Archinect - Features

Using algorithms to disrupt suburbia's monotonous designs

2016-10-13T12:22:00-04:00

“Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same,” Malvina Reynolds sang in 1962, forty-three years before her verses served as the theme music for the TV show Weeds. The song still resonates because, despite formal changes, suburban developments have, for some, represented monotony and homogeneity since they were first constructed in the late 1920s. But who said that mass-produced housing has to be boring?

Stripped of cosmetics, but imbued with substance: inside the Berard Residence

2016-08-26T09:20:00-04:00

As conceptually oriented housing design goes, the Berard Residence has a bold aim: it attempts to shift the preconception of housing's elemental function away from shelter and into a more experiential mode, concerned with the qualities of human existence itself. Submitted to our open call under July's theme of Domesticity, the home aligns itself with a new interpretation of the 'case study' ideal.

A home that molds itself to your memories

2016-08-18T09:13:00-04:00

Traces of the past permeate a home, which acts as a sort of repository for memories. Thus, a move is never just a relocation, it’s also a departure from the past and its signifiers. But what if houses conformed to our memories rather than the other way around? In The Settlement, a submission to our July open call, Noah Gotlib and Pica Limbaseanu propose a future where a family “will soon be able to experience everything within the confines of the home, yet part with nothing.”

If you can’t stand the domesticity, get out of the kitchen

2016-08-15T09:26:00-04:00

Kitchen design in the U.S. has evolved substantially in the last 100 years, moving from a service-oriented back room to the third largest space in houses. This shift has played a role in how people define domesticity, domestic relationships, and even community at large.

'Ethical Dwellings for Generation Y' explores new forms of living and owning in a changing London

2016-08-13T06:08:00-04:00

While an average of 100,000 people move to London each year, only about 25,000 new homes are built annually: a formula that has produced a critical lack in affordable housing. The median rent in the capital city is £1,400 and the average house price has passed £600,000. In other words, only the very rich can afford to live in London.

Working Life: Does Taliesin’s collaborative and pedagogical domesticity suit the 21st century?

2016-08-10T12:45:00-04:00

Founded at a time when Frank Lloyd Wright was floundering financially, Taliesin’s blend of education and site-bound intimacy has created a custom domesticity. As the site for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin combines both passion and white-knuckled acumen, teaching its student inhabitants to thrive with scarce resources and a generous community.

Touring some of the world's most attractive public housing projects

2016-08-09T09:24:00-04:00

Can affordable public housing be beautiful? It’s a question that for years was answered with indifference.

At home in a changing climate: strategies for adapting to sea level rise

2016-08-03T10:09:00-04:00

For most of us, ‘home’ conjures a sense of safety and security. But a home is a fragile thing: vulnerable to quaking ground, rushing water, violent winds—not to mention, the volatility of finances and health. This has never been more true than in the time of climate change. The global thermostat of the home in which we build our homes is on the fritz.

WikiHouse's lead architect on how open-source idealism could cure a sickly building market

2016-08-02T05:12:00-04:00

Working far beyond the simplistic notion of crowdsourced design, WikiHouse Foundation is a building system and a stamp of approval for open-source innovations around the building industry.

Glass and concrete tread lightly in DSDHA's London 'Covert House'

2016-07-28T09:20:00-04:00

What is domesticity in the 21st century? Is it a blend of the 19th century ideal of the sanctuary with the 21st century notion of greater transparency and connectivity?

"Living together is only possible if there is always the possibility to be alone." – Dogma studio's hard-line look at architectural solitude

2016-07-27T09:46:00-04:00

The single-person room is the among the most basic units of architecture and the background for much of daily life. Here we project our personalities on the walls in the form of decor. Here we can retreat from the world. Yet the ubiquity and familiarity of the room nearly renders it invisible. Rarely do we consider the specificity of these places, which simultaneously serve as refuge and site of labor, of reproduction, of identity formation and presentation.

SCI-Arc students step out of the studio to build an affordable, eco-friendly home with Habitat for Humanity

2016-07-25T09:56:00-04:00

It’s not that often that architecture students get to actually build a house while still in school. But a class of SCI-Arc students led by faculty member Darin Johnstone got to design and build a new home—and an affordable, eco-friendly one, at that.

"Emergence: Home Beyond Boundaries" – a reader submission on Domesticity

2016-07-23T10:33:00-04:00

As one of the submissions to our Open Call for July's theme of "Domesticity," Duha Al Nasir tackled the challenge of envisioning her version of the next Case Study home, riffing on the realtor "ad" prompt with a rumination on the very nature of home. Al Nasir locates the essential home within the nexus of experience, likening it to an "emotional suitcase" and concluding that ultimately, one's home is not a physical enclosure but a metaphor for a sense of self.

Home away from home: an interview with the curators of the Oslo Architecture Triennale

2016-07-21T09:50:00-04:00

Sometime in the last few years, your couch became a rentable asset; your bedroom, a factory; your taste, a commodity; your doorstep, the final destination for a package that has more freedom of movement than most of the world’s population. What, then, does it mean to be at home today?

Deciding how to bill clients is complicated. What are the basic fee structures behind residential projects?

2016-07-14T10:03:00-04:00

In the same way that no two designers have the exact same aesthetic sensibility, architectural billing is tailored to the demands of a specific project. Nonetheless, certain industry-wide guidelines do apply. Here, Archinect breaks down common architectural fee structures in the U.S. as they relate to residential construction projects.

Falling through the sharing economy's looking glass—and into an ocean of unpaid, gendered, domestic labor

2016-07-13T15:17:00-04:00

“Work, work, work, work, work, work,” instructs Rihanna as we drive through the mountain pass; her dancehall, reggae-pop anthem to staying on the grind despite poor returns on libidinal investment providing the tempo for my own frantic attempts to capture any last emails before I abandon the world of 3G for cacti, a meteor shower, and a cheap Airbnb.