Archinect - Features

Archinect's Guide to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale: Part I — The National Pavilions

2023-06-06T14:17:00-04:00

With the opening week of the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale now passed, there has been much discussion and media coverage of the anticipated international exhibition. It's safe to imply that the high-profile event aims to highlight, unveil, celebrate, and at times, provoke new and further existing discourse surrounding architecture. It can, however, be daunting to navigate the scene as a whole, especially for those who are learning about the pavilions, installations, participants, and overall event programming from afar.

To help Archinect readers who can only experience this year's Biennale virtually, we've created a handy reference guide to provide visuals and added context. In this two-part mini-feature series, we provide a summary and context for this year's exhibition theme, The Laboratory of the Future. Our guide offers a breakdown of important figures that make up the event, a list of participants, pavilions and installations, and upcoming events, as well as critical takes...

Exploring Architecture’s Uncertain Nature With Schidlowski Fellow François Sabourin

2023-04-17T17:28:00-04:00

Academic fellowships provide unique opportunities for designers and researchers to explore specific topics of interest while teaching. Archinect's Fellow Fellows series showcases individuals who are currently in or have recently finished an architecture fellowship.

For our latest interview, we're featuring François Sabourin, the 2021–22 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow at Kent State University. Sabourin discusses his fellowship experience as he explored "architecture's relationship with uncertainty." Themes from the works of Georgios Eftaxiopoulos, Douglas Spencer, and Axel Kilian inspired Sabourin to develop "To be determined," an exhibition consisting of robotic walls that "interact in scripted yet unpredictable ways with visitors." As an emerging faculty fellow, Sabourin reflected on his pathway as an educator and how this fellowship helped expand his perspectives as an instructor.

Uncovering the Untold Histories of American Campus Expansions with Boghosian Fellow Leen Katrib

2023-04-10T12:31:00-04:00

Archinect's Fellow Fellows series showcases individuals who are currently in, or have recently finished, an architecture fellowship. During our conversations, we discuss their architectural journey, areas of research, and their overall experience as academic fellows.

For our latest interview, we connected with Leen Katrib, the 2021–22 Harry der Boghosian Fellow at Syracuse University School of Architecture. Katrib shares her fellowship experience, her passion for uncovering the forgotten histories and influence of marginalized communities in architecture, the studio she taught, and details about her fellowship exhibition titled LESS IS...

Architecture as Caregiver: NYIT School of Architecture and Design Showcases Student and Faculty Work at the 2021 Venice Biennale

2021-12-16T10:49:00-05:00

Pavilions and exhibitions showcased at the 2021 Architecture Venice Biennale have grabbed news headlines for a good portion of the year. As the architecture and design world interrogates the works of numerous architects, curators, and professional design teams through the lens of the latest theme, How Will We Live Together, attention must also be paid to the participation of architecture students and faculty. Highly visible exhibitions have become outlets for educating the world about what architecture is today. Academic contributions add to architecture's growing discourse through research and investigations.

For this year's International Architecture Exhibition, architecture students and faculty from the New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design (SoAD) made an appearance in Venice. Through the leadership of SoAD Dean Maria Perbellini and fellow faculty members, the institution showcased two unique pavilions. Archinect connected with Dean Perbellini to lear...

Barbara Bestor Reflects on the Julius Shulman Institute and Woodbury University's Commitment to Celebrating Architectural Photography Through Exhibition

2021-10-29T10:13:00-04:00

Architecture and photography are two disciplines whose relationship has blossomed into visual documentation used repeatedly for reference, inspiration, and research. While there are many architectural photographers whose work has been exemplary in presenting the public with a glimpse into the world of architecture, Julius Shulman remains an industry icon and pioneer in the field. Since 2005, the Julius Shulman Institute (JSI) has acted as an important bridge for Woodbury University to connect the public with the disciplines of architecture and photography. To learn more about the JSI, its history, and its mission, I spoke with Woodbury University's Julius Shulman Distinguished Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the JSI, Barbara Bestor.

"Our goal is to change the way Architecture and photography of the built environment are understood and presented in our culture and museums," shared Bestor. "It's rare for there to be an architecture department in any given museum. On t...

Exhibit Columbus' 2021 University Design Fellows Bring Architecture Research to Life in the Midwest

2021-09-30T15:35:00-04:00

For the past several months, a small, Midwestern city located "in the middle" of the country has taken the architecture world by storm. Since the opening of Exhibit Columbus this past March, the exhibition team, designers, and curatorial duo Mimi Zeiger and Iker Gil have created an immersive, in-person experience teeming with work that embodies the past, present, and future of Midwestern architecture, research, and discourse.

