Archinect - News

Editor's Picks #303

2013-02-19T12:33:00-05:00

For the latest edition of the ShowCase feature, Archinect profiled 253 Pacific Street, a project designed James Cleary Architecture. It is a newly constructed building in Brooklyn, New York containing three duplex residences.

News

Planetizen covered Arup’s proposal for a "smart" building that will plug into "smart" urban infrastructure and cater to an increasingly dense and technology-savvy urban population. Fred Scharmen thought the proposal featured "Fantastic graphics" yet toasteroven continued his criticism from last week "I'm a little perplexed by this proposal - one the one hand it assembles all the ideas into one building (which should be larger city-wide infrastructure, not in a single building), but it's a little too ‘plug-in city’ for me - as in verging on completely unrealistic and incredibly naive about how the city really functions".

Apparently Ryan Griffin agreed, referring to the title of the news posting he wrote "radical? maybe helpful to post in a...

Five tenets of a new kind of architecture

2012-12-16T20:56:00-05:00

So when people look at you know, at the ability to 3D print using a robotic arm, they're very, very curious about the possibility of in the future, printing full scale houses, so I think the media lab and specifically in the Media Matter Group, we don't focus only on efficiency translations. For that, I would open a practice in the commercial world, but that's not the function of this lab...

Neri Oxman founder of the Mediated Matter group at MIT’s Media Lab was recently profiled in a 30-minute segment and interviewed by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. CNN also published a short essay in which Ms. Oxman begins to define a design credo suitable for the contemporary context, wherein the World-as-Machine is replaced by the World-as- Organism. The five components include; Growth over Assembly, Integration over Segregation, Heterogeneity over Homogeneity, Difference over Repetition and Material is the New Software.

As Bruce Sterling noted elsewhere "Looks like Prof Neri’s working up a manifesto there."

Pure Hardcorism

2012-07-11T19:15:00-04:00

Hard-Core: characterized by or being the purest or most basic form of something. [1]

Manifesto
In the kingdom of architecture the shapes reign supreme. Centuries of the continuous search for a transcendental architecture serve as evidence that a pure shape is the ultimate aesthetic utopia. Hardcorism is the theory of architecture as pure geometric shapes. The first endless architectural manifesto, it announces the advent of an architecture of already known looks. Hardcorism is form as ideology. Ideology as form.

Architects have been searching for the pure shapes ever since they started registering icons on a monumental scale. The pure shapes have become an endless obsession. A Platonic fetish. A recurrent topic. The pure shapes represent the ultimate aspiration of mankind. A direct connection to the gods. Form as temple. Religion as geometry.

Hardcorism is pure form unconcealed. It is blunt, straightforward, explicit, up front. It presents itself as it is, and represents ...

WAIzine 2 Coming Soon (Reserve your copy!)

2012-06-21T13:32:00-04:00

What About It? Part 2 to be released on July 7, 2012

The second issue of the graphic narrative in magazine format by WAI Architecture Think Tank includes essays, Manifestos, Projects, Collages and a series of Conversations with:
Simona Rota (Madrid)
Zhang Ke / standardarchitecture (Beijing)
Bernd Upmeyer / MONU (Rotterdam)
Perry Kulper (Michigan)

To order a printed copy (numbered limited edition of 100) of the WAIzine part 2 please email your order contact@wai-architecture.com (Subject: waizine) and you will receive a reply with the shipping details and an invoice through PayPal. If bank transfer is preferred please let us know.

WAIzine part 2 Information
What About It? Part 1
Soft cover, 100 pages , Black / White, Colour
Dimmensions: 205mm by 275mm
Publisher: WAI Architecture Think Tank Publishers
Language: English

For pricing and more information go to: www.wai-architecture.com

and www.waithinktank.com

The Shapes of Hardcore Architecture

2012-03-16T11:02:00-04:00

hard–core

adj \-ˈkȯr\

1: a : of, relating to, or being part of a hard core
2: of pornography : containing explicit descriptions of sex acts or scenes of actual sex acts
3: characterized by or being the purest or most basic form of something

Modernism

Modern Architecture was a fashion statement. Coated with an ideology of social impromptu and urban reconstruction, it seems undeniable and remarkable that the dominant gene of the Modern Movement’s DNA was its aesthetics.

Everything, from the “hygienic” appearance of its white villas, to its revolutionary materials—glass, steel and concrete, to its grid-restricted urban plans and its desolated tree-less plazas, was a trend; a stylistic straightjacket fiercely defended through an almost endless list of manifestoes and catalogues that prophesied how the modernist Zeitgeist should be portrayed.

Modernism’s plan was to become alchemistic through fashion; it was trying to transform positivism, rationalism, and Cartesianism i...