Archinect - Features

'AI Is Both Incredible and Terrifying'; A Conversation with Neil Leach

2023-06-19T11:00:00-04:00

Neil Leach is a British professor and licensed architect currently based in California. He has worked for NASA developing a 3D printer for the Moon and Mars, and is co-founder of DigitalFUTURES. Having authored over 40 books on architecture and digital design, and taught at some of the world's leading architecture schools, including the AA, Harvard, SCI-Arc, and Columbia, his in-depth understanding of architecture's professional and academic landscapes allows him to speculate how artificial intelligence will impact the future of design.

For Leach, conversations limited to popular AI tools such as Midjourney and ChatGPT detract from a broader reckoning that the architecture profession must have in the face of ever-more-capable AI models and platforms. This AI-induced reckoning includes, though is not limited to, the supply and demand of architectural labor, liabilities, and insurance, and the future of all pillars of the architectural community, be it practice, academia, or licensure...

Architecture’s 'State of the Union': Reflections on the 2022 World Architecture Festival

2023-01-05T06:00:00-05:00

From November 30th through December 2nd, 2022, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) held its first physical event in three years. The annual festival, adapting to an online format during the COVID-19 pandemic, is regarded as one of the most critical events in the global architectural calendar, from identifying award-winning projects from over 700 candidates around the world to facilitating debates, discussions, and critiques on the built environment, and the forces entwined within it. Below, Archinect’s Niall Patrick Walsh reflects back on his visit to the 2022 edition of the festival, held in Lisbon, Portugal.

The Pandemic Exposed Deep Flaws in the Architecture Profession — But Also Inspired Remedies

2022-08-25T11:26:00-04:00

Two and a half years after the initial outbreak of COVID-19, the U.S. architectural profession has emerged from the global pandemic in a stronger condition than many could have expected during the depths of 2020. However, many questions remain unanswered on how the pandemic impacted the architectural job market, firm operations, and the design process; questions which deserve scrutiny in the interests of avoiding future economic pain, and building a more resilient profession. In search of answers, we speak to three firms in differing parts of the U.S. to hear their reflections on how the profession fared during the pandemic, and where it goes next. To understand how these unique experiences fit within a national picture, we also speak with AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, who reflects on a deeper supply-demand issue across the profession.

How the Pandemic Is Impacting Architectural Photography

2020-05-06T12:14:00-04:00

While most of the professional and academic architecture world managed to, more or less, cope with the new reality of the pandemic by transitioning to remote work, some specialized roles in the industry intrinsically rely on the physical interaction with space in its unique location.

To find out how architectural photographers around the world have kept up so far with the sudden limitations to business, we have reached out to a number of photographers previously featured in Archinect's popular In Focus series.

We asked them how architecture had been impacted in their region, if social distancing was even possible during shoots, and how they planned on operating now with numerous new safety measures in place.

CONTOURS: The Divisions that Bind Us

2012-01-16T20:28:00-05:00

As if the narratives and infographics of Occupy weren’t loud enough by now, Catherine Rampell, an economics reporter for The New York Times, decided to bang the drum a little louder by writing “Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture”.

CONTOURS: Immigration and the Economy

2011-12-12T13:44:43-05:00

Listening to the Republican presidential debates, one would think that immigration is the single most important issue pressing on the U.S. economy today and that if it were “solved”—i.e. no immigrants of color (especially those from Mexico in particular, though those from Arab nations, China, and South Asia generally are also targeted by this discourse) were ever let across our borders again—that the economic woes would also be solved. In architecture, the presence of East Asian nationals in particular causes consternation amongst certain circles.

CONTOURS: EDD DE 1101 I - Part 2

2011-12-05T13:07:50-05:00

There are so many metaphors for being unemployed. My preference is a burial scenario. You are being buried and the earth keeps getting piled upon you deeper and deeper until you eventually stop trying to dig your way out. It becomes your early grave. Might as well just stay in there. When the economy eventually does improve, 43% of those 13.9 million long-term unemployed Americans may very likely remain buried as the new sidewalks of hope are poured right over them. The new armies with stars and dollar signs in their eyes will blindly stagger along going in and out of gold-plated doors, making their way around the Monopoly board until the next recession—roughly every ten years.

CONTOURS: EDD DE 1101 I

2011-11-28T12:45:19-05:00

Author’s Disclaimer

Hello! Author here. Just interjecting at the onset of this article to make it clear that, yes, I am indeed biased and this is not intended to be purely objective in any sense. I’m also blatantly stealing this device from David Foster Wallace, who used this little tactic in his posthumous novel, The Pale King. Have you read it? Quite good, I think, as long as you can get beyond the fact that he hanged himself. That’s depressing. Another subjective P.O.V. on my part. Sorry.

CONTOURS: Get a Job!

2011-11-21T12:39:20-05:00

Disconnects. There are disconnects. You become aware of them when you pass from one reality into another. From employed to unemployed is one such transition. It’s hard to understand unless you have gone through it. I would compare the experience to going to war…without all the weapons and death.

CONTOURS: What Should Architecture Occupy? Part Three

2011-11-14T12:53:28-05:00

The results of the OWS poll are in. Now, there are many different approaches to summarizing the responses. One is to rely solely on statistics, but since many of the answers cannot be meaningfully summarized this way, and since OWS itself is about giving people a voice, the best way to encapsulate the results is to quote some responses. Of course, the flip responses were jettisoned because what we wanted were sincere, thoughtful responses, whether we agreed with them or not.

CONTOURS: What Should Architecture Occupy? Part Two

2011-11-07T12:00:00-05:00

Of course, we know why architects are quiet on these fundamental issues of wealth and inequality. On the one hand they are just too busy trying to run their businesses and chase after ever fewer projects for less and less money. The other reason is that architects depend on the wealthiest segments of society for their livelihoods. Thus it seems to provide an obvious reason not to support a movement that stands for social and economic justice and an end to rules that favor corporations, banks and wealthy individuals over “everyone else.” Again, if you aren’t sure what the ruckus is all about, you can do some investigating on your own—start by reading outside the architectural press.

CONTOURS: What Should Architecture Occupy? Part One

2011-10-31T12:00:00-04:00

Unless you’ve been living under a very remote rock, you know by now that the OWS, or Occupy Wall Street movement, with its many offshoots including Occupy the Hood, has been continued for over a month, now. And what’s more, unless you are independently wealthy or a trustfund baby (and are therefore the “1%”), you are also part of the 99% of the population whom this collective movement addresses.

The Ideal Firm’s Profile

2011-10-17T12:34:04-04:00

In publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The Economist, articles have heralded a new economic era. An era that demands that business be done differently in order to survive not only the continuing recession but to create a new, more agile business model. As many economists have asserted, the effects of poor economic policies and deregulation throughout the 2000’s will be felt for years to come.

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.

CONTOURS: The Real

2011-10-05T12:46:14-04:00

Let’s get real. What we generally call Reality is not something we should lose sight of at this juncture, when our economy is still faltering, protests are erupting in cities across the country (you have heard about this, right?), and conservatives are arguing that taxing the rich will derail the engines of prosperity for all. So much for that “recovery.” Not in sight.