Archinect - News

Q+A w/ Richard Meier on AD

2013-04-25T10:50:00-04:00

One of the real challenges, since we’re working in so many places—Mexico, Japan, Brazil—is understanding variations, both in terms of culture and context. It’s important to understand differences in scale and environment.

Philip Michael Wolfson featured in VICE's Art Talk

2013-02-27T17:18:00-05:00

Philip Michael Wolfson is an architect from Philadelphia. He was Zaha Hadid's head of design for ten years and now runs his own studio where he works on sculptural pieces and interior architecture. In this episode of Art Talk, we visit Philip in his London studio and he discusses his creative process and shows us a recent piece called "Tsukumogami."

The Luxury of Light and Shadows

2013-02-12T19:09:00-05:00

Nestled in the flatlands of rural Bangladesh near the River Brahma-Jamuna, coursing down from Tibet, flush with the silts and melted snows of the Himalayas, the Friendship Centre is one of those new buildings which feels as though it may have been there for a very long time. Whilst the simple, graphic forms of its brick construction present a slightly archaic aspect, its enclosure by a bund or embankment lends the whole site an inward-looking inverted feel, almost like an excavation. T

Online publication, uncube, interviews Bangladeshi architect Kashef Chowdhury, discussing his recent project, the Friendship Centre, in Gaibandha.

Make mag interviews toothpick architect

2012-09-17T23:53:00-04:00

Today we chat with a man on a mission, Stan Munro, creator of the astounding and ever-growing Toothpick World. Stan is out to re-create the world’s most famous buildings — using nothing but toothpicks and glue.

The Ideology of Publication / Conversation with Bernd Upmeyer

2012-08-14T13:09:00-04:00

Urbanism is one of those malleable concepts that defy definition. A flexible subject where, by trying to lock it within a specific scope, its validity sometimes gets undermined and its potential spoiled.

But when a magazine develops and maintains its own way to portray the multiple faces, forms, shapes, relationships, arguments, contradictions, images, consequences, and messages of the discipline that is supposed to carry the unbearable load of thinking the city, then the exercise of defining urbanism becomes an enriching intellectual journey.

MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) was born in 2004 in Rotterdam. What was originally an almost underground magazine made available through a pdf dossier and a stapled black and white print has evolved into one of the main independent publications, a reference for the collective intelligence of urbanism, and an icon of exquisite aesthetics.

Set to satisfy a growing urbanophilic hunger, MONU has thrown into the mix an intoxicating mixture o...

Drawing Architecture - Conversation with Perry Kulper

2012-08-05T11:50:00-04:00

If “action painting” is produced by the dynamics of dripping, smearing, and sweeping brushstrokes of paint to reveal the complex character of abstract art, then “action drawing” would be something like juxtaposing lines, planes, volumes, typographical elements, photographs, and paper cutouts on a drawing that aims to uncover the intricate universe of architectural ideas.

Each of Perry Kulper’s architectural drawings is a cosmos of information and possibilities that resist the banal and simplistic reductionism so typical of contemporary architectural representation. Series after series, his drawings display objects as background, and background as object in a constant visual journey of an architecture that doesn't settle and always evolves: an architecture of ideas.

WAI Architecture Think Tank discussed with Perry Kulper the concept, intention, and potential of drawing architecture.

WAI: There was a moment in our academic experience in which we became very interested in th...

Charlie Rose interviews Tod Williams & Billie Tsien tonight

2012-06-18T20:43:00-04:00

Charlie Rose will be interviewing Tod Williams & Billie Tsien on tonight's show. Check your local listings for broadcast times.

Orhan Ayyüce: L.A. Love At First Sight

2012-05-24T17:01:00-04:00

I met this gray-haired woman. I lit her cigarette and she asked me what I was doing there? I said I just wanted to meet some architects and learn where I could go to school. "She said, okay, 'If you have a car, tomorrow go to this place in Santa Monica called SciArc, it's a new school. Ask for Ray Kappe and tell them that Esther McCoy sent you.'

KCET just sat down with Archinect senior editor Orhan Ayyüce for an interview about his Turkish roots, the arrival in Los Angeles, and his unlikely introduction to the world of architecture.

