Archinect - Features

Designing for Disaster, Before It Happens: Resilient by Design Seeks Architects

2017-06-02T12:41:00-04:00

Disasters resulting from climate change, such as sea level rise, often cause billions of dollars of damage. In an era when the United States Federal Government has largely withdrawn from climate change policy, San Francisco Bay Area-based Resilient by Design has released a design brief in hopes of assembling ten teams of architects, engineers, designers and experts to help anticipate and design for the needs of the region before massive devastation occurs. So what architects should apply?

As the City Grows, Bridging Manila's Bay Could Ease Population Strain

2016-10-21T12:28:00-04:00

Affordable housing, decent commute times, and an exploding population don't seem to have much in common until one considers the proposed "Journey by the Bay," a combined highway and high-speed rail backbone to bridge the Manila Bay.

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?

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.”

"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.