#ArchinectMeets is a series of interviews with members of the architecture community that use Instagram as a creative medium. With the series, we ask some of Instagram’s architectural photographers, producers and curators about their relationship to the social media platform and how it has affected their practice.
Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. Using our own account, @Archinect, as a site for image curation and news content, we wanted to ask fellow Instagram users how they navigated the platform.
We begin the series with Andrew Kovacs (@archiveofaffinities), a professor of architecture at UCLA and owner of the blog Archive of Affinities. Kovacs has treated this blog - divided between Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr - as his own personal strategy for "making architecture from architecture" against a field of notoriously uncompromising budgets, clients and deadlines. History often lays bare architecture that can somehow be as beguiling as it is easily forgotten; Andrew Kovacs has turned the search and exposure of its many unturned stones into his passion project.
What is your relationship to architecture? Has Instagram affected your views toward the profession?
My relationship to architecture is as follows: I teach design studios at UCLA, and I have a design studio here in LA, and I run the blog Archive of Affinities. I'm not sure if Instagram has affected my views towards the profession, but Instagram has allowed for a much more rapid and open exchange of ideas, sensibilities, tastes, etc.
View this post on InstagramNeuhaus and Taylor, Campbell Centre, Dallas, Texas, 1972
A post shared by Andrew Kovacs (@archiveofaffinities) on
How do you believe you have developed a distinct identity for your Instagram profile? What have you hoped to express through your posts?
Archive of Affinities is the longest project that I have worked on continuously. It is a project with no deadline, no client and no budget - all things that are integral to make architecture happen. Yet the content of Archive of Affinities is architectural. More specifically the content of Archive of Affinities reflects my interests and activities within architecture at the time.
How much of your Instagram is imagery of your own work versus that of others, and how have you curated the two together on one profile?
I don't know because I have never measured that. To me all the images that I share are related to what I am working on at the moment. Archive of Affinities serves as a kind of crucible for the work that I do.
Affinity is a nice word because it can mean either something that I have a personal predilection for, or something that might have an inherent relationship to something else. At times, images that I seek and search out and eventually share on Archive of Affinities might spark a project or a direction for a project or become the material for a speculative project.
View this post on InstagramNoëlle Lavaivre, Book House, Photo by Yves Jannes, 1973
A post shared by Andrew Kovacs (@archiveofaffinities) on
At other times I might be working on a project and I will look up relevant references from other architects. It is a constant back and forth that I find to be productive for the projects we produce.
Were you collecting these images before you had a social media presence, or did social media encourage you to take image curation more seriously?
Yes. I started collecting images of architecture when I was an architecture student. I had a folder on a hard drive that was organized by the names of architects and in this image bank I was collecting images that were on the internet of work that I found to be inspiring or that served as a relevant reference for the projects I was working on at the time.
When I started the project of Archive of Affinities in 2010 I stopped saving images from the internet and I started to scan images and upload them onto the internet. Archive of Affinities was folded into my graduate thesis at Princeton and has since served as an offshoot, generator, and reference point for the projects that I work on.
View this post on InstagramAdvertisements for Architecture
A post shared by Andrew Kovacs (@archiveofaffinities) on
How do you typically find the images you post on Instagram?
The images I share usually find me. The overwhelming content on Archive of Affinities comes from old media that I scan. There is an element of chance and serendipity in all of this. Mostly, because the way I look for things can seem a bit uncontrolled or random, and this is partly due to the fact that I am trying to find things that I have never seen before.
View this post on InstagramAdvertisements for Architecture
A post shared by Andrew Kovacs (@archiveofaffinities) on
Do you post your work anywhere else online? Is Instagram your social media channel of choice?
Archive of Affinities began as a Tumblr site and it is still active. There is also a Twitter feed. The work I do with my office can be found on my website. And I have also shared images on the site Ello.
Is there a post that you are particularly fond of?
Not really. I am interested in all the material that I share and at one level Archive of Affinities is about generating a large collection of images that serve as a reference point for me and the projects that I work on.
Who are your favorite users to follow?
Two feeds that I have recently been into are @terriblefloorplans and @newagecocaine
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