As media partners, Archinect has conducted several interviews where we dive into the minds of the Exhibition's talented designers. We've learned how they've pushed the boundaries of site-specific architectural exhibitions and how they evoke moments of reflection and pride for cities in the Midwest.

In preparation for Exhibit Columbus' upcoming event, Mapping the Middle: Design Research Conversations, we were given access to dive into the projects of this year's seven University Design Research Fellows. The Exhibit Columbus team shared that this new colloquium i...

Fellow Fellows: Jennifer Meakins Interrogates Power Imbalances Within Architectural Pedagogy

2021-08-23T13:37:00-04:00

Fellowships can help spark critical career-changing moves for designers and academics looking to establish their research and design perspectives through teaching. However, besides the teaching experience, research exploration, and funding, what else can an architecture fellowship provide young professionals? In Jennifer Meakins' case, she received much support as the 2020—2021 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow at Kent State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design.

For this iteration of Archinect's Fellow Fellows series, we unpacked Meakins' research and studio she taught. While her research primarily focused on "architecture's role in upholding and furthering systems of inequity and injustice," we also dove into the current state of fellowships and how they impact the careers of design professionals. In addition, Meakins provided insight into why she pursued a fellowship versus a full-time position at a firm and her thoughts on fellowships as a vehicle or con...

Michael Jefferson Talks the Future of Fellowships and the Biases of AI Application in Architecture

2021-02-08T09:00:00-05:00

In our latest installment of Fellow Fellows, Archinect connects with Michael Jefferson, the 2019-2020 Innovation in Design Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Together we unpack his fellowship experience and his exhibition False Walls. "The fellowship was organized as a series of exercises that examined rules, standards, and conventions when interpreted and reconfigured by artificial intelligence." According to Jefferson, the project was "an exhibition of fake walls built with real materials. Tied up between the computational logics of artificial intelligence and the conventional tectonic arrangements of stud framing, the protocols of the machine were mapped on to traditional methods of construction."

The nature of fellowships and their exhibition outcomes will continue to adjust as the COVID pandemic continues. When discussing his thoughts on fellowships, Jefferson makes an intriguing point that renders some reflection. "The 2019-2020 fellows (across the US) may end up...

Fellow Fellows: Galen Pardee

2020-10-27T13:17:00-04:00

In this latest installment of Fellow Fellows we connect with Galen Pardee, M.Arch graduate of Columbia University, where he received the Alpha Rho Chi Medal. Pardee chats with Archinect about his work and latest exhibition, "The Great Lakes Architectural Expedition." While academia transitions and shifts to better address and adhere towards fighting social and racial injustice with architecture, Pardee shares what he's learned in the process as 2019-2020 (now 2021) LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at The Ohio State University.

Fellow Fellows: Jonathan Rieke

2020-08-14T12:31:00-04:00

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the role fellowships play in architecture academia today. These prestigious academic positions can bring forth a fantastic blend of practice, research, and pedagogical cross-pollination, often within a tight time frame. They also, by definition, represent temporary, open-ended, and ultimately precarious employment for aspiring young designers and academics. Fellow Fellows aims to understand what these positions offer for both the fellows themselves and the discipline at large by presenting their work and experiences through an in-depth interview. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to the otherwise maddening pace of academia, while also presenting a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done by people navigating the early parts of their careers.

This week, we Archinect connected with Jonathan Rieke, M.Arch graduate of Harvard GSD and the recipient of the 2018-2019 Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow a...

Unpacking The Spatial Implications Of Architecture's Accessibility Failures

2020-01-14T13:19:00-05:00

There is a particular type of obliviousness to the built environment that most of us have the privilege of experiencing day-to-day. This obliviousness relates not to architecture’s aesthetic values, but rather to architecture’s accessibility out in the world. Built to Scale, an exhibition by artist Emily Barker currently on view at Murmurs Gallery in Los Angeles, is designed to knock you right out of it. And for designers and architects, it's a must-see. On view in a young gallery tucked between the nondescript buildings of LA's Manufacturing District, Barker's new solo show delves deep into the fundamental misunderstandings of architectural accessibility and its spatial implications, particularly in the realm of the home.

Nader Tehrani on Thesis and Its History at Cooper Union

2018-11-18T09:56:00-05:00

On Tuesday, October 23 2018, The Cooper Union opened a new exhibition entitled Archive and Artifact: The Virtual and the Physical, presenting 50 years of undergraduate architectural thesis projects by students of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Immediately before the opening, Donna Sink and I spoke with Dean Nader Tehrani about his perspective on the tradition of thesis, and how the new show reflects Cooper Union's 50-year history of undergraduate thesis under the direction of Hejduk, Vidler, and himself.

