Archinect - Features

Black MD’s, Lawyers…and Architects; Part 2

2021-09-23T11:19:00-04:00

Black America’s need over the next several generations is for an “apostate architect” wing [to complement the budding generalist design and theory architect wings]. The apostate wing must be capable of and motivated to play a vital role in the business of wealth creation-centered community production of affordable housing and related community facilities. Given the reality that [highly motivated] African Americans who could be interested in careers in architecture are not willing to take the profession’s de rigueur “vows of [personal] poverty,” an alternative re-purposed medical doctor modeled curriculum would also solve the architect’s unacceptably low compensation issue.

Melvin L. Mitchell continues with Part 2 of Black MD’s, Lawyers…and Architects. Click here to read Part 1.

How Overwork and Anxiety Led Architect Ben Channon to Focus on Designing for Happiness

2018-11-08T12:00:00-05:00

Architect Ben Channon was finishing up his architectural qualifications when he began to realize the toll it was taking on his mental health. Overcome by anxiety, and living in a small shared flat, he was gripped by questions of why some buildings make us happy, while others do not. "At the end of the day, our environment affects us, whatever type of building it is," Channon says. His curiosity led him down a path investigating the links between architecture and well-being. Channon's findings have culminated in the recent book, Happy by Design, where he asserts that the design of buildings can have large effects on the happiness of its inhabitants and offers advice on how to design spaces that better serve its users.

Screen/Print #53: Richard Meier Ponders the Meaning of 'Home' in America, Today

2017-04-21T12:09:00-04:00

“What does it take to make a house a home?” asks Bernard Friedman, editor of the newly-released book The American Idea of Home: Conversations About Architecture and Design. Featuring interviews with thirty of the most significant architects practicing today, the volume probes the meaning of home past and present, as well as the role of architecture in constructing it, particularly during an era when most American homes aren’t designed by architects at all.

Book review: "Entr'acte: Performing Publics, Pervasive Media, and Architecture"

2016-06-05T18:27:00-04:00

During the month of May, inspired in part by the theme of Alejandro Aravena’s Venice Biennale, Reporting from the Front, Archinect’s coverage has included a special focus on socially-engaged practices and, accordingly, hosted many conversations about how and why architects should engage with the public. Yet largely absent from this discussion is the question of who or what constitutes the public today.

"A continuation of his way of being" – an interview with the editor of "Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog"

2015-12-16T14:16:00-05:00

The champion of “radical reconstruction,” the revolutionary architect who wasn’t technically an architect, the artist, the teacher and theorist – Lebbeus Woods was also a blogger. Beginning in 2007 and lasting into 2012, up until a few months prior to his death, Woods posted drawings, articles, and journal-style ruminations to his own personal blog, drawing together his array of concerns that, in the words of the New York Times’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, “hoped to liberate architecture from its material tethers and encourage everybody who engaged with it to think more boldly and humanely.”

Emotional tactility: Tom Kundig's latest "Works"

2015-11-17T11:45:00-05:00

Tom Kundig has a few credits to his name: aside from a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Smithsonian’s 2008 National Design Award in Architecture Design, and eleven national AIA awards, his firm Olson Kundig has also twice been named one of Fast Company’s “Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Architecture.” Now, the would-be geophysicist turned architect, known for his inventive blending of mechanics and aesthetics in private residences and public buildings alike, has a collection out by Princeton Architectural Press featuring his latest nine works, called Tom Kundig: Works.

The In Crowd: review of "Conversations with Architects: In the Age of Celebrity"

2015-10-16T11:17:00-04:00

What can one say about the celebrity architect that hasn't already been said, especially if the status itself arguably displaces thoughtful criticism? For former corporate interior designer turned international architectural curator Vladimir Belogolovsky, architectural celebrity is in the eye of the practitioner – and to that end, he has interviewed 30 of architecture's best known professionals about their work, their motivations, and their designs for the future in Conversations with Architects: In the Age of Celebrity.

Oyler Wu Collaborative in ink, graphite and steel

2015-02-09T11:22:00-05:00

Painters paint, sculptors sculpt, and writers write, yet architects do not architect – they draw, model, and write. Architecture is one of the few creative fields that does not allow the artist to work in the medium where the final work will be produced. Yet Oyler Wu Collaborative makes productive use of that cognitive jump.

Never Too Young; 15 Librarian-Recommended Architecture Books for Young Children

2014-08-05T14:48:00-04:00

They say children are made readers on the laps of their parents. I couldn’t agree more, but what else can a child become between the covers of a book? A chef, an astronaut, an architect? Yes, yes, and yes. Books entertain us, expand us, spark the imagination, and expose us to new worlds. A child can find themselves—present and future—amongst the pages of a great story. Looking out from there, anything seems possible.

Elementary school librarian, Jennette Neville, shares her top recommendations for young, aspiring builders...

Screen/Print #20: "Architecture in Formation", design manual for the second digital revolution

2014-07-11T11:06:00-04:00

Part provocation, part manifesto-by-committee, part historical benchmark, Architecture in Formation is designed as the digital architecture manual for the second digital revolution. Anticipating a merger between theory and practice, the book combines formerly unpublished essays and interviews with architecture professionals, musing on how information processing creates, and is changed by, architecture.

Screen/Print #19: "Chicagoisms" honors the Windy City's architectural clout

2014-06-17T12:53:00-04:00

Judging by its nicknames, Chicago is a city driven by industry and a competitive mentality, whether matched up against comparable US metropolises or cities abroad. And while it may no longer be regarded as the urban symbol of architectural influence, Chicago has played an undeniably central role in the creation and dissemination of new ideas, inspiring those who passed through (including Adolf Loos and Frank Lloyd Wright) regardless of how long they stayed. A new collection of essays, gathered under the title Chicagoisms, explores the city’s personality and influence on the forefront of architectural progress, setting a new tone for how architects talk about the “Second City.”

Screen/Print #18: "New SubUrbanisms" by Judith K. De Jong

2014-06-09T10:16:00-04:00

The American suburbs no longer exist as physically and conceptually peripheral to the downtown, the central consciousness of urban development. According to Judith K. De Jong’s new book, New SubUrbanisms, the suburbs' mainstream designation as places of seclusion, domesticity, superficiality, and safety (set in comparison to their accompanying denser urban downtowns), has collapsed in the wake of a feedback loop between central city and suburbia.

A review of Joe Day's "Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime" (2013, Routledge)

2013-09-10T11:25:00-04:00

“Since 2000, institutions of display and discipline have taken on transnational dimensions, many of them unanticipated and controversial. In the most literal of convergences, yesteryear’s prisons have simply been reopened as today’s museums.”