Archinect - News

Thomas Heatherwick wants architects to improve mental health through 'interestingness'

2023-10-23T19:02:00-04:00

Boring, soulless buildings are making people stressed and lonely, according to Thomas Heatherwick [...] Calling for “a national conversation” about halting the spread of depressing architecture, he said: “We need to fearlessly demand interestingness. We need to rebel against the blandification of our streets, towns and cities, and make buildings that nourish our senses. Human beings deserve human places.”

The Lantern House and Vessel designer has been making the media rounds lately to promote his new treatise Humanize, which offers a call-to-arms of sorts for architects and planners both looking to combat the proven detriments bad architecture has on mental health. Heatherwick says his prognosis has been informed by multiple years of domestic research, including a new study he commissioned from the New Economics Foundation, and that offenders could be broken down by seven criteria: (too) flat, straight, plain, shiny, monotonous, anonymous, and serious.

Responding to this, the Observer critic Rowan Moore writes Heatherwick “does not have much to say about the value of simplicity” and that his argument is too reductivist and could result in “an outbreak of shallow wannabe Gaudís” should architects adapt his principles en masse. His position that Heathwick was too ignorant of the market forces behind modern architecture, however, seems to misunderstand the point of making such an appea...

'An experiment of archetype': LIN Architecture’s experimental wood design is all about interiority

2021-12-22T17:09:00-05:00

A groundbreaking new exploration of the physical elements of interiority comes to us in the form of an all-black wood pavilion by LIN Architecture in China's Jiangsu Province.

Labeled as a “space experiment” and located near the river on Jiangxin Island in Zhenjiang, the design forgoes functional elements to instead focus on a triad of ergonomics, proxemics, and behaviorology.

Light seeps in through the crevices, and the sea breeze blows in through them. Photo: LIU Songkai.

“The scale of human behavior is one of the concerns of this project. Research on the behavior of different people is a very good design resource for architects. By observing and understanding the behavior of people, designers can discover all kinds of possibilities of space,” its creators said, adding that “breeze, sunshine, the sound of waves, drizzle, sweet osmanthus fragrance, affecting feelings, perceptions, touch, hearing, [and] visual elements” were the true materials of their design.

Lying in front of the ...

Glass box theater? Designers like Es Devlin are making the Fourth Wall out of something new

2021-10-21T17:59:00-04:00

Even before Covid-19, many ambitious productions had been taking place not in the three-sided black boxes that defined the experimental zest and emerging punk of the late 1970s, or […] theater-in-the-round pioneered in ancient Greece and Rome, but in elaborately engineered glass cubes that evoke the International Style’s high Modernism and the minimalist penthouses of the contemporary metropolis. There would not seem to be a more flagrant violation of dramatic immediacy.

Glass cube sets from Miriam Buether, artist Todd Knope, and Expo 2020 Dubai British Pavillion designer Es Devlin have been popular among directors like Sam Mendes. One of Devlin's previous designs was based on a temporary Rachel Whitehead installation in East London from 1993. The artist's work will take center stage once again with the reopening of Mendes' The Lehman Trilogy, which plays at New York's Nederlander Theater until January 2nd.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway (@lehmantrilogybway)

“There’s a message embedded in a single room,” the three-time Olivier Award winner told the Times, “that architecture itself is the vessel through which history — whether intimate or monumental — is enacted. Glass helps you make that message explicit: A room is more than just a passive container. It remembers life.”

An art critic's soul-sucking experience visiting several “Instagram Museums”

2018-09-27T19:06:00-04:00

The central disappointment of these spaces is not that they are so narcissistic, but rather that they seem to have such a low view of the people who visit them. Observing a work of art or climbing a mountain actually invites us to create meaning in our lives. But in these spaces, the idea of “interacting” with the world is made so slickly transactional that our role is hugely diminished. Stalking through the colorful hallways of New York’s “experiences,” I felt like a shell of a person.

In this snarky piece, New York Times critic-at-large Amanda Hess recounts what it was like visiting as many of these hyped-up Instagrammable "museums" that have popped up around the U.S. in recent years.

“What began as a kicky story idea became a masochistic march through voids of meaning. I found myself sleepwalking through them, fantasizing about going to a real museum. Or watching television. Or being on Twitter,” Hess writes.