This story was originally published last year. We're re-featuring it today in light of Cooper Union's recent unveiling of The Student Work Collection.

Drawing a Blank: Harvard GSD's Recent Exhibition, Inscriptions, Asks Visitors to Imagine Architecture Before Speech

2018-09-26T09:30:00-04:00

Inscriptions: Architecture before Speech, the inaugural exhibition of the Drucker Design Gallery at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, prompted visitors to “read” the works on display as blank pages might be read.

In an essay on artworks that take the form of blank pages, the media theorist Craig Dworkin catalogs many different ways artists have done something significant while ostensibly doing almost nothing. For example, in the movie Orpheus, a Parisian poet published a book of poetry consisting of nothing but blank pages, titled Nudisme. What this book did in the context of the movie’s fictional poetry scene was very different from a similar blank book, also titled Nudisme and styled in a similar way, that was recently on sale in fashionable Brooklyn shops. Another of Dworkin’s examples, a poet bought 1,500 reams of blank paper and stamped his name on the cover, aiming to sell them as poetry. The patron who funded the project threw “the wretched little thing” into the garbage (...

Exhibiting Visionary Histories: a Conversation with the curators of "Past Forward" at the Art Institute of Chicago

2017-10-12T09:00:00-04:00

This fall has brought no shortage of design events and exhibitions to Chicago, the hometown of American architecture. In addition to exhibitions at the Graham Foundation and Chicago Architecture Foundation, this year’s Biennial ties together numerous tours, performances, events, and allied shows in two and three dimensions. But no other event seems to complement the Biennial so well as the inaugural presentation of the Art Institute’s permanent Architecture and Design collection.

You say Biennial, I say Biennale: 9 of Today’s Most Critical Architecture Biennials

2017-04-06T12:50:00-04:00

Every two years, hundreds of thousands flock to the historic small islands of Venice, where history and art meet to give us one of the most influential fixtures in the architectural world—The Venice Biennale of Architecture. While originally a more specialized art-world affair, biennials now figure in the larger cultural menu drawing huge crowds and the exhibitionary format, occurring every other year, has proliferated in the past two decades offering the field myriad options for getting one's expo fix.

Beatriz Colomina on "Playboy Architecture" and the masculine fantasy

2016-05-11T10:38:00-04:00

Playboy gets lip service as a leader in the sexual revolution, a vanguard publisher of emerging talent in fiction and interviews, and of course, a historic showcase for sexy ladies. While the publication has since lost its centerfolds, it is now being celebrated for its role in architecture and design – establishing both of those fields as firmly within the Playboy’s domain. Now on display at the Elmhurst Art Museum, “Playboy Architecture: 1953-1979” presents photos, films, architectural models and archival issues that illustrate how the ruling designs of the era fueled Playboy’s masculine fantasy, and the other way around.

Getting in the mood for One-Night Stand LA #2: the Rendezvous

2016-04-30T11:29:00-04:00

One balmy Los Angeles night last spring, throngs of architecture aficionados descended on a dingbat motel in the MacArthur Park area for what was billed, alongside amatory promotional material, as a "One-Night Stand for Art and Architecture." For a single evening, the trysting place was transformed into a series of distinct, room-size installations rendered with 3D-mapped projections, robotics, or simple 2x4’s. On May 14 of this year, the project will be reprised in the same location but with different curators and a new roster of participants. I chatted with the organizers to get the low down on what to expect from One-Night Stand LA: the Rendezvous.

To each their own home: A peek into the “HOME(less)” exhibition at USC

2016-01-19T09:30:00-05:00

For many of those who regularly navigate the streets of Los Angeles, seeing at least one homeless person is not only common, it’s expected. So normal is the sight of homelessness in the city that residents can easily become desensitized to it, making them less likely to question it, and at its worst, making the homeless population effectively invisible. Local designers and Colorblock partners Sofia Borges and Susan Nwankpa wanted to address this in their co-curated photo exhibition, “HOME(less)”, currently on display at the University of Southern California. The photos raise awareness of L.A.’s glaring homelessness crisis, while simultaneously highlighting the impactful relationship between people and their personal spaces in the urban environment.

Finding "Shelter" in Los Angeles' housing chaos

2015-09-08T12:00:00-04:00

With all the media attention on California’s drought, the “atoning L.A.” narrative has gotten pretty common. The city’s gluttonous lawns, sprawling infrastructures and indulgent residents – in short, its sinful stereotypes – have become untenable as the drought, a housing crisis and pressing sustainability measures come knocking at the city’s door.