…China changes you

2012-05-16T10:35:00-04:00

MovingCities interviews Dutch architect John van de Water – NEXT ARCHITECTS China – about his book “You can’t change China, China changes you” [010 publisher, 2012]. The book is a a formidable page-turner telling the story of a three-year long architectural discovery in and of China. In the interviews John van de Water talks about his motives to write the book, to come and a set-up office in China, the tension he feels between a Dutch/Western and a Chinese approach to architecture and talks about the discovery and rethinking of two basic design parameters that are related to the limits of architectural design in China.

Extract:

First of all it is a shortcoming of western architects to think that we are equipped to provide solutions to answers. Chinese architects provide possibilities and western architects provide solutions. The second shortcoming is that we always want to change. [...] We tend to think that we can make flexible buildings, but Chinese people are able to make m...

Lebbeus Woods talks with Thom Mayne

2012-04-23T17:37:00-04:00

Your message is really a philosophical message to architects. You’re trying to show us how we can build cities and break out of the old modes of urban planning and urban design. And even thinking about or imagining cities that we have had for the past few hundred years, you’re offering a new way. I don’t know anyone else that’s done that today. Maybe someone will say Colin Rowe. OK—Collage City, but this goes far, far beyond Collage City and any urban theory of Corbusier or anyone else.

Excerpts of a Candid Conversation between Thom Mayne and Lebbeus Woods Recorded in the privacy of LW’s studio, transcribed by Dave Irwin

KCRW's DNA interviews Moby on LA architecture

2012-03-23T18:44:00-04:00

Chances are, you know Moby best for his electronic dance music. But it turns out the eclectic-minded musician has another life, as an architecture buff who recently moved to LA and now writes a blog about buildings here he loves. The blog is called, simply, Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog, and features his photos of local architecture. Frances Anderton talks to Moby about his love of architecture.

And, on that note, I promise this will be the last we refer to Moby's over-hyped move into the world of architecture blogging.

'If Walls Could Talk': A History Of The Home

2012-03-14T12:49:00-04:00

The book answers questions like: Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why were kitchens cut off from the rest of a home? And did strangers really share beds as recently as a century ago? (Yes, they did.)

An interview with Jacques Herzog

2012-02-09T11:14:00-05:00

In this uniformity, I see a tendency among architects to respect and maintain the status quo, and a consensus about what architecture is and can do for our society. That’s the expression of a decorative understanding of architecture, even if it expresses itself in a subtle, modernist language. (Jacques Herzog)

On Places, Jacques Herzog discusses the recent work of Herzog & de Meuron and the challenges of maintaining a creatively vital practice, in an interview with Hubertus Adam and J. Christoph Burkle.

Bounce Back from Job Search Dejection

2012-02-08T20:12:00-05:00

There is randomness in job searches. Not every step will be successful. It's easier said than done, but here are three ways to build resilience:

Prepare in a first-class way. Prepare and execute a sensible plan. Develop a winning personal value proposition, and execute it with energy. Your plan may not have worked yet, but confidence comes from doing what you know is right. The only way you can deserve to fail is if you don't prepare.
Detach. Maintain a healthy distance from the result. Do everything you can to initiate contact or prepare for interviews, but don't get overly committed. You'll do better in meetings. You'll learn from any disappointments. Take the perspective of the Greek Stoics, the Buddha, or the Alcoholics Anonymous program whose Serenity Prayer has advice for job seekers just as it does for people needing help with addiction: "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." (For a fuller discussion, I recommend The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.)

Moreover, a lack of success may have nothing to do wi...

Interview with Star Architect Rem Koolhaas: 'We're Building Assembly-Line Cities and Buildings'

2011-12-19T19:59:25-05:00

Renowned architect Rem Koolhaas is viewed as one of the most important theoreticians of his trade. In an interview with SPIEGEL, he discusses soulless cities, the failings of Europe's largest urban redevelopment project in Hamburg and the problems with SPIEGEL's brand-new headquarters.

Alexander Brodsky - It still amazes me that I became an architect

2011-12-14T20:33:57-05:00

At the beginning of his career, Alexander Brodsky is part of the “paper-architecture“ movement even though at that point, at the beginning of the eighties, there is no movement in the true sense yet. The notion “paper-architecture” rather expresses a typical limitation to architectural creativity in the Soviet Union of the time: Young architects who would refuse to fit in with the established architecture system would have no means to carry out their projects...

