Archinect - Features

Exhibit Columbus' 2021 University Design Fellows Bring Architecture Research to Life in the Midwest

2021-09-30T15:35:00-04:00

For the past several months, a small, Midwestern city located "in the middle" of the country has taken the architecture world by storm. Since the opening of Exhibit Columbus this past March, the exhibition team, designers, and curatorial duo Mimi Zeiger and Iker Gil have created an immersive, in-person experience teeming with work that embodies the past, present, and future of Midwestern architecture, research, and discourse.

As media partners, Archinect has conducted several interviews where we dive into the minds of the Exhibition's talented designers. We've learned how they've pushed the boundaries of site-specific architectural exhibitions and how they evoke moments of reflection and pride for cities in the Midwest.

In preparation for Exhibit Columbus' upcoming event, Mapping the Middle: Design Research Conversations, we were given access to dive into the projects of this year's seven University Design Research Fellows. The Exhibit Columbus team shared that this new colloquium i...

‘What Is the Future of the Middle City?’ — Larger-Than-Life Exhibit Columbus Installations Activate the City of Columbus, Indiana

2021-08-25T14:37:00-04:00

On Saturday, August 21, the city of Columbus, Indiana welcomed thirteen larger-than-life installations displayed throughout the area as part of Exhibit Columbus' 2021 Exhibition. The program explores art, architecture, design, and community in Columbus. While the city itself has garnered a reputation for being the home of notable modernist architecture, landscapes, and art, this year's curators and exhibition team unpack the meaning of civic life by showcasing a series of design projects aiming to identify and question: "What is the future of the middle city?"

The theme, New Middles: From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City?, raises an important question about cities located within the center of the U.S., their ties to the past, present, and future through site-specific and site-responsive installations. According to the Exhibition's curators, Iker Gil and Mimi Zeiger, the design programming this year asks to "re-evaluate, refresh, and reframe" the city...

Exhibit Columbus: Meet the Presenters at the March 26th Design Presentations

2021-03-24T16:01:00-04:00

Exploring the theme New Middles: From Main Street To Megalopolis, What Is The Future of The Middle City?, the 2020-21 cycle of Exhibit Columbus has launched the latest Design Presentations in an accessible four-session virtual format. While the presentations during the initial two sessions on March 19th focused on the topics Ecologies and Geographies, the next event, taking place this Friday, March 26th, will present two sessions with featured designers and architects covering Visibilities and Possibilities.

As the official media sponsor for Exhibit Columbus' Design Presentations, Archinect is delighted to highlight each session and introduce the featured designers and their work.

If you missed Part 1 of Archinect's coverage of the event, click here to learn more about the presenters of the March 19th sessions.

Get to Know the Presenters at Exhibit Columbus’ March 19th Design Presentations

2021-03-18T09:00:00-04:00

On March 19th and 26th, Exhibit Columbus invites the public to experience its annual exhibition in a new virtual format. A program led by the Landmark Columbus Foundation, this year's theme New Middles: From Main Street To Megalopolis, What Is The Future of The Middle City? allows visitors to "preview design concepts of thirteen site-specific, future-oriented public installations and experience the design process first-hand."

Taking place this Friday, March 19th, and next Friday, March 26th, the exhibition event is broken into four, two-hour sessions. Each featured designer will discuss their work and site installation during virtual sessions across the four themes Ecologies, Geographies, Visibilities, and Possibilities. As the official media sponsors for Exhibit Columbus' Design Presentations, Archinect explores each session to learn more about the designers and their work.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Archinect's coverage of the event, where we dive into the two remaining sessions ta...

Extra Extra: Meow Wolf Transmogrification

2019-06-01T10:48:00-04:00

“It is art, just like sci-fi and fantasy is literature” — George R.R. Martin on Meow Wolf

Everyone knows that most interstellar spacecraft visiting Earth prefer landing in New Mexico. UFO’s consistently enjoy the remote landscapes, fresh cuisine, and picturesque scenery of the Southwestern United States. In a recent visit I decided to search for stranded vessels. What I found was an entirely different type of otherness in the desert. But I didn’t look in the vast empty darkness of Roswell or the secure and mysterious Area 51. My search began and ended with Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return at 1352 Rufina Circle in Santa Fe.

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’.

18 Amazing Examples of Festival and Event Architecture to Celebrate the End of Summer

2017-08-29T12:28:00-04:00

The culture and lifestyle associated with music festivals has greatly changed since they first emerged. Evolving from a symbol of counterculture into popular mainstream entertainment, many music festivals have embraced the use of visual arts and architecture. Typically, this comes in the form of temporary structures and installations that provide visual stimuli, some shade, and often much-needed landmarks for locating lost friends. Even if confined by a tight budget and a short deadline, these temporary structures nevertheless represent exciting examples of efficient and engaging design.

Listen to 'Next Up: Arroyo Seco Weekend' Mini-Sessions

2017-07-20T14:38:00-04:00

Recently, Archinect teamed up with Bureau Spectacular for the Arroyo Seco Weekend festival. Jimenez Lai and Joanna Grant designed a pavilion for the event, while Archinect's Paul Petrunia and Nicholas Korody held a series of interviews within it. Conversations focused on temporary architecture, installations, festival design and planning, and the festival's host city of Pasadena, CA, the results of which can be listened to below.

