Archinect - Features

The Open Workshop explores how housing density may have decided the U.S. 2016 Election

2017-07-21T13:11:00-04:00

Think about the American political landscape, and a highly partisan, Russian-government-colluding version may come to mind. But what about the literal American political landscape, as defined by housing density and building typology per acre? The project “Environment as Politics: From Identity to Density Politics” by The Open Workshop, originally presented on Places Journal, studied voting patterns in the 2016 election for the U.S. President and discovered that how closely people live together may be the soundest predictor of which candidate gets their vote.

"I think of architecture as an act of writing in the city": Vishaan Chakrabarti discusses PAU's upcoming projects

2017-06-22T13:27:00-04:00

As the founder of PAU, Vishaan Chakrabarti is an architect and urban planner who considers every aspect of the city with foresight, but isn't as concerned with the culture of celebrity that has often dominated the profession. "Calling oneself a humanist over the last couple of decades was a real no-no," he explains via phone. "You're supposed to be a bad-boy, cape-wearing starchitect." He purposefully did not name the firm after himself in order to place emphasis on intelligent discussion, not hierarchy. Although he's excited about taking on more projects, he never wants PAU to grow beyond roughly 30 employees so that he will always know everyone in his office.

Student Works: Martin McSherry's "Vertical Graveyards"

2014-02-12T10:06:00-05:00

Martin McSherry’s “The Vertical Graveyards” is a speculative proposal for a new infrastructure of death, mimicking the skyscraper as a symbol of expanding and densifying urban systems. Currently an MArch student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, McSherry initially drafted the project as a proposal to the Nordic Association for Graveyards and Crematoria’s “The Graveyards of the Future” competition. Imagining the cemetery as vertical and central, rather than horizontal and suburban, the project focuses less on design specifics and more on provoking a change in societal attitudes towards death.