Archinect - Features

Screen/Print #65: Student Publication from Harvard GSD Reflects on Early Generation of Refugee Architects

2018-01-30T09:00:00-05:00

Very Vary Veri is a student run journal coming from Harvard's GSD that publishes archival material found at the Loeb Library alongside newly commissioned pieces; their latest, Issue 3, explores the theme of Exile.

For this iteration of Screen/Print, we are sharing an included essay by Kathleen James-Chakraborty, an art history professor at University College Dublin. In it, James-Chakraborty reflects on America's early generation of refugee architects—Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn, to name a few—who came to the U.S. and forever shaped its built environment.

S/P #61: Husos Architects trace the role of remittances on migratory urbanisms

2017-08-03T12:00:00-04:00

Since the late 1990s, remittances, or money transfers made by international migrants to their countries of origin, have played an increasingly large role in both the local and national economies of the receiving countries. In some cases, like Nepal, remittances can make up a full third of a countries total GDP.

A look at 22 talented immigrants expanding the definition of American architecture

2017-07-04T13:40:00-04:00

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” read the famous lines inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Housing nearly 20% of all immigrants in the world, the United States is a famously diverse country and, when at its best, incredibly welcoming. This Fourth of July, we’re celebrating this proud tradition by taking a look at architects from around the world who’ve made America their home.

Can Trump’s anti-immigrant border wall be built without immigrant labor?

2017-02-25T13:05:00-05:00

Border agents don’t want an opaque, precast concrete wall. Financially, the wall is unlikely to be built without immigrant labor. And historically, large-scale border walls don’t keep people out as much as signal that an empire is caving in. Here’s why Donald Trump’s proposed U.S./Mexico border wall isn’t just a moral failure, but a practical one.

Brexit: a chance to roll back the interventionist state and unleash entrepreneurial creativity – op-ed by Patrik Schumacher

2016-07-08T04:02:00-04:00

I have very little in common with the arguments of the Leave Campaign, and in particular reject the anti-immigration thrust of the Campaign. However, I welcome Brexit as offering an enhanced ability and chance to experiment with new policies that dare more economic freedom.

CONTOURS: Immigration and the Economy

2011-12-12T13:44:43-05:00

Listening to the Republican presidential debates, one would think that immigration is the single most important issue pressing on the U.S. economy today and that if it were “solved”—i.e. no immigrants of color (especially those from Mexico in particular, though those from Arab nations, China, and South Asia generally are also targeted by this discourse) were ever let across our borders again—that the economic woes would also be solved. In architecture, the presence of East Asian nationals in particular causes consternation amongst certain circles.