Archinect - Features

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...

Are We Digital? Pseudorthography and the Electronic Image

2019-11-30T09:00:00-05:00

The difference, in English, between the words “electric” and “electronic” is subtle but powerful. A simple definition might go something like: “electric” refers to things that use electricity as energy, while “electronic” is used to describe things that use electricity as a means to manipulate information. Therefore, a lamp is an electric object, but an email (previously e-mail) is an electronic letter. And yet, in the context of architecture, a field often troubled by semantics and syntactic nuances, we often take for granted our media’s relationship to electricity. Despite their reliance on electrical light, for instance, our drawings are still drawings, not e-drawings or i-drawings or any other variant that could separate them from mechanically produced media. Moreover, today the main difference between drawings, images, and photographs is simply derived from what file extension is used to format them.

True Grit: How One Designer Taught Himself to Draw and Became an International Artist

2019-06-25T13:30:00-04:00

Hand drawing has been in the architect’s arsenal since the beginning. The ability to sketch by hand presents the designer with a tool untied to any technology. This is a medium that is an intrinsic part of the individual. How many times have we observed someone, masterful with the hand, sketch something right there in front of us? It is a powerful experience. This article tells the story of a young designer who decided that he wanted to learn to draw and stopped at nothing until he could. Little did he know, his life would be transformed forever. If you’ve wanted to learn to draw or any new skill for that matter, this piece is for you.

Jacob and Melissa Brillhart of Brillhart Architecture Discuss Florida's Architectural History and The "Chemistry of Space"

2019-02-11T16:30:00-05:00

Jacob and Mellisa Brillhart have established their place in South Florida's architectural history through their emphasis on vernacular building principles. Tapping into the area's roots of Tropical Modernism, the duo emphasize the importance of construction methodology in designing sustainable structures for hot and humid climates. The studio's design process utilizes a blend of analog and digital techniques, all while incorporating natural materials found within Florida's landscape.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, the founders of Brillhart Architecture share the importance of uncovering what makes up the emotional qualities of a space. By reflecting on their built works, the two discuss the importance of drawing inspiration from their surroundings and Florida's vernacular architecture.

Finally(!), an Architectural Reference Book with Intention: A Review of 'An Unfinished Encyclopedia of Scale Figures Without Architecture'

2019-01-29T11:15:00-05:00

An Unfinished Encyclopedia of Scale Figures without Architecture, by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of MOS, might be exactly the update needed for the architectural reference book genre.

#ArchinectMeets @joaocarlostalves

2018-10-05T11:00:00-04:00

#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. Using 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 as well as their thoughts on social media's impact on architecture.

We spoke with Joāo Carlos Alves, the curator of @joaocarlostalves. An architect born in Portugal and currently living and working in Geneva, Switzerland, he produces imaginative architectural renderings specifically for Instagram in his spare time. Sharing his detailed imagery to the platform several times a month, Alves relishes the freedom i...

#ArchinectMeets @terriblefloorplans

2018-09-21T11:12:00-04:00

We spoke with the curator of @terriblefloorplans, a careful collection of careless things, a repository of odd architectural content published daily on Instagram. With only 41 floor plans posted at the time of this writing, the anonymous curator has quickly gained a following among those users of Instagram seeking alternatives to the rational ...

Soapbox: Semiotics

2018-01-31T09:00:00-05:00

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.

SoapBox: Representation

2017-11-29T09:00:00-05:00

Comic Relief(s): Exploring the Architectural Imagination of Ben Katchor

2017-04-07T13:27:00-04:00

Architecture is one of the most expansive fields there is: it bridges the loftiest conceptual realm with nuts-and-bolts physicality. Some architects never leave the paper world, while others dwell primarily in crowded conference rooms and muddy building sites. This is partially why the comic strip of work Ben Katchor is so remarkable; it acts not only as an idiosyncratic survey of the built world, but as a humorous exploration of the conceptual one.

"Living together is only possible if there is always the possibility to be alone." – Dogma studio's hard-line look at architectural solitude

2016-07-27T09:46:00-04:00

The single-person room is the among the most basic units of architecture and the background for much of daily life. Here we project our personalities on the walls in the form of decor. Here we can retreat from the world. Yet the ubiquity and familiarity of the room nearly renders it invisible. Rarely do we consider the specificity of these places, which simultaneously serve as refuge and site of labor, of reproduction, of identity formation and presentation.

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.

Working out of the Box: Francis Tsai

2014-08-13T11:16:00-04:00

Working out of the Box is a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths.

In this installment, we're talking with Francis Tsai of Francis Tsai Illustration and Concept Design.

Are you an architect working out of the box? Do you know of someone that has changed careers and has an interesting story to share? If you would like to suggest an (ex-)architect, please send us a message.

Cutting Room: "Interiors" takes classic films back to the drawing board

2014-06-23T12:44:00-04:00

Filmmaking is a labor of love that shares architecture’s compulsion: to model a stratum of life down to the most precise detail, creating entire worlds that do not (yet) exist. It seems natural then that an architect and filmmaker would combine forces to create Interiors, a journal of reconstructed sections taken from famous scenes in classic films.