Hong Kong's public housing receives widespread photographic attention

2018-08-13T15:52:00-04:00

Across Hong Kong, where almost half the population lives in government-provided housing, public housing complexes have become wildly popular Instagram destinations. Locals and tourists have flocked to estates around the city, craning their necks to get that perfect social media shot and irritating residents in the process. The estates have drawn professional interest as well, featuring prominently in marketing campaigns and even a music video by the Korean boy band Seventeen.

Hong Kong's public housing, largely built in the 1960's and 70's, has attracted widespread public attention for its aesthetic appeal. These modernist style high-rises photograph beautifully with colorful displays of clean lined symmetry. While these buildings are visually engaging, they also play an important role providing affordable housing to millions in one of the most expensive cities to live. Hong Kong's immense public sector housing program creates space for nearly half of the city's residents.

“The world is an Instagram ad” — how the social media app is influencing consumption of art and culture

2017-08-11T17:13:00-04:00

Spaces like the Museum of Ice Cream and the Paul Smith Pink Wall offer a perfect setting for a highly shareable image—and that’s it. What happens to art, or travel, or the outside world in general when taking a photograph becomes an experience itself? As photo-driven social networks continue to grow more powerful, they are both transforming boutique economies and exercising visual influence over our modern day cuisine, travel destinations, clothing labels, and makeup trends.

From museums to music festivals to that cool-looking, brightly colored wall there, this article looks into how image-driven social media like Instagram is increasingly changing the way people are consuming art and culture in practically identical ways.

In one interesting part of the article:

“...these critics’ concerns get to the heart of larger questions that arise when a network of 700 million monthly active users congeals into one vaguely unified, often-sponsored aesthetic. ‘Instagram is one of many arenas where professionalization, or the democratization of professionalization, is playing itself out in a very very visible way,’ [CUNY Professor Lev] Manovich said. His most recent project analyzes the brightness, saturation, and hue of Instagram photos from 81 separate cities, and he has found they’re becoming more similar. ‘We have this suggestion that visual variability is decreasing.’ The whole world is starting to look like an Instagram ad, and we are all willing participants....

The dictatorial aesthetic of Donald Trump

2017-03-13T12:17:00-04:00

Trump’s design aesthetic is fascinatingly out of line with America’s past and present. If you doubt it, note that the interiors of the apartments his company actually sells bear no resemblance to the one he lives in. But that doesn’t mean his taste comes from nowhere. At one level, it’s aspirational, meant to project the wealth so many citizens can only dream of. But it also has important parallels...

The best aesthetic descriptor of Trump’s look, I’d argue, is dictator style.

Exploring Alvar Aalto's "benign errors"

2016-08-30T12:56:00-04:00

Could one of Alvar Aalto's most sublime works be the result of a mistake? And more intriguingly, did Aalto exploit error to acheive a certain aesthetic/politically pointed effect? In this thoughtful piece on Medium, Dan Hill explores the role of "benign errors" in Aalto's work, a term the architect himself coined. Hill centers his focus on the concert hall known as Finlandia, taking particular issue with (but not limiting his scope to) the building's marble facade, noting that:

"Even more remarkably, this apparently uniform and utterly wonderful bowed marble grid appears to have been a mistake, an outcome of the temperature extremes in Helsinki (I’m reminded of the Dali-esque images of failing façades from Jeffrey Inaba's talk at Postopolis regarding Kazakhstan’s -40ºC to +40ºC, though it’s not quite that bad here.)"

For more on the legacy of Alvar Aalto:

The Golden Ratio: Relevant or not?

2015-06-01T13:05:00-04:00

It's bullshit. The golden ratio's aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn. Many designers don't use it, and if they do, they vastly discount its importance. There's also no science to really back it up. Those who believe the golden ratio is the hidden math behind beauty are falling for a 150-year-old scam.

Do designers ever follow the Golden Ratio? Is it even relevant in architecture? FastCo.Design writer John Brownlee voices his perspective on the old myth.

The future of 3D printing will be...neoclassical villas?

2015-02-26T14:03:00-05:00

Outside, across the car park of this otherwise unremarkable industrial estate, is a grand, neoclassical mansion that recently became a global internet sensation . It is the world’s first 3D-printed villa. [...] Not all architects are convinced that 3D printing is good for architecture as a discipline. [...] "It may come without economic cost at a small scale but in architecture, if we are not careful, this is at the expense of integrity.”

