Archinect - Features

Columbia GSAPP MSAUD Students Tackle the Redundant Infrastructure of Retail

2020-07-24T09:00:00-04:00

Recent Masters in Science of Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD) graduate students of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) aim to redefine the retail model with an emphasis on small businesses and community. A research project initiated by Einat Lubliner, Sushmita Shekar, Hatem Alkhathlan, and Chris Zheng titled Post Retail Apocalypse investigates a new approach for reusing big box stores by implementing design solutions that foster "social interaction and equity."

According to the group, "With the global transition from traditional shopping to e-commerce and the change in consumer trends, main street retail, Big Box stores, and malls, which were a de facto social space for American small towns, have transformed into redundant infrastructure. The repercussions of this have highly impacted social interaction, local economy, existing infrastructure, jobs and services." Their international world views and backgrounds add to the pro...

A Conversation with Curtis Moody, FAIA on What It Means to Help Shape a Future for Black Architects

2020-02-29T07:00:00-05:00

Within the realm of architectural practice, the need to write and re-frame the narratives and contributions of women in architecture, Black architects, and other minority-identifying designers has gained increasing urgency in recent years. And while architects like Paul Revere Williams, Phillip Freelon, Norma Merrick Sklarek, Zena Howard, Gabrielle Bullock, and Kimberly Dowdell are nearly household names in design, these architects constitute but a few of Black architects who have impacted the profession.

Curtis Moody, a renowned architect based in Columbus, Ohio who has been practicing for over 38 years, is another such architect. When he first started his practice back in 1982, his goal was not only to establish a thriving architecture practice but also build a firm that would be a representation of a group that is often overlooked and misrepresented. Since then, he has expanded Moody Nolan into a practice consisting of 230 employees with 12 offices across the U.S.

Archinect spen...

Somewhere Studio Discuss Architecture and Practice as an Ongoing Process of Conversation and Investigation

2019-07-09T11:28:00-04:00

Enthusiasm and the freedom to create your own design framework lie at the heart of every emerging studio. For Jessica Colangelo and Charles Sharpless of Somewhere Studio, the inspiration for starting their practice is precisely that. With architectural interests in research and an understanding of "architecture as a conversation," the duo explores ways in which practice and academia provide new opportunities worth investigating. According to the duo, "setting up frameworks can both be a design method as well as an end goal for a project." With this in mind, the Arkansas-based practice thrives by approaching each new project with a scalable goal in mind that pushes new interventions and creativity.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect had a chance to connect with Colangelo and Sharpless. Together they discuss their goals for starting a practice and how working in academia influences their design framework. They also offer their take on research, intervention, and history's role...

Conversations Amongst Friends: Architect Charles Renfro and Artist Anton Ginzburg Discuss Art, Architecture, and the Idea of Disappearance

2019-07-01T10:13:00-04:00

Conversation between colleagues can lead to new perspectives unveiling new areas of discourse, especially between differing practices. The art and architecture disciplines have experienced much overlap over the years, and many would argue for or against the notion of these disciplines having an interchangeable set of methodologies. Despite differing views and stances on where these practices might fall into each other, discussions between architects and artists are common, and entertaining. From Frank Gehry and Ai Weiwei to David Adjaye and James Turrell, it can be observed that artists and architects have more similarities than differences in certain aspects of practice and approach.

Following the recent opening of Anton Ginzburg's exhibition, VIEWs, at Helwaser Gallery in New York, Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Anton Ginzburg met for an exclusive discussion with questions provided by Archinect. The two reflected on each other's work, spoke of observational techni...

The Manifold Transparencies of Virgil Abloh

2019-06-28T12:03:00-04:00

Archinect has published news posts about fashion designer, artist and Louis Vuitton director Virgil Abloh in the last year, but only to announce any time that he had collaborated with an architect or an architectural theorist. What we had never mentioned, however, is that Abloh is himself trained as an architect, having obtained a Master of Architecture degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2003, and has since gone on to describe the lessons learned and architecture studied during these years as crucial to his current success.

