Archinect - Features

Husos Architects: One Guy, One Bulldog, One Vegetable Garden, and the Home They Share

2020-03-21T14:34:00-04:00

Project by Husos. Text by Camilo García and Diego Barajas (Husos)

This is a small refurbished house, 495 square feet (46 square meters) in size, in a modern variation on the traditional Spanish corrala––a block of flats whose access corridors look out over a shared interior courtyard––in the Acacias neighbourhood of Madrid. It began as a commission from Jaime, a young doctor who works in Casualty, in order to cater to his needs and those of his bulldog Albóndiga (Meatball).

Towards Neuro-Spatial Diversity: Thoughts on the Relationship Between Architecture and the Patterns of the Mind

2020-03-15T13:40:00-04:00

“Too proper for the black kids, too black for the Mexicans… what’s normal anyway…” opines mixed-race, LA-born R&B artist Miguel on his 2015 track, “What’s Normal Anyway.” The artist’s self-identified ethnic identity quandary serves to mirror our understanding of the gradated nature of mental health conditions. Mild encounters with anxiety, obsession, and mania, amongst other symptomatic states, are a fundamental part of the human experience. In the classical model of mental health disorders, it is only when these symptoms are abnormally heightened and chronic enough to cause consistent distress that the shift from ‘normal’ to ‘disordered’ occurs. Subjectivity is unavoidable in this act of categorization.

Crip Camp: An Interview with Filmmaker Jim LeBrecht About Accessibility, Universal Design, and Spaces of Freedom

2020-03-07T09:42:00-05:00

The politics of disability are fundamentally spatial. They respond to the struggle for equal access and representation against different forms of socio-spatial discrimination and aspire to alternative understandings of the relation between the body and space that destabilize both current constructions of an able body as well as established norms concerning the use of space. Expanding beyond design guides and regulations to encompass more broadly structural and systemic issues related to the experience of disablement and segregation, this concern continues to be relevant well beyond the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).1 The goal, in this context, is not only to facilitate access to buildings for differently abled bodies but also access to society itself as equal individuals.

Curating Development: Carson Chan on Forming Community Through Building Groups

2020-03-01T07:00:00-05:00

Although trained as an architect, Carson Chan is mostly known for his work as a curator and writer. In 2006, after working for Barkow Leibinger Architects and the Neue Nationalgalerie's architecture exhibitions department in Berlin, he founded PROGRAM, a non-commercial initiative for art and architecture collaborations. Since then, he has worked on more than thirty international exhibitions of contemporary art and architecture, notably including the 4th Marrakech Biennale in 2012 and the Biennial of the Americas in Denver in 2013. Meanwhile, Chan has written for a wide range of publications across the fields of art, architecture, and contemporary culture, and serves as the Editor-at-Large of 032c—all while pursuing his doctorate in architecture at Princeton University, researching the rise of environmentalism and aquarium architecture in postwar United States.

Technoflesh: An Interview with Simone Niquille on Normalizing the Body Digitally, Physically, and in the Workplace

2020-02-24T11:55:00-05:00

Creator of the design and research practice Technoflesh, Simone Niquille draws from her background in graphic design, photography, and branding to demystify the processes behind the digitization of the body. Currently working in Amsterdam, Niquille received a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.A. in Visual Strategies from the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam. While currently teaching Design Research at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem, Niquille continues to produce research, graphic work, films, and installations internationally, most recently as a commissioned contributor to the Dutch Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale entitled Work, Body, Leisure.