holds that when we would all be living in better-made citie...

Archinect's 12 Top 12 for '12

2013-01-02T00:07:00-05:00

Just like last year, we're transitioning into the new year by reflecting back on the 2012 by sharing the most trafficked pages in Archinect's diverse online ecosystem, with a list of 12 top 12 lists for '12. As always, we're listing the most popular pages from across the site, based exclusively on visits by unique page-views. There's no emphasis on quality or relevance here... we're simply providing a non-subjective reflection of what our valued readers are reading and sharing the most.

Instigating Change with Common Ground

2012-09-18T10:16:00-04:00

In the age where cultural production has usurped industrial production as the driver for Western economies, the Venice Architecture Biennale represents a special kind of affair. This three month-long bonanza of architecture and urban design represents a collection of diverse principles produced under a unified curatorial umbrella. Despite the trash-talk that has proliferated in certain circles since the opening of the event in late August, this year’s Biennale doesn’t have much to be cynical, negative, or nasty about.

Soriano's Glen Lukens House: Back to Life and Happy

2012-07-26T17:41:00-04:00

Opportunities to write about historically significant modern houses in Los Angeles keep coming to my attention this summer and more are on the way. It is kind of fun to write about these masterpieces from my messy office alcove next to the kitchen in our little happy dingbat apartment in Glendale, California.

Color in Architecture — More Than Just Decoration

2012-07-20T13:28:00-04:00

By Frank H. Mahnke

Color is an integral element of our world, not just in the natural environment but also in the man-made architectural environment. Color always played a role in the human evolutionary process. The environment and its colors are perceived, and the brain processes and judges what it perceives on an objective and subjective basis. Psychological influence, communication, information, and effects on the psyche are aspects of our perceptual judgment processes. Hence, the goals of color design in an architectural space are not relegated to decoration alone.

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.

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.

The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream

2012-01-30T15:25:00-05:00

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work."
— Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912)

“yes i was wondering how i go about not lossing my house it has been in my wifes famlily for over a hundred years my wife was layed off the morgage company wouldnt talk to us because she was layed off and now we are so far behind we cant get cought up so now we are loosing our home is there help out there for me”
— unedited comment from MoMA workshop blog (2011)

In Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, part of MoMA’s Issues in Contemporary Architecture series, five architects-in-residence and their interdisciplinary teams [1] were challenged to “engage in a rethinking of housing and related infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation.” The investigation also sought to “begin a conversation,” on the “recent” (though painfully on-going) foreclosure crisis by examining su...

CONTOURS: New, Energy-Efficient Technologies, Part II

2012-01-23T18:01:00-05:00

Continued from CONTOURS: New, Energy-Efficient Technologies, Part 1:

This week, we examine some very advanced technological developments on the active technology front that may potentially lead to more efficient and cheaper photovoltaic panels.

CONTOURS: New, Energy-Efficient Technologies, Part 1

2012-01-09T14:11:00-05:00

Smart and energy efficient is the new-ish approach for many architecture and design firms these days. The problem for the last decade has been that trying to persuade clients to incorporate some of these strategies into their needs has been difficult. Why? The prohibitive costs of implementing advanced technology-based elements into building design. PV panels are the first to come to mind. And when the cost is perceived as prohibitive by the client, firms balk at pushing them.

Archinect's 11 Top 11 for '11

2012-01-03T19:01:00-05:00

As we enter another new year (Archinect's 15th!), we reflect back on the previous year and share the most trafficked pages in Archinect's diverse online ecosystem, with a list of 11 top 11 lists for '11. As we always do, we're sharing the most popular pages from across the site, based exclusively on visits by unique page-views. There's no emphasis on quality or relevance here... we're simply providing a non-subjective reflection of what our valued readers are reading and sharing the most.

NEXT SERIES: RADAR LOVE

2011-12-29T12:39:08-05:00

Something happened somewhere and I am having a hard time writing anything about any of the stuff I see in the media about architecture, public space, occupy, theory of architecture, urbanism... Including most everything I say I am interested in my 'about' section. Just months ago I was writing about these things provoking arguments, at least in my own mind if not with my students and friends. Then social responsibility, unemployment and public space became ubiquitous conversations due to economic downturn and occupy movement. People start to write about them, take pictures and notes, lament, resist, notice.

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.

A Macro Look at Unemployment and the Economy

2011-10-10T17:48:37-04:00

Different approaches to alleviate the Great Recession’s intransigence have been suggested. Repeatedly, policy approaches have been examined, only to be jettisoned, based on whether they concur with their own political ideologies. To combat this, we examine a few academic studies that offer views tested by more than mere opinion.

Review: Shannon Ebner, &, Verses in Urban Art

2011-07-25T12:00:00-04:00

Shannon Ebner: and, per se and, 2011

Painted wood, steel, aluminum, light emitting diodes, photovoltaic solar cells, 12 volt battery 

Jul 15 - Oct 9, 2011

Through a collaboration with the City of Culver City, the Culver City Cultural Affairs Commission, and the Culver City Redevelopment Agency, the Hammer Museum, LA><ART, and as part of the 54th Venice Biennale present Shannon Ebner’s first public project in Los Angeles, ‘and, per se and,’, an 8-foot tall plywood ampersand installed in a vacant lot on the northeast corner of Centinela Ave. and Washington Blvd. in Culver City, CA.

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down

2011-07-21T12:00:00-04:00

In this feature Bartlett student (and Archinect school blogger), Chris Hildrey, discusses some critical issues in the architecture industry, such as the core sustainability of the practice of architecture, as it relates to other industries, and unpaid labor. He also takes us to a fun London architecture event to show us the sweeter side of our profession.

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.

Slipstream: An Exploration of Spatial Turbulence; Inspired by the drawings of Lebbeus Woods and Leonardo Da Vinci

2011-06-07T14:00:00-04:00

Slipstream is compelling pavilion whose form emerged from an exploration of both spatial phenomena and digital design methodologies. A Slipstream, in essence, is a type of turbulence generated by a body moving rapidly within a larger body. As stated by Lebbeus Woods, “The slipstream is a highly dynamic space active with forces that impel a direction and that itself moves, together with the moving body continuously creating it...” This became the design intention: to express such a phenomenon experientially, to explore the implications of slipstreaming as a spatial construct.

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...

Op-Ed: Sticks and Stones; Ai Weiwei and the Uses of Architecture

2011-05-26T12:39:00-04:00

This op-ed was initially conceived as a series of critical Twitter messages by Fred Scharmen, aka sevensixfive, directed at blogs (including Archinect) that have been providing ongoing exposure of new architecture projects in China, considering China's unfair capture and treatment of artist/activist Ai Weiwei. In an effort to investigate this issue further, and hopefully spark a little productive debate, we invited Fred to pen this op-ed.

Should the media protest the treatment of Ai Weiwei by ceasing promotion of all new architectural work in China? Should architects refuse to take on new work in China? Should we continue to support the work of architects and artists in China, but only with a disclaimer? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Sustainability of Workers' Rights

2011-05-23T14:33:01-04:00

The USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system promotes sustainable construction; however, despite the system’s focus on occupant health and comfort, LEED turns a blind eye to worker safety. The building practice, by the nature of its scale, will always rely on mass labor for construction. Yet from early monuments like the Egyptian pyramids or the Great Wall of China to recent slavery charges in the UAE documented by the Human Rights Watch, architecture has always had a complicated relationship with labor rights.