Archinect - Features

Finding Value in Waste: Japan’s Kamikatsu Zero Waste Center is a Temple to Material Reuse

2022-02-03T15:37:00-05:00

Today, building materials account for half of all solid waste generated worldwide every year. In response to mounting concerns over the impact of construction on the built environment, a growing number of architects and material scientists are investigating the potential for recycled materials to form an integral part of future construction. In this article, we reflect on a recently completed building in rural Japan that embodies an alternative approach to the norm; with the added accolade of being perhaps the world's first waste recycling center constructed almost entirely from recycled waste.

For Host Cities, the Olympics Are No Game

2021-08-03T13:27:00-04:00

With the 2020 Olympics underway in Tokyo, we reflect on the urban and environmental impacts of the Olympic Games on its host cities. Whether Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024, or Los Angeles 2028, the Olympics suffer from a legacy of fragmenting existing urban environments, accelerating gentrification, and alienating local citizens. Meanwhile, the environmental cost of hosting the Olympics, driven by the construction of new venues and infrastructure, serves as a visible embodiment of our failure to adequately address climate change. Among the challenges, however, there are meaningful steps for improvement.

In Focus: Peter Stewart and His Exploration Into the Architecturally Unreal

2019-05-26T11:38:00-04:00

In Focus is Archinect's recurring series dedicated to profiling the photographers who help capture architecture and who make the work of architects look that much better. In this series, we ask: What is their relationship to architecture? How do they work? What kind of equipment do they use? What are their goals when capturing buildings?

For this installment, Archinect chats with Australian architectural photographer Peter Stewart. Through extensive travel, Stewart has spent much time exploring South East Asia and experiencing its dense urban environments. After immersing himself within each culture and learning about the environments around him, Stewart has used his creative eye as a tool to capture photographs that follow themes of mass scale and repetition. Using a technical approach to photographing buildings, Stewart aims to blend the visual perspective with geometry and color to see the world through "the spaces between." An exploration into the "unreal" Stewart provides a mes...

The Proust Questionnaire: Kengo Kuma

2017-05-23T12:06:00-04:00

Kengo Kuma, the prominent architect and writer known for blending modernist approaches with traditional Japanese values, reveals his love for the color white, his desire to learn the piano, and his fondness for designing sacred spaces in this iteration of Archinect's recurring series The Proust Questionnaire.

Playtime! 7 bold and whimsical playgrounds from around the world

2016-08-12T12:44:00-04:00

The act of play rests heavily on the ability to indulge in the imagination. While a certain degree of functionality is required for elements like swings, slides, and climbing walls, the key to any great playground design is that it be inspiring: and oddly enough, it doesn’t always have to be strictly for children. Game-playing takes multiple forms, from the stream of consciousness rules of a child's adventure to the psychologically penetrating/illuminating construct of an artist. These examples of architectural spaces for play from around the world openly embrace the esoteric and playful.

Transparent Motives: the ins and outs of sex-specific architecture

2016-04-15T08:20:00-04:00

If sex is the ultimate form of openness, then the architecture designed specifically to facilitate it could, up until recently anyway, be described as opaque. Even those more flagrant hot spots, like Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea or Japan’s ubiquitous love hotels, tended to be built to obscure their purpose, at least from the outside. Indeed, it is only within the last few decades that the notion of sex as an activity that could be displayed, or at least not obscured, has come into a more public architectural vogue. Transparency, in its boundary blurring form, is a defining characteristic of architecture for sex.

Waka Waka's furniture strikes a balance between simplicity and playfulness

2016-02-08T11:17:00-05:00

Waka Waka is a Los Angeles-based design studio founded by the Japanese-born designer Shinichiro Okuda. Taking a minimal approach softened with a bit of humor, the studio’s striking, handmade plywood furniture has a distinct and contemporary look.

Showcase: A’ House by Wiel Arets Architects

2015-01-05T22:58:00-05:00

Wedged between the narrow alleys and razor-sharp property lines of Tokyo's Nishi-Azabu neighborhood, A' House fits in its dense context like a shiny puzzle piece. Bold yet familiar, expansive yet compact, transparent yet opaque, open to dialogue yet impenetrable like an oyster shell.

Designed by Wiel Arets Architects, the building's innovative system of immense sliding windows responds to varying desires for privacy, air flow, light intake and participation in the neighborhood's social life.

Turns out, where Dutch and Japanese practicality intersect, one might discover concrete poetry.

ShowCase: Restaurant On The Sea by CASE-REAL

2013-11-07T18:12:00-05:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

ShowCase: House Yagiyama by Kazuya Saito Architects

2012-11-13T13:20:00-05:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

Tadao Ando Interview: 20 Minutes with a Master

2012-04-23T20:10:00-04:00

I can easily point to Tadao Ando's work as one of my earliest sources of inspiration, pulling me toward a life embedded in architecture. The powerful simplicity of his forms has always seemed to me, to represent an understanding far greater than that of the built environment alone. A few weeks ago, we had a rare opportunity to meet and talk with the master, thanks to a generous offer from Cal Poly Pomona and Axel Schmitzberger, during Ando's brief visit to Los Angeles to collect his 2012 Richard Neutra Award. So, Orhan, Alex, Kaori and I headed out to Neutra's VDL House in Silver Lake, on a chilly afternoon in late March, for a brief, yet memorable, chat.

Working out of the Box: Logan Amont

2011-04-27T13:50:35-04:00

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

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.