Archinect - Features

How Will Architecture be Affected by the Rise of Blockchain Technologies like NFTs?

2021-03-24T08:53:00-04:00

In the midst of a media cycle dominated by the ongoing pandemic, last week’s news that Christie’s sale of artist Beeple’s Everdays for a staggering $69 million made its way into national headlines. A rarity for any art event even in normal times. This served as a watershed moment for the growing online community of crypto collectors, whose use of blockchain technology and platforms like SuperRare to acquire digital art sold as Non-Fungible Tokens (or NFTs for short) has shaken up art sales in ways that are only now starting to become clear.

Are the Doors Closing on the Open Office?

2020-11-17T18:59:00-05:00

As workers return to their offices after the regional lockdowns implemented to stop the spread of Coronavirus, there is a new reckoning in the workplace: Will the open office survive?

The Architecture Industry on Workplace Design and Returning to the Office

2020-07-02T10:25:00-04:00

As many prepare to transition back to the office, it would be safe to conclude that things will not “go back to normal.” With a long list of requirements for businesses looking to get back in-house, it can seem dreadful to coordinate one’s office space in compliance with the seemingly countless precautions. However, this recent time has introduced a new need for spatial experts, a role architects have filled for centuries. Today, we are seeing more firms embrace a role as a consultant in contrast to a more traditional designation as “designer.” Firms are stepping up to capitalize on workplace expertise, informing and guiding clients to fruitful re-opening strategies. Moreover, architects themselves have also been planning their return-to-office strategies, many of whom have communicated their thoughts with us, as we will share in this article.

In this piece, we’ll look at some insights from the industry concerning the return to work, reviewing the new research done by a handful of p...

Lessons in Monochromatic Composition from Arthur Elrod

2019-07-27T07:13:00-04:00

Arthur Elrod, the noted Mid-Century Modern interior designer, is widely known for his eye-popping, colorful, and groovy designs, but what can we learn from his monochromatic works? Stylistically eclectic, formally complex, and materially decadent, these works hold valuable lessons that, upon further inspection, make great precedents for contemporary design explorations.

Why? Because Elrod anticipated a now distinctly contemporary form of eclecticism that combines the curatorial approach of discerning taste with a no-holds-barred, cabinet of curiosities-centered sensibility that relies on color and materiality to seemingly tie together new and traditional spaces and objects alike. While Elrod’s colorful works are sure to wow, this approach is more effectively appreciated through the subtlety of his monochromatic designs, where Elrod manages to work in surprisingly explicit ways to undermine the notion that Modernism was founded on newness alone, and to erode the idea that design ha...

Rex’s Brown University Performing Arts Center Shape-Shifts to Fill a Campus Void

2019-06-14T13:38:00-04:00

The tradition of architects experimenting with new typologies and forms on college campuses is one that goes way back.

Whether considering Frank Lloyd Wright’s 10-building collection of Usonian structures at Florida Southern College, Venturi-Scott Brown’s technological-contextual works at UCLA, Minoru Yamasaki’s elegant and stately Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, or Frank Gehry’s shape-shifting Stata Center at MIT, college campuses have often provided fertile terrain where thoughtful, brand name designers and open-minded clients with unconventional program needs can come together in the pursuit of bold design solutions.

REX’s forthcoming Performing Arts Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is no exception.

Discussions on Domestic Hydrology with Elizabeth Galvez

2019-05-29T12:57:00-04:00

This week we talk to Elizabeth Galvez who is was the 2018-19 Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College.

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the current eruption and trend of fellowships in academia today. These positions within the academic realm produce a fantastic blend of practice, research and design influence and traditionally within a tight time frame. Fellow Fellows sits down with these fellows and attempts to understand what these positions offer to both themselves and the discipline at large. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to an otherwise maddening pace of refreshed academics while giving a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done in-between the newly minted graduate and the licensed associate.

19 Young Architects on Why They Decided to Start Their Careers With Their Own Firms

2019-05-02T12:00:00-04:00

Striking it on your own can be an exhilarating process, the ability to take on your own clients, building your imagination and growing your own company. While your mind will jump immediately to the successes of your own company, learning the nuances of the nuts and bolts is just as if not more critical of launching your own design office. Looking through our Small Studio Snapshots, we look to highlight the reasons, decisions, and motivations from some of today's young, successful and productive offices.

#ArchinectMeets @newagecocaine

2018-11-02T11:00:00-04:00

#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. While we use 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 spoke to Kate Sennert, curator of @newagecocaine. The photographs she finds across her path are from that magical era roughly between 1975 and 1985, which some have described as the 'late-modernist' period. Some of the modernist tenants stayed intact in this era, such as those of expediency and experimentation with new materials, while others had been gleefully rejected, such as modesty and the sacre...

