Archinect - Features

Where Are All The Affordable Housing Startups?

2024-06-19T13:04:00-04:00

Despite the general consensus that the United States is in need of more affordable housing, funding to startups focused on affordable housing and more efficient construction technologies is lower in 2024 than in recent years. In the meantime, a series of high-profile bankruptcies, closures, and struggles have been reported among startups tackling the issue. How has this happened?

A Conversation With Cover Co-Founders on Their Tesla-Inspired Building Process And The Future of Construction

2021-02-10T14:24:00-05:00

Alexis Rivas and Jemuel Joseph first met while studying architecture at the Cooper Union. After school, Alexis worked on several residential projects at a number of firms. He began to notice inefficiencies in the project delivery process, which propelled him into an exploratory journey that eventually led him to a job in prefab construction. But that wasn't good enough for Alexis.

He believed the prefab construction industry had missed a few things. There were still too many pitfalls. With lessons uncovered from the automotive and tech industries, Alexis wanted to productize the home, approaching its production like one might approach the production of a car or a smartphone. But he needed help.

Alexis reached out to his old colleague from architecture school, Jemuel, who had a special gift with software and computers, and the two soon embarked on an ambitious pursuit to reinvent the way homes are designed and delivered.

Soon, the partners conceived Cover, a technology company that...

19 Young Architects on Why They Decided to Start Their Careers With Their Own Firms

2019-05-02T12:00:00-04:00

Striking it on your own can be an exhilarating process, the ability to take on your own clients, building your imagination and growing your own company. While your mind will jump immediately to the successes of your own company, learning the nuances of the nuts and bolts is just as if not more critical of launching your own design office. Looking through our Small Studio Snapshots, we look to highlight the reasons, decisions, and motivations from some of today's young, successful and productive offices.

Growing Up by Scaling Down

2016-12-20T11:53:00-05:00

While working in a large, hundred-plus person firm certainly has its benefits, boutique practices offer the partners the chance to create their own designs in their own way. I spoke to two firms: r+d studio, a firm started by a married couple who used to work for Frank Gehry, and Studio Hillier, a practice that was initially started in 1966 by J. Robert Hillier, merged with the enormous U.K.-based firm RMJM, and then was purposefully relaunched by the founding partners as a small studio in 2011. I asked each set of partners about the challenges of scaling down after having worked in the big leagues.

Factory Berlin, a New Tech Incubator, Emerges from the Ruins of the Berlin Wall

2014-09-15T11:06:00-04:00

The archives of the New York Times testify to the euphoria that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. An article entitled “The End of the War to End Wars” reads: “Crowds of young Germans danced on top of the hated Berlin wall Thursday night. They danced for joy, they danced for history. They danced because the tragic cycle of catastrophes that first convulsed Europe 75 years ago, embracing two world wars, a Holocaust and a cold war, seems at long last to be nearing an end.”