Archinect - Features

USC M.Arch Graduate Fabian Dietrich Creates an "Urban Architectural Metaphor" for Southern California

2020-07-27T14:00:00-04:00

Imagine dissecting a region and collaging areas together in order to study the relationships between two different urban landscapes. Fabian Dietrich uses his thesis, Long Air, or L.A, to do just this by creating "a composite of disparate communities, united by the shared idea of a city." Influenced by British architecture duo Smout Allen and their two drawing series LA To Be Done and LA Recalculated, Dietrich creates a conceptual cut-out using two Southern California cities, Bel Air and Long Beach, to test his hypothesis.

Since completing his M.Arch from the University of Southern California (USC), Dietrich's job search has been a bit different from other COVID-19 era graduates, as he has been able to successfully enter the workforce. Dietrich shares his own perspectives as an international student to observe how the industry has been affected by the pandemic and what students should take away from these challenging times.

Archinect's Spotlight on 2020 Thesis Projects: 2020 has been...

The Geometry of the World

2019-04-30T12:14:00-04:00

City-States

Permanent Crisis

The American City seems to exist now in a state of permanent crisis.

That is to say: our cities seem lashed to a self-renewing state of emergency driven by entrenched and multiplying acts of violence. We bear witness to police violence against civilians; civilian aggression towards officers of the peace and, inevitably, mass shootings by radicalized citizens against communities: Las Vegas, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Thousand Oaks, Poway and so on and so on. Add to this ongoing acts of seemingly retaliatory public rioting and counter-violence organized by the citizen militias as far afield as Portland and Charlottesville. In this context and we can and should consider the possibility that our cities have become settings for persistent urban confrontations pitting citizens against citizens and civilians against the police, the very branch of local government retained to maintain a civil society.

A tale of many cities with Rosalyne Shieh and Troy Schaum of SCHAUM/SHIEH

2019-01-14T14:54:00-05:00

Based out of New York City and Houston, Rosalyne Shieh and Troy Schaum of the practice SCHAUM/SHIEH discuss the power of learning from cities through their complexities. Over the years, both have taken their interests in urbanism to look at the scale of individual buildings and the role they play in the larger built environment. As architects and educators, the two view their firm—and its projects—as the reflection of both a social unit and a cultural endeavor; all while still being a professional body of service.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, the duo talks with Archinect about the importance of identifying their values as a small practice and using collaboration to make room for each person to evolve. Focusing time and energy on the power of revision, SCHAUM/SHIEH reflects on the strength of their processes and how it translates to their work.

New Ground I: Advancing the Countryside

2018-01-31T09:50:00-05:00

Across the urbanized world, the contemporary countryside is a paradox. While media attention is absorbed by the city, many rural regions are experiencing accelerating change due to increased automation, the emergence of megastructures and new self-learning systems, all of which are reshaping the terrain. The divisive political events of 2017 exhibited just how much today’s countryside has grown apart from the city both ideologically and spatially. To kick off 2018, in New Ground I, the first of a two-part feature series co-authored with Christine Bjerke from In-Between Economies, we will briefly explore a selection of major shifts that have influenced how the countryside operates today. We check in with rural demographer and sociologist Ken Johnson from the University of New Hampshire and Ivan Sergejev, an architect exploring the potential of the data center typology. In addition, will be tapping into the latest research from international architecture practice OMA*AMO, who have bee...

America and the AV: Digital Mobility for Architects

2017-11-15T09:00:00-05:00

American cities and their suburbs were built on innovations in transport technology. The spatial imprint of car ownership is so apparent it led urban activist Jane Jacobs to question whether American cities had in fact been built for people or for cars. In the past five years, a digital-hybrid layer of urban mobility has emerged—a fleet of autonomous, self-driving, car-pooling, electric vehicles have been set in motion. Google’s Waymo project is now driving 25,000 autonomous miles each week, and the net worth of the automated vehicle (AV) industry is projected at $7 trillion. This month I discuss how architects can participate in this emerging technology with architect and Yale professor Keller Easterling and Carlo Ratti of MIT’s Senseable City Lab. Will the uptake of AV’s deter people from public transit, pressurizing motorway expansion, or will we instead create an architectural switch, for a smarter, more equitable transport network?

When you cut funding and abandon people, surprises happen

2017-01-17T11:42:00-05:00

Detroit, once one of the 20th century’s top three thriving U.S. metropolises, has been a case study in ruin and decay for nearly half a century. “Detroit is No Dry Bones: The Eternal City of the Industrial Age,” a new book of photographs and nuanced essays by Camilo Jose Vergara, delves into this culture of ruin, offering architects and urban planners an intriguing (and often surprising) pictorial atlas of what happens to a civilization during uncivilized times.

NEXT SERIES: FASTER PUSSYCAT CITY

2012-03-21T15:23:00-04:00

I used to be more intrigued by the voodoo goat head in New Orleans, but lately, cities designed in few charrette hours became more of a curiosity.

I like the ones that twirl but I even developed a particular taste for those 20 ft. square ones on pedestals attended by architecture students, their teachers, bartenders and by others who go to pecha kucha parties.

Playing instant cities on plywood trays are easy, fast and you get to meet a lot of people. This activity is usually done with creative types who like cultural districts full of galleries and sidewalk cafes where trend followers wait on the line to get eggs Benedict with fresh urban farmed herbs in weekend mornings.