Archinect - Features

Op-Ed: Beyond Stars, Icons and Much More, by Patrik Schumacher

2015-06-08T15:21:00-04:00

In mid-April I had posted a note entitled "In Defense of Stars and Icons" on my Facebook page. This was picked up and extensively commented on, here on Archinect. I am thrilled about the lively debate that followed (in which I had participated as ‘parametricist’) and I am happy to get the opportunity to come back to this debate once more in this op-ed.

AfterShock #1: Architectural Consumers in the Experience Economy

2013-09-11T11:53:00-04:00

AfterShock is a non-conclusive series on Archinect that grapples with the impact and responsibility of contemporary architectural design, hoping to instigate dialogues on how to make architecture more accountable.

Building Between Dimensions: An Interview with Sophia Vyzoviti

2012-02-27T20:00:00-05:00

by Woody Evans

Architect Sophia Vyzoviti pushes, cuts, pleats, folds, and shreds the edges of architectural design – to startling effect. I was a librarian to architecture and engineering departments at a community college for some years, and found myself often promoting her work on folding matter to CAD-dazed sophomores; it opened eyes. Her emphasis on the techniques of handling physical models and materials is refreshing in a world when so many of the Prtizker class seem to work solely in software. I interview her here about augmented reality, touching stuff, and the aesthetics of smart textures.

Safavid Surfaces and Parametricism

2011-12-02T19:09:52-05:00

The development of specialized treatments of concrete and glass, customization through digital fabrication, and parametric design tools have brought about a contemporary resurgence of surface articulation, reopening the general issue of surface composition as a “legitimate” aspect of design, after almost a century of (near) omission by modernism. A wide variety of firms, among them Zaha Hadid (Patrik Schumacher), Herzog and de Meuron, Weil Arets, Aranda\Lasch and Foreign Office Architects, have been reintroducing this aspect of design -- most notably the last, which in addition to built work, Farshid Mousavi’s The Function of Ornament includes surface articulation as part of its theoretical explorations.