From Exodus to S, M, L, XL to Seattle; Architecture with Rem Koolhaas

2018-10-31T12:00:00-04:00

Soapbox is a weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.

This week we take a look at Rem Koolhaas.

The Negative Spaces of Domesticity

2018-10-24T11:32:00-04:00

This week we take a look at English artist, Rachel Whiteread. Whiteread was the first female artist to win the Turner Prize in 1993.

Cut. Copy. Paste. One in a Million. Cut. Copy. Paste.

2018-09-14T09:00:00-04:00

The role of Archinect’s series Cross-Talk is to bring forward the positive aspects of the polemic and allow for the resulting conflict to bring to life an otherwise still and comfortable climate of creativity—if there can be one. Cross-Talk attempts—if to only say that it did—to allow text the freedom that the image has accepted and embraced. Cross-Talk attempts to force the no, to contradict itself, to anger, to please and then anger again, if only to force a stance, to pull out the position of the self, of the discipline and of the hour as a means to begin and maintain conversations moving forward.

In this installment we hear from Yoonjee Koh. Yoonjee Koh is the Director of Intermediate Architecture Studios and full time faculty member at The Boston Architectural College.

From Dr. Dre to John Lautner, it all started here. The Panel House by Barbara Bestor.

2018-08-10T09:00:00-04:00

From the Ground Up is a series on Archinect focused on discovering the early stages & signs of history's most prolific architects. Starting from the beginning allows us to understand the long journey architecture takes in even the formative of hands and often, surprising shifts that occur in its journey. These early projects grant us a glimpse into the early, naive, ambitious and at points rough edges of soon to be architectural masters.

From Obscurity to MoMA. Eric Owen Moss's Playa Del Rey Triplex

2018-08-03T09:00:00-04:00

Soapbox: Psychotherapy

2018-08-01T09:00:00-04:00

From the Ground Up: Claude Nicolas Ledoux

2018-06-08T09:00:00-04:00

From the Ground Up is a series on Archinect focused on discovering the early stages & signs of history's most prolific architects. Starting from the beginning allows us to understand the long journey architecture takes in even the most formative of hands and the often, surprising shifts that occur on its journey. These early projects grant us a glimpse into the early, naive, ambitious—and at points, rough—edges of soon to be architectural masters.

Redlines: SOILED

2018-04-24T09:00:00-04:00

Redlines is a collection of interviews with editors that make today's most provocative architectural publications come to life. While architecture is traditionally concerned with buildings, materials, and scale, their importance and historical impact are recorded through words, books, and images that are often organized, published, and disseminated. Redlines seeks to understand the pedagogical and design frameworks that shape this process.

In this session, we look at SOILED; Co-founded by architect Joseph Altshuler and performance artist Isaac Bloom, SOILED was conceived upon a simple observation: even though architecture is all around us, architecture lacks an accessible venue for public consumption and entertainment.

One, Two Three Swing & #ILikeEverything; Installations from the Tate Turbine Hall and the Hestercombe Estate

2017-10-03T11:40:00-04:00

The first Tate Turbine Hall installation seventeen years ago featured the work of the surrealist Louise Bourgeois, since then, there have been many popular, bodily engaged installations such as Olafur Eliasson’s, Weather Project, and Carsten Holler’s polished stainless steel slides. With this year’s installation commissioned from the Danish art collective, Superflex, entitled ‘One, Two Three Swing’, the fun is back with an experiential attraction, a stimulation for body and mind. Superflex have a track record of provocative and collaborative work, from urban graphics to film and sound work, from their ‘flooded MacDonalds’ film to the remarkable ‘international’ playpark in Copenhagen, ‘Superkilin’.

Screen/Print #54: Galen Cranz on Why We Need to Rethink the Chair

2017-04-28T12:04:00-04:00

Besides buildings (obviously), chairs are probably architects favorite things to design. There’s Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair and Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig-Zag chair; Arne Jacobson’s Model 3107 and Frank Llloyd Wright’s Peacock chair. Today, the tradition continues, with architects from David Adjaye to Rem Koolhaas to Zaha Hadid all designing places to perch. Yet, for all their formal grace and beauty, these chairs rarely break the mold. Invariably, they are designed around an upright individual sitting at a right angle. And, according to Galen Cranz, a Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, such traditional chair designs just don’t cut it—and they're even harming our health.

The gimp room, the padded cell, the medical office: inside the world of Kink.com

2016-04-26T10:02:00-04:00

“If you do your job right then no one will notice,” it’s been said. There may be no better exemplar of this truism than the work that goes on behind the scenes of a porn film. In the heat of an onanistic moment, the last thing you want to think about is bad design. Yet, an adult film is very much a designed object – particularly when it comes to the elaborate structural and fantasy elements involved in BDSM and kink.

