Archinect - Features

Lessons in Monochromatic Composition from Arthur Elrod

2019-07-27T07:13:00-04:00

Arthur Elrod, the noted Mid-Century Modern interior designer, is widely known for his eye-popping, colorful, and groovy designs, but what can we learn from his monochromatic works? Stylistically eclectic, formally complex, and materially decadent, these works hold valuable lessons that, upon further inspection, make great precedents for contemporary design explorations.

Why? Because Elrod anticipated a now distinctly contemporary form of eclecticism that combines the curatorial approach of discerning taste with a no-holds-barred, cabinet of curiosities-centered sensibility that relies on color and materiality to seemingly tie together new and traditional spaces and objects alike. While Elrod’s colorful works are sure to wow, this approach is more effectively appreciated through the subtlety of his monochromatic designs, where Elrod manages to work in surprisingly explicit ways to undermine the notion that Modernism was founded on newness alone, and to erode the idea that design ha...

Brooklyn's Frederick Tang Discusses What It Means to Find Opportunities in Design by Learning to Say Yes and No

2019-01-07T14:49:00-05:00

For Frederick Tang, running a practice starts with remembering where opportunities for design freedom can occur. Channeling advice given to him during the early part of his career, the Brooklyn-based architect is reminded to never forget "architecture is a service profession." An attitude that Tang has carried throughout the growth of his practice, he focuses on fostering a team that encourages design humility while prioritizing collaboration.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Tang discusses how making big decisions for his growing firm requires understanding what it means to say "yes" or "no." As his design practice Frederick Tang Architecture evolves, so does the opportunity for exploration.

#ArchinectMeets @newagecocaine

2018-11-02T11:00:00-04:00

#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 Kate Sennert, curator of @newagecocaine. The photographs she finds across her path are from that magical era roughly between 1975 and 1985, which some have described as the 'late-modernist' period. Some of the modernist tenants stayed intact in this era, such as those of expediency and experimentation with new materials, while others had been gleefully rejected, such as modesty and the sacre...

Screen/Print #54: Galen Cranz on Why We Need to Rethink the Chair

2017-04-28T12:04:00-04:00

Besides buildings (obviously), chairs are probably architects favorite things to design. There’s Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair and Gerrit Reitveld’s Zig-Zag chair; Arne Jacobson’s Model 3107 and Frank Llloyd Wright’s Peacock chair. Today, the tradition continues, with architects from David Adjaye to Rem Koolhaas to Zaha Hadid all designing places to perch. Yet, for all their formal grace and beauty, these chairs rarely break the mold. Invariably, they are designed around an upright individual sitting at a right angle. And, according to Galen Cranz, a Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, such traditional chair designs just don’t cut it—and they're even harming our health.

Opendesk, cracking the production code for open-source furniture

2016-03-30T15:12:00-04:00

Before the Industrial Revolution, if you wanted a new piece of furniture, you’d go to your local carpenter. Today, you’re more likely to buy a chair that’s made of Brazilian wood, designed by a Swede, and manufactured in China than one with even a single locally-produced nail. Enter Opendesk, a furniture company with a global network and local manufacturing model, which might just spark a new revolution in the industry.

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.

A sheet of plastic, a few screws, and five minutes are all it takes to assemble one of these "darling" stackable chairs

2016-03-01T15:34:00-05:00

IKEA may be the main peddler of assemble-it-yourself furniture, but, as many disgruntled college students would attest, their designs are often less-than-easy to realize. The "Thermoplastic Darling Stackable Chair", on the other hand, requires just one sheet of pre-scored polypropylene, a few screws, and about five minutes to put together.

Leftover inspiration: the construction aesthetic of "Chair 6.0"

2016-02-28T11:56:00-05:00

What happens when you bend a six-meter long piece of rebar 14 times? Well, this chair, for starters. By using found materials at a construction site and carefully planning ahead, University of Michigan alum and architect Moon Joo Lee was able to create this chair without any welding or use of bolts.

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.

