Archinect - Features

‘As Compton Natives, It Is Our Lifelong Goal to Give Back to the Community’ — Gallery 90220’s Founder on Empowering a New Generation of Black and Brown Artists in Los Angeles

2021-08-05T11:54:00-04:00

A new Black-owned and operated gallery has just opened in South Los Angeles, sprouting out of a vibrant artistic revival in Compton, California, and paving the way for an urban renaissance centered around the artistic expression of Black and Brown creatives.

Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy discuss the design process for Muzeum Susch, a gallery built deep into the Swiss Alps

2019-01-25T09:27:00-05:00

Muzeum Susch, founded by Grażyna Kulczyk, is a new gallery in a remote town in the Engadin Valley designed by the young duo Chasper Schmidlin and Lukas Voellmy, who previously designed the Von Bartha Gallery in Basel. The original building, set on a sloping hillside, has always been integral to the community it is situated within. Prior uses have included a vicarage, a hospice, a monastery, and, in the 19th century, an industrial brewery building. Working with the existing geology of the site, Schmidlin and Voellmy have created a dynamic space that weaves its way through the mountain, tunneling into the existing building—paying homage to its past while creating interventions and new spaces for its contemporary future. Below, the two talk about their process and what they hope the legacy of Muzeum Susch will be.

Fellow Fellows: WAI Architecture Think Tank

2018-01-18T09:00:00-05:00

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the current eruption and trend of fellowships in academia today. These positions within the academic realm produce a fantastic blend of practice, research and design influence and traditionally within a tight time frame. Fellow Fellows sits down with these fellows and attempts to understand what these positions offer to both themselves and the discipline at large. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to an otherwise maddening pace of refreshed academics while giving a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done in-between the newly minted graduate and the licensed associate.

This week we talk to WAI Architecture Think Tank. WAI Architecture Think Tank is an international studio practicing architecture, urbanism and architectural research, founded in Brussels in 2008 by Puerto Rican architect, artist, author and theorist Cruz Garcia and French architect, artist, author and poet, Nathalie Frankowski. WAI ...

Cutting a Rug: Making the Abstract Tangible With Urban Fabric + Elena Manferdini's "Building Portraits" area rugs

2017-02-10T12:13:00-05:00

After the success of Four O Nine’s “Urban Fabric” rugs, the firm has partnered with designer Elena Manferdini to create “Building Portraits,” a series of limited-edition area rugs that incorporate riffs on Miesian patterns and city grids with more abstract impressions of urbanity. The result, as unveiled in an opening in L.A.’s Chinatown on January 27th, is a mesmerizing blend of texture and architectural imagination.

Architecture's place in the museum

2016-08-17T09:36:00-04:00

The role that architecture plays in our individual and communal lives is often overlooked, yet in an age when environmental crises are imminent and individuals increasingly turn inward to their electronic devices, an investment in quality spaces that promote social and ecological well-being seems more urgent than ever. This conundrum begs the question: how can a deeper appreciation for architecture be instilled in twenty-first century society?