Archinect - News

Is "Burning Man urbanization" a useful planning model?

2019-09-09T20:00:00-04:00

Most of the structure that has been added since [Burning Man's 1996 revival] feels invisible to the people who come: the streets that are surveyed to be exactly 40 feet wide, the plazas that steer people together without crowding them, the 430 fire extinguishers around town, each tracked by its own QR code. The goal now, one planner explained to Mr. Romer, is to make Black Rock City just safe enough that people can joke about dying without actually dying.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer and The New York Times writer Emily Badger explore the urban economics of Burning Man's Black Rock City while envisioning the potential relevance of the instant-city planning model amid massive, worldwide urbanization.

Doomsday bunkers are coming back in a big way

2019-08-16T19:00:00-04:00

Americans have, for generations, prepared themselves for society’s collapse. They built fallout shelters during the Cold War and basement supply caches ahead of Y2K. But in recent years, personalized disaster prep has grown into a multimillion-dollar business, fueled by a seemingly endless stream of new and revamped threats, from climate change to terrorism, cyberattacks and civil unrest.

A look at the dioramas of apocalypse

2016-06-29T12:54:00-04:00

Their ongoing series -- titled "The City" -- imagines a parallel universe where humankind is extinct and nature has already started to reclaim the concrete jungle. Think of it as a journey through apocalyptic architecture.

Commercial diorama makers Kathleen Gerber and Lori Nix's dystopian art project, "The City," is a miniature labor of love. Each diorama takes about 7 to 15 months to build, primarily because of the intricate level of detail contained within each scene. Check out this post-apocalyptic casino, replete with distressed slot machines and chintzy carpet:

Or this bombed-out circulation desk scene with half-opened card catalog drawers (a physical object filled with index cards that people used to look up library materials before computer searches):

Meanwhile, this subway scene features a decayed downtown, glimpsed through the permanently agape doors:

What's the latest in innovative model-making?

John Portman's Inadvertent Dystopian Fortresses

2015-04-08T16:54:00-04:00

“[Directors are] projecting a future by imagining how it would look in ruins,” said Michael Hays, a professor of architectural theory at Harvard. “All the flesh has been removed and you just see the architectural bones. I’ve always thought Portman’s buildings would make very beautiful ruins, because the essence of them is so powerful and so direct.”

In this larger piece about how Atlanta has become a favored setting for dystopian cinema, Harvard professor Michael Hays shares an unusual perspective on the work of John Portman as cinematic harbinger of doom.