Archinect - Features

Storytelling, Bias, and Exploitation in Digital Realms; A Conversation with Miriam Hillawi Abraham

2023-10-24T12:01:00-04:00

For Miriam Hillawi Abraham, the digital realm is one fraught with both opportunities and dangers. The Ethiopian designer and researcher sees digital media as an impactful, playful, and unrestrained way of shaping immersive stories that challenge Western narratives and power dynamics imposed on the African continent, its histories, its built environment, and its people.

Meanwhile, Abraham sounds a timely note of caution on the potential for digital technologies and artificial intelligence to generate a single, incomplete visual language for the future, further propagating a Western-centric monoculture under a false guise of democratization, opportunity, and accessibility.

In July 2023, Archinect’s Niall Patrick Walsh spoke with Abraham about her life, work, and reflections on the relationship between architecture, storytelling, digital realms, and power relations. The discussion, edited slightly for clarity, is published below.

This article is part of the Archinect In-Depth: Artifici...

The Impact of Ireland's Architects, from the Pritzker Prize to the White House

2022-03-17T06:00:00-04:00

Historically, Ireland's architects have punched above their weight on the world stage. Be it the White House in Washington D.C., innovative World Expo pavilions in New York, or Stirling Prize-winning buildings in the United Kingdom by Dublin-based Pritzker laureates, we explore how the island's architectural history and attitudes have informed what has today been dubbed the "golden age" of Irish architecture.

The Great Chicago Fire at 150: Architectural Historian Jerry Larson Weighs in on Myths Surrounding the Architectural Changes it Brought to the City

2021-10-08T18:32:00-04:00

Today, October 8th, 2021, marks the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The three-day blaze, which killed an estimated 300 people and destroyed over 17,000 structures, is said to have been a catalyst in the history of modern design, sparking, as a direct result of the “blank slate” that was created, a revolution in the uses of different building methods, materials, and urban planning strategies around the city. From this, many of us learned, a direct line can be drawn connecting a variety of the changes that took place inside of Chicago thereafter with some of the architectural trends that shaped the development of modern cities through the end of the 20th century.

As convenient as this narrative is, it remains amongst the more dated that are still being routinely taught in design curriculums across the country. Today, we will reexamine the impacts the fire has (and has not) made using a simple two-question prompt: How has the event been misconceptualize...

Reyner Banham Is Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies at 50

2021-08-19T07:59:00-04:00

If you have an interest in Los Angeles, you also have a copy of Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. My own is a mid-1980s Pelican paperback, which I chose because it had the dumbest cover of all the editions. Though it shares with previous printings the image of David Hockney's A Bigger Splash, an unimpeachable representation of a certain midcentury vision of the city's hauntingly good life, its title replaces their elegant Helvetica with letterforms better suited to a post-apocalyptic action movie gone straight to video. "Angeles" is spelled out in forward-slanting, shadow-casting, bright yellow capitals but for the red initial "A," rendered as if hastily spray-painted and set inside a circle to form the 1970s anarchy symbol. Right, Los Angeles — that's the zone of semi-controlled urban chaos obedient to no conventional rules or order, architectural or otherwise, isn't it?

Juneteenth and the Villa that Became a Legend

2021-06-19T15:18:00-04:00

Juneteenth is perhaps the oldest holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States. In our recent time, many have begun to focus more deeply on the heritage and experience of Black people in the United States. A much needed shift, but for years, the Black community has been celebrating Juneteenth, remembering the jubilant day millions of oppressed people’s freedom was solidified, celebrating and acknowledging the dignity of our fellow men and women.

Civil Rights have been a crucial part of American history, and maybe more appropriately, we should say Human Rights, as the two are inextricably intertwined. As architects and designers, the recognition of every human being’s intrinsic value and worth are categorically unavoidable to our duties as facilitators and builders of spatial human experiences. But, with all that aside, what does Juneteenth have to do with architecture? Really, it doesn’t have anything to do with it. But, the culminating event that established this his...