How the couch furnished modernity’s notions of privacy

2016-03-07T14:10:00-05:00

In the 21st century, the couch is so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible. We find them in commercial waiting rooms, in private homes, as infested harbingers of urban decay on street corners. They populate television talk shows and form a shorthand for psychiatric evaluation. But how has this piece of furniture, which has only been around for about 330 years, become the seat of our culture?

Working Out of the Box: Jader Almeida

2016-03-02T08:19:00-05:00

Working out of the Box is a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths.

In this installment, we're talking with Jader Almeida, a Brazilian furniture and product designer.

Are you an architect working out of the box? Do you know of someone that has changed careers and has an interesting story to share? If you would like to suggest an (ex-)architect, please send us a message.

A sheet of plastic, a few screws, and five minutes are all it takes to assemble one of these "darling" stackable chairs

2016-03-01T15:34:00-05:00

IKEA may be the main peddler of assemble-it-yourself furniture, but, as many disgruntled college students would attest, their designs are often less-than-easy to realize. The "Thermoplastic Darling Stackable Chair", on the other hand, requires just one sheet of pre-scored polypropylene, a few screws, and about five minutes to put together.

Leftover inspiration: the construction aesthetic of "Chair 6.0"

2016-02-28T11:56:00-05:00

What happens when you bend a six-meter long piece of rebar 14 times? Well, this chair, for starters. By using found materials at a construction site and carefully planning ahead, University of Michigan alum and architect Moon Joo Lee was able to create this chair without any welding or use of bolts.

Innovation with a heart: Guto Requena's technological and emotional designs

2016-02-27T11:54:00-05:00

Imagine “technology". What comes to mind? A robot? An iPhone? A self-driving car? Whatever the case, chances are it’s an object that feels pretty cold and provokes little emotion.

Between art and design: rethinking function with Hand Job Gallery Store

2016-02-23T17:55:00-05:00

Google “art vs design” and you’ll find a slew of fairly common sense diagrams and articles. “Good art is a talent”, stipulates one, while “good design is a skill”. Or, similarly, “good art is interpreted”, whereas “good design is understood”. My favorite includes two identical images of a chair. Beneath one reads the caption, “a chair: design”, while beneath the second, “a tree: conceptual art”.

Screen/Print #40: Alexandra Lange's "Power Positions" from Dirty Furniture, issue #2

2016-02-17T17:43:00-05:00

In the high-gloss landscape of design magazines, all tables have been wiped clean. But in practice, things get messy: our desks are cluttered, our kitchens are flecked with sauce, our careers take form or falter as we finger the seams in the Formica. In this issue of Dirty Furniture, the second in a finite series of six, an object usually shrouded by its ubiquity is illuminated by a series of essays that considers the table not just as a formal object, but also as an architecture and convention that structures our familial, social, political, and spiritual relationships.

A prize-winning installation pays tribute to a historical Quebec village

2016-02-10T17:03:00-05:00

Vercheres, a small village near Montreal, has recently integrated a unique memorial to honor those who originally settled the region in 1740. A local firm, Les Ateliers Guyon, has designed a cluster of benches with white oak sails rooted along the shore of the St. Lawrence River. Sails Benches echoes the arrival of 18th century explorers, while reflecting a particular artistic aesthetic that Les Ateliers Guyon has become known for. The project has recently garnered accolade from the prestigious World Interiors News Awards in London, receiving first place in the ‘Furniture Category’.

Waka Waka's furniture strikes a balance between simplicity and playfulness

2016-02-08T11:17:00-05:00

Waka Waka is a Los Angeles-based design studio founded by the Japanese-born designer Shinichiro Okuda. Taking a minimal approach softened with a bit of humor, the studio’s striking, handmade plywood furniture has a distinct and contemporary look.

A misting mirror, a chair that shoots fireworks, and other material experiments by Soft Baroque

2016-02-03T17:44:00-05:00

Soft Baroque, the London-based design studio founded by Saša Štucin and Nicholas Gardner, has made pretty significant ripples in the design world for a practice just barely two years old. Their strange but visually-delightful furniture functions both online and offline, incorporates unwieldy materials like fireworks and water vapor, and treats history like a hunk of clay to be molded. They have an adept and playful way of involving conceptual elements in their work that makes you wonder how form and function alone ever seemed like sufficient ends for a design – or, at the very least, why your living room table is so boring.

UpStarts: Four O Nine architecture and design

2015-01-12T09:30:00-05:00

In a country infamous for its one time zone and countless architectural knock-offs, Four O Nine's success is startling and original.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts surveys the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.