Between art and design: rethinking function with Hand Job Gallery Store

2016-02-23T17:55:00-05:00

Google “art vs design” and you’ll find a slew of fairly common sense diagrams and articles. “Good art is a talent”, stipulates one, while “good design is a skill”. Or, similarly, “good art is interpreted”, whereas “good design is understood”. My favorite includes two identical images of a chair. Beneath one reads the caption, “a chair: design”, while beneath the second, “a tree: conceptual art”.

Screen/Print #40: Alexandra Lange's "Power Positions" from Dirty Furniture, issue #2

2016-02-17T17:43:00-05:00

In the high-gloss landscape of design magazines, all tables have been wiped clean. But in practice, things get messy: our desks are cluttered, our kitchens are flecked with sauce, our careers take form or falter as we finger the seams in the Formica. In this issue of Dirty Furniture, the second in a finite series of six, an object usually shrouded by its ubiquity is illuminated by a series of essays that considers the table not just as a formal object, but also as an architecture and convention that structures our familial, social, political, and spiritual relationships.

Getting the chair: how cinematic villains' seats illuminate character

2016-02-14T00:07:00-05:00

Imagine Hannibal Lecter in a lawn chair: not quite as menacing, right? While furniture in film can be a subtle part of the mise-en-scene, for cinematic villains, their signature chair often defines their character, even if that character is rotten right down to the studs. What chairs do the best job of bringing out the worst of an empire-crazed nihilist, or a serial killer, or a limelit psychopath? To answer that question, we had these ten evildoers take a seat according to their preferred vice.

A prize-winning installation pays tribute to a historical Quebec village

2016-02-10T17:03:00-05:00

Vercheres, a small village near Montreal, has recently integrated a unique memorial to honor those who originally settled the region in 1740. A local firm, Les Ateliers Guyon, has designed a cluster of benches with white oak sails rooted along the shore of the St. Lawrence River. Sails Benches echoes the arrival of 18th century explorers, while reflecting a particular artistic aesthetic that Les Ateliers Guyon has become known for. The project has recently garnered accolade from the prestigious World Interiors News Awards in London, receiving first place in the ‘Furniture Category’.

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.

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.

Modular benches provide maximum functionality and versatility for Lake Jasper House

2016-02-02T13:41:00-05:00

The Lake Jasper House, designed by Architecturama, stands in the midst of a forested haven in Chertsey, Canada. The Quebec-based architecture firm has thoughtfully combined a minimalist aesthetic with maximum functionality, optimizing the use of the house’s interior space. In keeping with their manifesto, Architecturama has approached their design with the intention “to have a present, living and enthusiastic architecture that engages the senses,” in addition to reducing an environmental footprint in any way conceivable.

UpStarts: Four O Nine architecture and design

2015-01-12T09:30:00-05:00

In a country infamous for its one time zone and countless architectural knock-offs, Four O Nine's success is startling and original.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts surveys the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

ShowCase: Abedian School of Architecture by CRAB Studio

2014-01-10T10:02:00-05:00

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.

Student Works: "Saltworks" from Washington University in St. Louis

2013-10-02T20:21:00-04:00

Finding inspiration in the genetics behind a giraffe’s neck, students at Washington University in St. Louis used parametric design methods to build a flexible piece of public furniture for the university campus.

Working out of the Box: Scout Regalia

2013-09-12T12:00:00-04:00

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 Makoto Mizutani and Benjamin Luddy, founders of LA-based product design studio Scout Regalia.

Student Works: INSITU Medellin

2012-08-27T10:00:00-04:00

INSITU is an initiative founded by Blokcad Lab and uAbureau in 2011 to implement projects that investigate the informal development of cities, its non-consolidated urban spaces and auto- construction processes. Its central objective is to explore how the ecological and the social environments of the city can be merged to create new and unforeseen landscapes. Through a series of ongoing workshops, lectures and events, the program is directed to students, professionals and communities working in art, architecture, design and its related fields.

ShowCase: White Elephant (Privately Soft)

2012-01-05T14:06:00-05:00

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.