Archinect - Features

#ArchinectMeets @chatelp

2018-11-20T12:00:00-05:00

#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 Pierre Chatel, the photographer behind @chatelp. A computer scientist by trade, Chatel recently took up architectural photography full time. His work can best be described as 'cool abstraction' thanks to a rare abilities to both discover rare moments in well-known buildings throughout Europe as well as to find the beauty in objects as mundane as storage containers.

Transforming Architecture Into “Spaceships” Through the Lens of a Camera

2017-08-14T10:16:00-04:00

Growing up by the sea and honing his photography skills in the alien Antarctic landscapes during the ANT-XXIII/9 expedition, Hamburg-based Lars Stieger has long been drawn to capturing expansive, desolate landscapes. Equally fascinated by modern architecture, Stieger began using photography to explore the intriguing details of the built environment. He ventures further into this photographic experimentation with his science fiction-inspired “Spaceships” series.

dIONISO LAB's new home puts the outside at the center

2017-02-26T10:20:00-05:00

Located in a suburban area of Póvoa de Varzim, a coastal town in Portugal known unsurprisingly for its fish and beach resorts, sits a stark white home. Inserted into a gridded plot and enclosed by fragmented gardens and paved areas, House L27, stands apart from its neighbors. Designed by José Cadilhe of dIONISO LAB, the home plays with the standard geometry of the surrounding construction by offering a more fluid alternative in which the exterior becomes the central, organizing space.

Spatial Activism: Profiling a New Wave of European Architecture Collectives and Their Spatial Manifestos

2017-02-01T12:05:00-05:00

While there exists an extensive volume of politically engaged architecture projects and countless architects who, particularly in their youth, practiced with explicit agendas, architecture offices have in the main been formed around a signature typology or aesthetic. Consider Zaha Hadid’s cultural icons, Christopher Wren’s churches or Santiago Calatrava’s sculptural engineering: such designers branded their careers upon a signature feature, their trademark image subsequently produced and reproduced in design journals. However, a contingent of young European architects have begun to challenge this custom to instead orient their practice around what might be referred to as the ‘political object’. These spatial activists operate from the sidelines as facilitators, utilising design not as an end in itself but as a means to pursue a specific objective.

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.