INTERVIEW: University of Maryland Wins Big at the 2011 Solar Decathlon

2011-10-19T13:34:54-04:00

"This year’s Solar Decathlon was a nail-biter of a competition, but in the end the University of Maryland team ultimately triumphed over all the other teams with an elegant, water conservation-focused home called the WaterShed."

A Conversation With Allison Arieff, Writer and Editor on Sustainability

2011-10-12T18:44:47-04:00

Arieff discusses how sustainability issues -- climate change, peak oil, declining resources -- suffer when they're thought of as trends; why Julius Shulman deserves to be in a sustainability hall of fame for his photographs showing how architecture is about buildings and people; and why, after years at the top of Dwell's masthead, she's done writing about gorgeous Italian closets and kitchens.

Ground zero master planner, Daniel Libeskind, praises 9/11 memorial, calls it a 'visceral encounter with this piece of New York'

2011-08-15T14:40:00-04:00

My idea in the master plan was that this was a place of the spirit. This is where people perished. It was not a piece of real estate any longer. You could not put a building there.

Previously on Archinect: Water On at WTC Memorial & On the 9/11 memorial and its disappointments.

Inside Archinect, A Precursor to Social Media

2011-08-05T18:03:00-04:00

Why drop in an interview with Archinect’s founder and creative director Paul Petrunia on the MDC blog? Well, on any given day, Archinect is, well. . .bustling with architects, designers and firms who drop by the site’s highly trafficked job boards and community forums. The latter have become the net’s sweet-spot for architects looking for advice on topics ranging from the most mundane to the most ephemeral.

In case you hadn't already stumbled upon it yet, the AIA California Council recently interviewed our very own Paul Petrunia, Founder and Creative Director of Archinect. Paul talks about the state of the industry and its indicators on the site, as well as Archinect's long history of fostering a strong and very lively architecture and design community on the web.

Dossier Journal » Ball-Nogues

2011-05-31T13:56:00-04:00

We typically start with a hypothesis about how a particular material could be used to make structure, space, and atmosphere. We then do a lot of research and testing of the material to determine its potential and economic feasibility. Once we believe we can successfully work with the material, we try to get a sense of how a space constructed from it might feel and what it might signify in a particular form.

Dossier Journal interviews Ball-Nogues.

Interview: Bikes, architecture, and "Cycle Space" with Steven Fleming

2011-05-26T15:10:49-04:00

The reason I'm here and in this gallery is because bicycles in this city are being custom built and designed with love and skill and intelligence in a way that architects design buildings for people when they really get things right. Portland is a beacon to so many other cities. It's easy for people to dismiss Holland or Denmark, but not Portland.

Q&A: Architects’ Sketchbooks

2011-05-19T19:31:28-04:00

To combat the relentless move toward electronic technologies, many schools are integrating such analog technologies as pencils, pens, water colors, pastels, in addition to teaching the manipulation of the latest computer software.

Metropolis Magazine's Susan S. Szenasy interviews Will Jones about his book "Architects' Sketchbooks".

Spacesuit: An Interview with Nicholas de Monchaux

2011-04-27T18:59:30-04:00

Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect, historian, and educator based in Berkeley, California. His work spans a huge range of topics and scales, as his new and utterly fascinating book, Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, makes clear.

Philippe Starck: a 60-second interview with the WSJ

2011-04-25T14:47:10-04:00

I don't have a favorite architect. I'm not into all that. I know nothing about design or architecture. My daughter says I am a modern autistic. I live alone, I work alone, I don't watch TV or go to cinema or read magazines—I have simply no idea of what is happening in the world.

Ever wonder what goes on in the minds of some of the world's greatest designers? In the case of Philippe Starck, the answer may as well be nothing but motorcycles and a collection of impulses and ambient music. The Wall Street Journal shares with us a short interview from the surprisingly humble, honest and even somewhat absent designer known for bringing us everything from some of the best interior design to toothbrushes to $300,000,000 super yachts.

A word of advice from Monsieur Starck... "My advice to students is 'don't try to make design.' It's so fashionable now for students—there are now more designers than there are forks per person."

Wise words to potential designers or bitter remarks?

The Saturday interview: architect Amanda Levete

2011-04-08T21:34:36-04:00

Amanda Levete made her reputation working with in the influential architectural practice, Future Systems. She talks about her 'spectacular failures', and also her many thrilling triumphs