We'd like to thank the Goldenvoice team, and in particular Raffi Lehrher, for recognizing the importance of architecture and urban issues, their interest in engaging the community, and inviting us to take part in this inaugural event.

At Exhibit Columbus, Students Get a Chance to Test Their Ideas in the Real World

2017-06-15T19:04:00-04:00

On August 26, the inaugural exhibition of Exhibit Columbus, an annual exploration of architecture, art, design, and community, will open to the public. The exhibition will include six built structures, designed by teams from six different Midwestern universities, that investigate the built environment of Columbus and involved working closely with members of the community.

The Short Life and Bitter End to Munich's 'Yellow Submarine'

2016-11-26T12:26:00-05:00

Made of 16 bathtubs with specially installed portholes, 'Yellow Submarine' was a hotel room/political housing statement, and one of the 24-winning designs in the 2015 Shabbyshabby Apartments competition. Created by the Glasgow-based and Lithuanian-staffed collective Urban Restart along with Kurt Cleary, the design is purposefully referred to in the past tense: only two days after it was erected in Munich, it was destroyed. This prompted speculation that vandals, or right-wing extremists opposed to refugees, were responsible.

The students behind 'Liquid Shard' – a dynamic sculpture for downtown Los Angeles

2016-08-22T10:05:00-04:00

Liquid Shard was raised on July 28, 2016 as the product of the students of the Los Angeles Visiting School of the Architectural Association in London (AAVSLA) and Poetic Kinetics, an L.A. based company specialising in large-scale art installations and experimental design.

paraSITE: the bandage over the nomadic wound

2016-05-27T11:04:00-04:00

Using the air discharged from publicly accessible HVAC units, artist Michael Rakowitz has created a series of inflatable temporary plastic shelters for the homeless he calls “paraSITE.” The work, which began in 1998 and was later added to the MoMA’s Architecture and Design online collection, is both a form of social protest and an ingenious, budget-conscious design (most units cost around $5 to construct).

ShowCase: Tussen-Ruimte (Between Space) by Office Jarrik Ouburg

2013-09-25T15:03:00-04:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

"The Sidewalk's End", by Flux Foundation, for Coachella 2013

2013-06-05T08:00:00-04:00

The Sidewalk's End is a project about experience. How can art be inextricably linked to the landscape to enhance the experience of the physical place? In an environment over-saturated with stimuli, what are the fundamental kinds of human experience that are lacking? And how can the act of producing public art at this scale be a meaningful experience for everyone who contributes? The Flux Foundation, an Oakland based organization dedicated to producing large scale public art via a collaborative process, proposed an answer to these questions by creating a place where the sidewalk ends.

ShowCase: Augmented Structures v2.0 by Refik Anadol & Alper Derinbogaz

2012-10-26T18:04:00-04:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

ShowCase: Cerebral Hut by Guvenc Ozel

2012-10-25T15:09:00-04:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

Student Works: PERFORMA_12

2012-08-21T13:56:00-04:00

The PERFORMA Studio at the University of Kentucky College of Design is an intensive research and fabrication studio run by professor Mike McKay.

2011 PS1 Young Architects Program People's Choice Award

2011-02-23T13:00:00-05:00

Archinect is pleased to announce the PS1 People's Choice Award, an honor bestowed upon the PS1 competition entry that is selected by public vote as the architectural community's favorite.

In 2000 the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 launched the Young Architects Program (YAP), an annual competition to design and build an installation in the iconic triangular courtyard of MoMA PS1. Although MoMA's goals for the competition are rather modestly stated as to "provide visitors with an outdoor recreational area for the summer... making the best use of the pre-existing space and available materials," the competition quickly became a venue for architectural innovation and a platform from which practices such as SHoP, ROY, and nArchitects stepped into the big league.

Now in its twelfth incarnation, the PS1 YAP competition is beginning to show signs that its competitors have outgrown their hosts as an increasing number of entrants feel compelled to look beyond the creation of shade and add new...

ShowCase: SEA: Seeing Eye Architecture

2009-10-07T10:33:00-04:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

Primitivo Suarez

2004-04-06T14:09:00-04:00

Primitivo Suarez has a BA in architecture from SCI-Arc (1998), and an MFA from UCLA (2000). He has demonstrated his dual training in all of his subsequent exhibitions, where he has evaporated distinctions between architecture and sculpture to create an exciting hybrid realm. Since 2000 he has been invited to exhibit at Blum & Poe gallery in Santa Monica, ACE Galleries in New York and Los Angeles, the 1R Gallery in Chicago, and the Luckman Gallery at California State University Los Angeles.

One of the hallmarks of Primitivo Suarez's work is how he manages to render the familiar fantastic. In his hands, the iconic attributes of the single family dwelling, from fenestration to foundation, are pulled, stretched, and prodded into abstracted entities at the breaking point of recognition. Houses splatter on the ground into prismatic Suprematist shards or are sucked into powerful vortices that twist them into Dali-esque follies. Ever wonder what would happen if the skeletons of exurban ...