San Francisco-based Design Firm SAW Tackles Architecture's Design Blindspots by Challenging Possible Outcomes

2019-06-13T13:34:00-04:00

Within architectural practice, navigating through blind spots in the design process is something many studios work through. In Dan Spiegel and Megumi Aihara's case, SAW's mission is to approach these moments of design obscurity by focusing on their passions for architecture, landscape architecture, and design. With their goal of designing both for the inside and outside, Spiegel and Aihara use object materiality and scale to produce potential outcomes in spatial design.

From their stunning residences to the integrative urban-scaled projects they design, SAW uses their interdisciplinary approach to develop highly technical yet subtlety beautiful landscape and architectural works. For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect chats with Spiegel and Aihara about their experience in running a practice and the strategic risks they take when designing for the ever-changing environment.

The Yves Béhar-Designed ADU and the Complicated Altruism of the “Fully-Customizable Prefab”

2018-11-13T12:00:00-05:00

My invitation to interview industrial designer Yves Béhar about his first step into architecture, an immaculately designed Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), brought me to a design festival of unprecedented scale and wealth.

Held in the historic core of Downtown Los Angeles - a neighborhood physically and economically between the Financial District and Skid Row - Summit LA18 was a three day festival that hosted, according to its promotional material, “a wide array of talks, performances, wellness classes, art installations, gourmet food, and experiences designed to foster relationships and inspire new perspectives.”

A cursory glance at the titles of highlighted events, including “Al Gore and Jaden Smith on New Hope for Solving the Climate Crisis” and “Manufactured Organs and The Radical Quest to Cure Aging” was my first clue of what relationships might be fostered and what new perspectives might be prioritized at this event; my second clue was the intensive application for entry (follo...

#ArchinectMeets @daniellaondesign

2018-11-06T09:00:00-05:00

#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 Daniella Ohad, Ph.D, the curator of @daniellaondesign. As a design historian that regularly lectures on the subject, Ohad uses Instagram to advocate for the significance of design history through its most stunning precedents and their most seductive photographs.

#ArchinectMeets @__benthomas

2018-09-27T13:58:00-04:00

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 Ben Thomas (@__benthomas), a photographer and based in Australia. His career has taken him all over the world, including a trip to Dubai for the New Yorker. Through his work, he hopes to provide a way for people to consider the relationships that they form with their surroundings and how those surroundings might affect them in tu...

#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 ...

Founded by a Designer and an Architect/Chef, Hong Kong-based Studio openUU has an Unconventional Origin Story

2018-08-27T09:00:00-04:00

openUU—pronounced "open you, you"—is a small design practice led by Kevin Lim and Caroline Chou, who, having both spent time growing up in Asia and the United States, decided to go to Hong Kong to establish their firm in 2011. Kevin (who is the son of artist and architect William Lim) is a trained architect and chef with degrees from both Cornell and Le Cordon Bleu. Caroline, on the other hand, is an award-winning interior designer with an M.Arch from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Together, the two have combined their expertise to focus on space conversions and the Food & Beverage industry; their roster of projects includes mall renovations, warehouse transformations, art and light installations, traveling pop-up libraries and even their own restaurant, Mean Noodles, which the couple own and operate.

Soapbox: Black in Design

2018-02-07T12:00:00-05:00

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: Aesthetics

2018-01-12T09:00:00-05:00

Announcing the winners of Archinect UK Portfolio Competition 2017!

2017-07-27T04:09:00-04:00

Earlier this year, we launched the UK portfolio competition to celebrate and expose the wealth of fantastic work already up on Archinect as well as to encourage individuals not registered to upload and share their work with our global online community.

Johnston Marklee tackle the “tyranny of newness” in 2017's Chicago Architecture Biennial

2017-04-14T13:06:00-04:00

As the artistic directors of this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, Johnston Marklee are interested in examining history and its contributions to contemporary architecture in a way that isn’t about promoting rearguard ideas, but rather one that demands a more thoughtful approach toward the value of “newness.”

