Archinect - Features

Narrative, Media, and AI in Architectural Academia; A Conversation with Natasha Sandmeier

2023-11-06T13:00:00-05:00

Archinect last spoke with Natasha Sandmeier on the themes of visual media and narrative storytelling in 2019. Back then, few could have imagined the seismic impact that generative AI would have on such fields. In her leading role at UCLA AUD's Entertainment Studio, Sandmeier sits at the forefront of an architectural academic landscape, already asking what the recent popularized adoption of AI in design and world-building means for authorship, ethics, representation, learning criteria, and the role of the architect.

The intervening four years since 2019 have also seen a shift in Sandmeier's own responsibilities. Beyond her position as an assistant adjunct professor at UCLA, Sandmeier is now the Executive Director of Los Angeles' A+D Museum, offering yet another outlet to explore the question of how technology is changing the face of architecture and media. The latest appointment adds to Sandmeier's long list of prior positions in the worlds of architectural academia, practice, and cu...

'You Need to Use AI Much More Than You Think to Get Unique Results From It'; A Conversation with Alexis Christodoulou

2023-07-26T08:00:00-04:00

Studying Alexis Christodoulou’s work, including his highly popular Instagram portfolio, one would expect his images to be the product of decades of education, training, and practice at the top of the field. The fact that Christodoulou is a self-taught artist of ten years, preceded by a career in advertising and winemaking, is a testament to the artist’s flair and passion for exploring new frontiers.

That same passion for exploration has allowed Christodoulou’s work to evolve from its simple architectural beginnings to vivid, minimalist experiments in Modernism, Brutalism, and the natural world, to present-day commissions by luxury brands through his company, Color C Design Studio.

In June 2023, Archinect’s Niall Patrick Walsh spoke with Christodoulou about his career in 3D visualization, including his background, process, tools, and thoughts on how artificial intelligence intersects with his field. The discussion, edited slightly for clarity, is published below.

This article is part...

Kilograph and Climate Cents Team Up To Rewrite L.A.’s Climate Action Narrative

2020-01-03T14:57:00-05:00

Discussions regarding climate change and the need to make progressive reforms in the built environment are everywhere these days.

Over the last year, calls from architects and the architecture community to strengthen their involvement in fighting the growing climate crisis have increased markedly. From international organizations like Architects Declare to efforts on the part of individual practices to create manifestos to ensure their own accountability towards this issue, it's difficult to avoid talking about sustainability and climate action when discussing architecture.

Individually, however, the task of reinforcing action and follow-through can be tough, but collectively, entities and groups of firms can band together to create not only moments of change, but also movements that advocate for continuous action. To learn more about such collaborations, Archinect spoke with Keely Colcleugh, CEO of Kilograph and Sean Cushing board member of Climate Cents. Together, they unpack th...

Exploring the Future of Narrative in Architecture with Natasha Sandmeier and Nathan Su of UCLA's IDEAS Entertainment Studio

2019-11-14T20:30:00-05:00

Narrative, drama, and fiction have always played a key role in the production of architecture.

During the 19th Century, for example, architects like Louis Sullivan and McKim Mead & White mixed organic and formal languages to tell stories about the activities that took place within the buildings they designed, while Modernist architect Le Corbusier often worked through episodic vignettes while designing buildings and urban plans alike. In the 1980s, Jon Jerde mixed these approaches to create his trademark "experience architectures," precedents that architects like Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid melded with an urban focus to create buildings that extend the street indoors and create seamless collections of spaces that blur the distinction between inside and outside.

In recent years, architecture's narrative turn has largely focused on a variety of digital fronts, where virtual and augmented reality experiments, filmic approaches, and sophisticated visualizations are creating yet another ...

The young and restless practice of IF_DO

2016-09-05T05:34:00-04:00

I’m in Peckham, South London, just across the road from Camberwell College of Arts, to meet IF_DO, a young practice run by Al Scott, Sarah Castle and Thomas Bryans. The trio met in 2002 at the University of Edinburgh whilst getting their MA in Architectural Design, and in the two years that their fledgling studio has been in practice, they’ve caused a stir with a thought-provoking manifesto and renderings that were displayed at the Royal Academy Summer Show. All that, without having yet embarked on a building of their own creation.