Looking to "Frank Gehry", after Paris but before Los Angeles

2015-08-05T14:00:00-04:00

On September 13 of this year, Los Angeles will get its first major exhibition of Frank Gehry’s work, ever. Despite being the adopted hometown of the world-famous architect, and the city whose new-millennium architectural identity has been inflected most by his work, Los Angeles has not yet hosted a show exclusively on Gehry's retrospective.

"Work on Work" exhibition turns public space into office space

2015-07-31T11:55:00-04:00

If the current exhibition at Los Angeles’ Architecture + Design Museum was titled by a sarcastic person, it would be called "Work/Life Balance: Pshaw!" As it is, the infographic-laden collection of vinyl banners loosely mounted to stacks of brown boxes, co-organized by Gensler and UCLA’s cityLAB, is called "Work on Work", and it is both the history of and the proposed future for society's daily grind. And man, what a grind it is.

The motley life and uncertain legacy of Lina Bo Bardi

2015-05-04T10:32:00-04:00

Lina Bo Bardi: Together is not, and does not attempt to be, the definitive collection of Lina Bo Bardi’s work, but rather an examination of her life, influences, and motivations for producing her timeless architecture and enduring contributions to Brazilian, particularly Bahian, culture.

Ghosts of Schindler's past haunt Renee Green's MAK Center exhibition

2015-03-24T12:10:00-04:00

Where does an encounter with a work of architecture begin? There is the building as it first emerges on the horizon. Then the series of connected moments as you approach, that, like in a film, change according to variables of speed and distance, of the position of the subject in relation to the object. There is also the moment of crossing the threshold, the ambiguous line that demarcates inside from outside.

Oyler Wu Collaborative in ink, graphite and steel

2015-02-09T11:22:00-05:00

Painters paint, sculptors sculpt, and writers write, yet architects do not architect – they draw, model, and write. Architecture is one of the few creative fields that does not allow the artist to work in the medium where the final work will be produced. Yet Oyler Wu Collaborative makes productive use of that cognitive jump.

Koolhaas wreaks havoc at A+D Museum's "S,M,L,XLA" exhibition

2014-07-14T11:02:00-04:00

In the 1958 classic film "The Blob", a globular alien terrorizes a small Pennsylvanian town, ravenously absorbing everything and everyone in its path. It's formidable but silly looking at the same time, and the more it takes in the bigger and angrier it gets. Walking through the Architecture and Design Museum at the opening of their S,M,L,XLA exhibition, at times it felt like The Blob had overtaken curation.

The Trouble with a Bird’s Eye View: LA Forum's exhibition looks at Los Angeles from afar

2014-06-27T19:10:00-04:00

No single image can contain a city, particularly one as large as Los Angeles. But through the accumulation of many, it may be possible that the irreducible complexity of a city can become slightly more legible. Pairing aerial photographs by Los Angeles-based Lane Barden with a geo-mapping project by the German-American duo Benedikt Groß and Joseph K. Lee, the summer exhibition of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Design presents two distinct perspectives with which to view the city.

Rem's Venice Biennale is "like being immersed in a stormy S,M,L,XL, with a glass of wine, and hundreds of other people"

2014-06-16T10:46:00-04:00

Is Modernism “history”? How do Modern concepts, especially regarding representation, nature, technology and housing, relate to the current state of architecture? These were some overarching questions embedded in the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture, curated by Rem Koolhaas. The show opened June 7th under the “Fundamentals” theme, and it is worth visiting for the important questions it raises about the current state of architecture and building.

On the ground: USC Blue Tape showcases student work as barometer of California architecture

2014-05-23T14:28:00-04:00

Tucked in at the edge of USC’s campus, along downtown Los Angeles' Exposition Boulevard, stands Southern California's first accredited architecture program, which has spent the past year celebrating its centennial class of students with a variety of school events. At the resolution of the academic year is USC School of Architecture's Blue Tape, a two-day climactic event showcasing work from throughout the year, across all disciplines and student levels.

Review: Glen Small, Father of Green Architecture

2013-11-25T17:33:00-05:00

It is always good to see old friends, past mentors and new students at an exhibit honoring someone you love and admire. The work of Glen Small, the 'hesitant' father of Green Architecture is on display until the end of November.

The organizer and curator of the exhibit, Assembly and Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce, has put together a smart, focused, visual overview that also includes several lectures, workshops, a book and a screening of the documentary film MY FATHER THE GENIUS.

Shock of the new: "Beyond the Assignment" and architectural photography's future

2013-10-18T15:24:00-04:00

Smack in the middle of Hollywood, among costume shops, bars and a Scientology center, WUHO Gallery celebrated the opening of "Beyond the Assignment: Defining Photographs of Architecture and Design", an exhibition honoring the work of active architectural photographers from across the United States.