Establishing Shot: Will the Hollywood Competition Redefine Single Family Housing?

2017-02-02T12:17:00-05:00

What is the future of single family housing? For Nick Graham of Arch Out Loud and property owner Steve Alper, the tract of land just below the Hollywood sign offers designers a powerful opportunity to (re)define sustainable design and future living.

Architectural panel tape proves its strength with SPF:architects' Double Stick project

2016-04-09T10:49:00-04:00

The “Double Stick” residence comes by its name honestly. With an impressive anodized aluminum façade held in place by a high performance, two-sided architectural panel tape, this 5,000-square-foot single-family dwelling designed by Studio Pali Fekete architects is a stellar expression of modern design and engineering.

The far-reaching work by "state-of-the-art weirdos" MOS Architects

2016-03-11T14:12:00-05:00

MOS has developed an impressive cache of work over a relatively brief period of time, including a range of designs unequivocal to the company’s unique, and at times quirky, style. Their approach considers economic climates and environmental limitations, but evades conventional aesthetics. Take it from the firm’s website; MOS rejects the ordinary. A succinct self-description concludes that their company is “a collective of designers, architects, thinkers and state-of-the-art weirdos.”

With the recent release of MOS: Selected Works, it seems fitting to reflect on a selection of projects that highlight the company’s discernible attitude toward conceptual design and architecture.

How the couch furnished modernity’s notions of privacy

2016-03-07T14:10:00-05:00

In the 21st century, the couch is so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible. We find them in commercial waiting rooms, in private homes, as infested harbingers of urban decay on street corners. They populate television talk shows and form a shorthand for psychiatric evaluation. But how has this piece of furniture, which has only been around for about 330 years, become the seat of our culture?

Working Out of the Box: Jader Almeida

2016-03-02T08:19:00-05:00

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 Jader Almeida, a Brazilian furniture and product designer.

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.

Innovation with a heart: Guto Requena's technological and emotional designs

2016-02-27T11:54:00-05:00

Imagine “technology". What comes to mind? A robot? An iPhone? A self-driving car? Whatever the case, chances are it’s an object that feels pretty cold and provokes little emotion.

Children's drawings inspire COBE's kindergarten in Copenhagen

2016-02-18T08:53:00-05:00

Needless to say, children require very little to have a lot of fun. An imaginary world can be transformed from the most modest of settings. Really, all that’s needed is a bit of space (albeit safe and relatively clean), and a great imagination –something that little ones have an endless supply of.

So when it comes time for kids to embark on the short-lived, yet impactful journey that is kindergarten, the most nurturing of environments are those that foster diversity, social connectivity, and creativity. The Danish architecture firm COBE has used that ethos to cultivate an amazing setting for children attending preschool in the Copenhagen neighborhood of Frederiksberg. The educational institution encompasses a unique campus, a blank canvas of sorts for young minds to re-imagine a world of their own.

A misting mirror, a chair that shoots fireworks, and other material experiments by Soft Baroque

2016-02-03T17:44:00-05:00

Soft Baroque, the London-based design studio founded by Saša Štucin and Nicholas Gardner, has made pretty significant ripples in the design world for a practice just barely two years old. Their strange but visually-delightful furniture functions both online and offline, incorporates unwieldy materials like fireworks and water vapor, and treats history like a hunk of clay to be molded. They have an adept and playful way of involving conceptual elements in their work that makes you wonder how form and function alone ever seemed like sufficient ends for a design – or, at the very least, why your living room table is so boring.

Working out of the Box: Anne Dérian, Architect turned Mosaic Artist

2014-10-15T11:16:00-04:00

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 French-born Berlin-based mosaic artist and pattern designer Anne Dérian.

Working out of the Box: Linda Bennett, Architect turned Jewellery Designer

2014-10-09T15:09:00-04:00

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 Linda Bennett, co-founder of Architact Collective, a Melbourne-based DIY jewellery design outfit.