Previously: Rapid Construction, China Style: 10 Houses in 24 Hours

Get Lectured: Princeton Fall '13

2013-11-15T13:41:00-05:00

Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2013

Here on Archinect we recently launched "Get Lectured", where we'll feature a school's lecture series--along with their snazzy posters--for the current season. UPDATE: We've begun adding international schools!

Although the Fall '13 term will wrap up soon for many schools, we'll still post some select posters and lecture series worth checking out.

Our featured poster of the day comes from the Princeton University School of Architecture. The "Rarefied" series still has two more lectures for the fall term. Each Wednesday session will present debates between speakers, Princeton SoA faculty, and select graduate students as they discuss different modalities of "Rarefied" architecture -- described in the shortened summary below:

"Princeton School of Architecture will hold a series of lectures and public debates about the aesthetics of the Rarefied: what is the architecture that grows in a resource-depleted environment? Rarefied aims t...

Editor's Picks #332

2013-09-10T11:11:00-04:00

Orhan Ayyüce penned a remembrance to his friend architect Larry Totah, titled Slow Weather of Architecture. Therein he describes "The House"...overlooking Pacific Ocean rather edgewise and build like a long drawing depicting a horizontally composed architecture. The fog, roof and the walls are more of Chumash hiring Hopi to build on their mountains for few exquisite basket full of shellfish to adorn the wedding dresses in Hopi villages like the ones a Don Juan dreamed of, a fair exchange"...

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg interviewed architectural photographer Bilyana Dimitrova, formerly Metropolis Magazine’s photo editor. The two discussed Architecture Photography in the 21st Century ahead of the exhibition 'Beyond the Assignment: Defining Photographs of Architecture and Design' which will be presented by the Julius Shulman Institute at Woodbury University, October 5 - November 1, 2013.

Orhan Ayyüce penned a remembrance to his friend architect Larry Totah, titled Slow Weather of Architecture. Therein he describes "The House" which "continuously frames and de-frames itself in three or four sets of axis minded passages. In the front, overlooking Pacific Ocean rather edgewise and build like a long drawing depicting a horizontally composed architecture. The fog, roof and the walls are more of Chumash hiring Hopi to build on their mountains for few exquisite basket full of shellfish to adorn the wedding dresses in Hopi villages like the ones a Don Juan dreamed of, a fair ...

The Blind Design Paradox

2013-01-07T00:33:00-05:00

Those outside the design industry may often wonder what makes for good architectural design. Most laypeople would say good design is aesthetically pleasing and unique, but their assessment would likely end there.

On the Aesthetic Potential of Sustainability

2012-06-04T13:45:00-04:00

So, to re-pose the question: what is the radical aesthetic consequence of the cultural desire for sustainable performance? Is it something that expresses itself in a set of formal rules, like the Modern response to the development of the steel frame? Or is it something — because it is essentially about performance — requiring entirely different means to fruition? Well, as with uncharted territory: here there be dragons.

In his latest essay for Places, David Heymann asks, "What is the 'radical aesthetic potential of sustainable design?" Drawing on examples from Leonardo to Duchamp to Peter Zumthor, Heymann explores the still unmet challenge — the "uncharted territory" — of developing a new aesthetic ideal inspired by the evolving technologies of sustainability.

Editor's Picks #266

2012-05-28T20:14:00-04:00

In Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center, Alexander Maymind argued the center's "grid-based diagrams instantiate disestablishment effects[2]...hinge on a particular aesthetic reading of architectural ugliness." 18x32 responded "I like where you've gone with the 'Ugly' here, but I don't think this building offers the best example. Nothing about Wexner is viscerally repellant, abhorrent or disgusting."

Alexander Maymind shared his essay Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center, recently published in One: Twelve Issue 4, April 2012. Therein he begins by suggesting how the center's "grid-based diagrams instantiate disestablishment effects[2] related to the aims of a contemporary art institution sited in a traditional neoclassical campus plan. These effects; critical, discursive and haptic, hinge on a particular aesthetic reading of architectural ugliness."

18x32 responded "I like where you've gone with the 'Ugly' here, but I don't think this building offers the best example. Nothing about Wexner is viscerally repellant, abhorrent or disgusting. Everything is too clean, too precise, too clinical, too withdrawn, too intentional to be grotesque. The 'Uncanny' might be a more accurate descriptor and be more in line with Eisenman's own position (see, for example, his comments on Moneo's Town Hall in Logroño in discussion with Christopher Al...