Archinect - Features

Fellow Fellows: Ranitri Weerasuriya, the 2018 Goodman Fellow at GSAPP

2019-10-25T13:00:00-04:00

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the increasingly important 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 talk to Ranitri Weerasuriya, the 2018-2019 Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellow from Columbia University Graduate School of ...

SOFTLab's Michael Szivos Discusses the Power of Material Experimentation and What It Means to Blend the Boundaries of Architecture With Other Disciplines

2019-03-04T12:27:00-05:00

Executing projects through experimentation and technical refinery, Michael Szivos of SOFTlab focuses his energy on creating new ways for the boundaries of architecture to overlap with other materials, digital techniques, and disciplines. Starting your practice is not an easy task. After receiving his graduate degree in architecture from Columbia GSAPP, Szivos sought to work on projects that pushed his creative process while challenging the scale and feasibility of his work. Established as a studio whose expertise ranges from digital fabrication to immersive and interactive installations, SOFTlab has made their mark in the fields of architecture, art, and technology.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Szivos shares his humble beginnings as an emerging designer. We discuss the struggles of design feasibility in addition to how he manages the business and creative side of the practice. From discussions about interactive multimedia to the origins of the studio's name, Szivos shares with ...

Deans List: Amale Andraos of Columbia University's GSAPP

2015-10-07T09:17:00-04:00

The Deans List is an interview series with the leaders of architecture schools, worldwide. The series profiles the school’s programming, as defined by the head honcho – giving an invaluable perspective into the institution’s unique curriculum, faculty and academic environment.

For this issue, we spoke with Amale Andraos, Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York City.

The Deans List: Mark Wigley of Columbia University's GSAPP

2014-07-07T14:38:00-04:00

For this issue, we spoke with Mark Wigley, former Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York City.

Columbia University GSAPP Fast Forward

2012-01-25T13:19:00-05:00

The evolution of digital visualization over the last decade has enabled designers to articulate powerful visions of space, manipulate components, isolate significant moments and generate provocative renderings of a given space at a given time. Often, the generative process of digital modeling remains exclusively in the hands of the creator with the potential of these virtual environments frozen in the presentation of a static image or a scripted animation. In this way, there has been an inherent disconnect between the intelligence embedded within the dynamic process of generating 3D virtual environments and the presentation of static CGI images which are meant to represent them. However, what if the audience had a window into the designer’s world, where we could interactively reshape the environment as we choose and instantaneously see the cascading results updated in real time? How would this effect the manner in which designers can effectively communicate ideas to their audience...