Archinect - Features

SCI-Arc Graduate and 2021 Gehry Prize Winner Proposes New Perspectives Between City Structures and Augmented Reality Holograms

2021-10-13T09:00:00-04:00

Continuing with Archinect's commitment to highlighting students and their academic work, we connected with SCI-Arc M.Arch II graduate Burak Celik. As the 2021 Gehry Prize Winner for best thesis, Celik talks to us about his project "Super•positioning." He uses Los Angeles as a backdrop for exploring architecture and its relationship between digital and analog, reality and speculation, and how the use of superpositioning allowed him to question other architectural perspectives. The word superposition is defined as "the placement of one thing above or on top of another" and "the combination of two distinct physical phenomena of the same type (such as spin or wavelength) so that they coexist as part of the same event." Celik uses this as the basis for thesis exploration.

"Today's digital culture would be embraced by architects not only as a means of software and tools but also as a complete architectural experience by the viewer," Celik explains and continues by sharing: "Through superp...

SCI-Arc's Design Immersion Days High School Summer Program Fosters Design Exploration Through Architectural Thinking and Scholarship

2021-06-16T09:00:00-04:00

Summer is here. As high school students search for programs that spark their interests, architecture institutions like SCI-Arc provide opportunities to bring the basics of architectural thinking to teens interested in architecture, technology, and design.

"DID's curriculum is built to articulate projects within three different formats and scales, from analog models to digital renderings, presenting scenarios in which students are challenged to think analytically, use different tools, and imagine nontraditional approaches to design," shares SCI-Arc. "Through projects emphasizing visual studies, design lab, and portfolio building, students are introduced to a range of skills essential to exploring, discovering, describing, and producing design work."

To learn more about SCI-Arc's popular Design Immersion Days (DID) summer high school program, Archinect spoke with its Program Coordinator, Mira Henry. Now in her fifth year as coordinator, Henry discusses what excites her about each inc...

Post-Digital Rendering: Leaving Drawing Behind

2021-04-01T11:21:00-04:00

Not too long ago, a novel graphic representation, rebelling against the digital tools and techniques that dominated the past two decades, took the architecture world by surprise. Post-Digital Drawing, coming mostly from European offices, started propagating across professional circles, competitions, and academia. This style of representation, noted by Sam Jacob, embraces digital technology in a critical way; utilizes digital tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, and techniques like drawing and collage without aiming for realism. Instead, "this new cult of the drawing explores and exploits its artificiality, making us as viewers aware that we are looking at space as a fictional form of representation. This is in strict opposition to the digital rendering’s desire to make the fiction seem 'real.'" However, by taking a look at the work of emerging practices, competitions, and academia today, one can discern that an evolution starts to emerge. Ironically, this evolution of the Post-Digi...

How Will Architecture be Affected by the Rise of Blockchain Technologies like NFTs?

2021-03-24T08:53:00-04:00

In the midst of a media cycle dominated by the ongoing pandemic, last week’s news that Christie’s sale of artist Beeple’s Everdays for a staggering $69 million made its way into national headlines. A rarity for any art event even in normal times. This served as a watershed moment for the growing online community of crypto collectors, whose use of blockchain technology and platforms like SuperRare to acquire digital art sold as Non-Fungible Tokens (or NFTs for short) has shaken up art sales in ways that are only now starting to become clear.

SOFTLab's Michael Szivos Discusses the Power of Material Experimentation and What It Means to Blend the Boundaries of Architecture With Other Disciplines

2019-03-04T12:27:00-05:00

Executing projects through experimentation and technical refinery, Michael Szivos of SOFTlab focuses his energy on creating new ways for the boundaries of architecture to overlap with other materials, digital techniques, and disciplines. Starting your practice is not an easy task. After receiving his graduate degree in architecture from Columbia GSAPP, Szivos sought to work on projects that pushed his creative process while challenging the scale and feasibility of his work. Established as a studio whose expertise ranges from digital fabrication to immersive and interactive installations, SOFTlab has made their mark in the fields of architecture, art, and technology.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Szivos shares his humble beginnings as an emerging designer. We discuss the struggles of design feasibility in addition to how he manages the business and creative side of the practice. From discussions about interactive multimedia to the origins of the studio's name, Szivos shares with ...

Horizons, Political Organizations & Facebook; A Conversation with Tony Gonzalez

2019-02-15T09:00:00-05:00

Thesis Review is a collection of conversations, statements and inquiries into the current state of thesis in academia. Thesis projects give a glimpse into the current state of the academic arena while painting a picture for the future of practice.

Each feature will present a contemporary thesis project through the voice of those that constructed it. This week, we talk with Tony Gonzalez about his thesis, ANXIOUS HORIZON.

Forging Alternate Hybrids of Practice; Conversations with the Writers of The Blindspot Initiative

2019-02-06T09:00:00-05:00

Soapbox is a weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.

This week, we look at the themes and voices from within the newly realized publication, The Blindspot Initiative. The Blindspot Initiative, the latest book of projects and essays on design resistance and alternative modes of practice edited by Jose Sanchez and will have a special launch event at Archinect Outpost this Saturday...

#ArchinectMeets @zhestkov

2018-11-27T11:59:00-05:00

#ArchinectMeets is a series of interviews with members of the architecture community that use Instagram as a creative medium. With the series, we ask some of Instagram’s architectural photographers, producers and curators about their relationship to the social media platform and how it has affected their practice.

Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. While we use our own account, @Archinect, as a site for image curation and news content, we wanted to ask fellow Instagram users how they navigated the platform.

We spoke to Maxim Zhestkov, the media artist and director behind @zhestkov. Trained in architecture and digital technology, Zhestkov launched a studio/workshop where he with his friends and colleagues developing new forms of moving images and producing motion content for brands and companies all over the world. His videos exist on Instagram to bridge the divide between architecture and the latest in dig...

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.

Cutting Room: Listen to John Szot, creator of "Architecture and the Unspeakable", discuss cyber-architectural realities and speculative practice

2014-05-19T11:08:00-04:00

John Szot, architect and creator of the Architecture and the Unspeakable film series, is a pioneer in film's unique architectural exploration, working with digital animation to investigate parts of the built environment that remain hidden at the street level. In our interview for Cutting Room, an audio series at the intersection of architecture and film, Szot spoke with me about his architectural background and how he started making films.