Archinect - News

Corrugated Cardboard Pavilion by Miguel Arraiz García / David Moreno Terrón

2013-05-07T16:49:00-04:00

We have received photos and a video of a pretty stunning temporary pavilion built with 3,000 corrugated hexagonal cardboard boxes for the annual “Fallas” festival in the Spanish city of Valencia. The pavilion design was a collaborative effort between Miguel Arraiz García of bipolaire arquitectos and David Moreno Terrón of Pink Intruder.

UCLA engineers will study the stability of Watts Towers

2013-04-01T16:37:00-04:00

The Watts Towers in South Los Angeles will be the subject of a new study conducted by experts from UCLA to determine the stability of the historic sculptures, which were completed by Simon Rodia in 1954. The study, now underway, is expected to be completed by early next year.

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."

Hoover Buildings by Frank Halmans

2013-01-29T18:40:00-05:00

We often see our homes as sanctuaries from the outside world. We try to leave our problems at the door and just make our dwellings a neat and comfortable place. Dutch Artist Frank Halmans’ was obviously bored by this syndrome thus he created the ‘Hoover Buildings’. The machines literally suck up dirt into the interior of a dollhouse. Halman has created functioning vacuum cleaners and dust busters in the shape of buildings in an attempt to show how ‘dirt and debris’ clutters our personal space.

Abandoned Monuments of the Socialist Republic

2012-11-07T12:39:00-05:00

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place, or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic.

Rainbow Massimal by Design Office Takebayashi Scroggin

2012-07-31T14:35:00-04:00

Lexington, KY-based Design Office Takebayashi Scroggin (D.O.T.S.) has sent us images of its installation "Rainbow Massimal", one of the attractions at Lexington's 2012 Beaux Arts Ball and winner of a 2011-12 A' Design Award.

Curtain, a Folly Proposal, Opens in New York this Saturday

2012-07-12T14:17:00-04:00

Curtain, a new sculptural project by young architects Jerome Haferd and K. Brandt Knapp, will open this Saturday afternoon with a picnic at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens. Curtain is the winning entry in Folly, a recent competition hosted by the Architectural League and Socrates Sculpture Park that invited emerging architects and designers to propose contemporary interpretations of the architectural folly.

Image of Democracy: Why I Want to Build Nine Freedom Towers in Tiananmen Square

2012-03-22T12:39:00-04:00

Eleven years ago I made a modest proposal to create a series of three massively flat and empty superblocks (two in New York and one in Washington DC). I last showed these proposals as three large architectural site models, just six months before September 11th attacks. Because my proposals seemed to foreshadow the 16 acre gap left in Manhattan’s grid, I was urged to revisit the project.

Let's Go Bowling

2012-03-21T18:58:00-04:00

An ongoing series of sculptures exploring the notions of trophy and information, Trophy appropriates the Brunswick 'Black Beauty' bowling ball. Each ball is meticulously hand carved into the seminal architectural 'Big game' trophy, i.e., the 'super books' of Mau, Koolhaus, Corbu etc.

Works by Ted Lott

2012-01-17T20:54:00-05:00

Craft practices are at once defined and restrained by their connections to tradition. Viewing woodworking in the context of objects made with wood; housing, particularly stick frame construction, emerges as possibly the most widespread use of the material throughout the modern world. Utilizing these techniques in a studio based practice, it is my hope to further the conversation on how notions of craft fit into the modern world.

Ted Lott, an artist/sculptor/woodworker from Madison WI, has shared with us some of his recent architecture-inspired pieces. Take a look at more of his work here.

Artist's Downing Street sculpture fashioned from 5,117 cubes

2012-01-16T19:28:00-05:00

Northern Ireland artist Brendan Jamison has claimed a special niche in the UK corridors of power. The craftsman is a cubist of a different kind - he is known for carving thousands of sugar lumps into intricate buildings.

John Chamberlain 1927-2011

2011-12-22T17:15:01-05:00

Mr. Chamberlain spoke of his work with reluctance and often humility, deriding the over-intellectualizing tendencies of his questioners. “Everyone always wanted to know what it meant, you know: ‘What does it mean, jellybean?’ ” he told Julie Sylvester, adding: “Even if I knew, I could only know what I thought it meant.”

The ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower

2011-12-13T19:58:58-05:00

The name of the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower is a real mouthful, a hybrid title for a mongrel artwork. The contorted steel “sculpture-cum-tower-cum-engineering feat,” in the inelegant phrase of Tate director Nicholas Serota, is the totem of our Olympic games, rising more than 375 feet out of the central plaza of the park, on former light industrial land equidistant between Stratford and Hackney Wick in east London.

Frank Kunert's Art

2011-11-10T15:06:43-05:00

Before the German photographer even snaps a single shot, he is in his studio, creating 3D model subjects—usually industrial grey constructs in still, almost poetic, settings—out of deco boards, plasticine, and paint. It could take weeks, even months, before Frank is fully satisfied that each model is indeed flawless.

Broken Houses by Ofra Lapid

2011-08-05T13:34:56-04:00

The series Broken houses is based on photographs of abandoned structures neglected by man and destroyed by the weather. The photos are found in the web while pursuing an amateur photographer from North Dakota who obsessively documents the decaying process of these houses. His photographs are used to create small scale models. Afterward, in the studio, the models are photographed again, omitted from their background and placed in gray.

The Works of Pim Palsgraaf

2011-07-26T14:09:53-04:00

His ‘Multiscape’ sculptures are city scenes literally carried by preserved dead animals or other objects found along the side of the road. With this subject matter, Pim Palsgraaf shows us contradictions between culture and nature. The urban city is seen to overtake nature. One gets the feeling that urbanism is a process which grows like a tumor.

‘Chimecco’ at Sculpture by the Sea

2011-06-28T20:29:53-04:00

The kinetic sculpture ‘Chimecco’ is a large interactive wind chime by artist Mark Nixon. It is currently being exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark: one of the most popular outdoor sculpture exhibitions in the world. The design was selected as one of the winners of an open competition from over 350 submissions.

If you're in Denmark this week, visit the exhibition which opened June 2 and still runs until July 3, 2011 along the spectacular three-kilometer long coast line from Tangkrogen to Ballehage in Aarhus.

Mettre - Student Design Project at BTU in Cottbus, Germany

2011-06-27T20:34:59-04:00

Sabrina Kolar, graduate architecture student at Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus, Germany, has sent us images of the temporary membrane sculpture "Mettre" which was exhibited on the school's campus earlier this June. The sculpture design followed an internal, studio-wide competition for students of architecture and structural engineering in which Kolar, together with fellow student Ben Strachotta, was awarded the First Prize. The winning proposal was then further worked out within the studio project "Flying Surfaces" and finally realized.

Here's a more detailed project description from the designers:

Mettre: French for use, make, and create.

This single word is the inspiration for the design and construction of the Flying Surfaces sculpture for the 20th Anniversary of BTU Cottbus.The sculpture was specifically designed to be ‘hands on’ allowing people to use, touch, explored, and view from every angle. Allowing people the chance to fully ‘experience’ the sculp...