Archinect - Features

'What Is Truly Good About AI, Nobody Has Probably Thought of Yet'; A Conversation with Richard Saul Wurman

2023-07-25T08:00:00-04:00

To many, Richard Saul Wurman is inevitably introduced as "the man who created TED." Since Wurman organized the first TED conference in 1984, the organization's library has expanded to over 4,300 publicly available videos from some of the world's greatest minds about some of humanity's most curious and urgent subjects, not to mention the almost 50,000 independent TEDx talks which have been delivered since 2009.

The more one talks to or reads about Wurman, however, the smaller TED seems to shrink amidst a dizzying list of his pursuits into the world of the misunderstood, the unknown, and the unexplored. Born in 1935 in Philadelphia, an architectural alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, Wurman has counted Louis Kahn and Charles Eames among his mentors and Moshe Safdie and Frank Gehry among his great friends. He has published over 90 books on topics from architecture and graphic design to data and medicine, leaving a trail of influential projects such as TED and TEDMED, theories s...

Understanding a City’s Image: Exploring New York Through the Spatial Experiences and Perceptions of Its Users

2023-03-31T12:45:00-04:00

For our latest installment of the Thesis Review series, we connected with New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) M.Arch graduate Jay Patel to discuss his project, Urbanary — Enjoy the City While Moving.

Patel explained that his work reflects the perception of urban spaces. He uses the city of New York as a reference to investigate "how a human-oriented city image is formed with people’s perceptions to design and define future cities and spaces." Patel's thesis project aims to explore a concept that "emphasizes how each urban location has a distinctive character that has been shaped by human interaction."

In our interview, he discussed his motivations for exploring the topic of architectural perception, urban usability, how Kevin Lynch's work influenced his research approach, and he shared his own path toward licensure in both India and the U.S.

Dystopia in the Desert: Expo 2020 Dubai Embodies Our Unsustainable Attitude Towards Urbanism

2021-11-12T12:05:00-05:00

In a confluence of events, the autumn of 2021 saw the opening of both the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and Expo 2020 in Dubai. While COP26 is billed as "the last chance saloon" to save the planet, Expo 2020 Dubai is described by its organizers as "the most sustainable expo in the history of expos." This opinion piece reflects on how beneath Expo 2020 Dubai's rhetorical and programmatic accolades, the event is in fact a symptom of a systemically unsustainable attitude towards the built environment and a warped exercise in utopian thinking.

A Conversation with Mia Lehrer on Her Origins, Civil Service, and Design Leadership

2020-05-27T13:32:00-04:00

Born in El Salvador, Mia Lehrer grew up under a mother and father committed to making a difference in their local community, a quality the pair passed along to their children. It was at a young age that Mia and her siblings began advocating for the well being and empowerment of those around them through pursuits like teaching locals to read at their self-led summer school in the family’s home garage. Later, the family left Central America due to the break out of civil war and young Mia began to develop an inclination towards design. She explored vocations in architecture and landscape design and soon enrolled at Tufts University, pursuing a degree in Environmental Design.

With a growing and solidified interest to work on the design of cities, Mia embarked on a self-directed education through reading and attending lectures, leading her to the Master of Landscape Architecture program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. In 1982, Mia Lehrer + Associates was founded, and t...

Studio Visits: Studio-MLA

2020-05-19T12:57:00-04:00

The city within a city is a common architectural idea, but few times does one have an opportunity to experience this loose concept as a physical reality. Studio-MLA captures the essence of this dynamic interior urbanism, as it situates itself as a kind of indoor campus greenhouse. But, instead of districts and cities, there are conference rooms, workstations, plazas, and outdoor environments designed to enrich and enlighten the experience of its users. Color, light, and space delineate the the unique character of Studio-MLA, a character that radiates from the studio's eclectic leader and founder, Mia Lehrer.

For our latest Studio Visit, Archinect’s Paul Petrunia sat down with Mia Lehrer to talk about the city within a city that is Studio-MLA, its many uses, the workplace culture, and its special place as a community hotspot.

Architensions on Creating Architecture That “Exists Beyond the Logic of Capitalism”

2020-03-03T09:00:00-05:00

When Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro teamed up to lead Architensions, it was, as Alessandro describes, a “sort of a re-birth” for the architectural design studio. Since then, the Brooklyn- and Rome-based practice has been committed to exploring ideas that challenge “the paradigm of architecture as a financial tool” by putting human-driven design at the center of all their work.

In this Studio Snapshot, Alessandro and Nick thoughtfully reflect on their journey and what they've learned, from the ongoing process of evaluating their identity as a practice, to the importance of agency and social responsibility in the architectural field, to the thrill of getting to design an art installation for Coachella 2020.

Developing a Better City With UCLA's IDEAS Urban Strategy Studio

2020-02-27T14:30:00-05:00

How do we go about shaping a better city? How can land use and urbanism be explored to create solutions for pressing urban problems? Can multidisciplinary approaches to urban planning help create new ways of defining and shaping urban growth?

In Los Angeles, ubiquitous and challenging land development conditions have positioned the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design to unpack these topics and explore them like perhaps no other school of design can. An institution that focuses on collaborative research between its students and faculty, UCLA AUD strives to create learning environments fueled by experimentation and discovery. As a means to highlight the initiatives being focused on at the school, Archinect spoke with Associate Adjunct Professor, Jeffrey Inaba, and lecturers David Jimenez Iniesta and Gillian Shaffer of UCLA AUD's IDEAS Urban Strategy Studio. The studio is one of four research topics: Entertainment (studio previously covered...

EXTENTS on the Importance of Being Earnest, Contemporary Urbanism, and the Digital World

2019-08-21T12:00:00-04:00

How do you re-image a city? How would you re-tell this narrative? The Ann Arbor-based duo Cyrus Peñarroyo and McLain Clutter use their passions in digital media, urbanism, and visualization to help answer this very question. Heavily invested in reshaping and reworking architectural practice and academia, both are faculty at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and also, co-founders of EXTENTS, their architectural practice. Keen on finding new ways to "see the city," the duo creates digital and spatial practices for experiencing and understanding contemporary urbanism.

According to Peñarroyo and Clutter, "if we're able to see the city differently, maybe we can get other people to see it differently, too."

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect had a chance to connect with Peñarroyo and Clutter. Together, they share their goals for running a practice as well as the role academia plays in their work. They also share their values when co...

S/P #61: Husos Architects trace the role of remittances on migratory urbanisms

2017-08-03T12:00:00-04:00

Since the late 1990s, remittances, or money transfers made by international migrants to their countries of origin, have played an increasingly large role in both the local and national economies of the receiving countries. In some cases, like Nepal, remittances can make up a full third of a countries total GDP.

"I think of architecture as an act of writing in the city": Vishaan Chakrabarti discusses PAU's upcoming projects

2017-06-22T13:27:00-04:00

As the founder of PAU, Vishaan Chakrabarti is an architect and urban planner who considers every aspect of the city with foresight, but isn't as concerned with the culture of celebrity that has often dominated the profession. "Calling oneself a humanist over the last couple of decades was a real no-no," he explains via phone. "You're supposed to be a bad-boy, cape-wearing starchitect." He purposefully did not name the firm after himself in order to place emphasis on intelligent discussion, not hierarchy. Although he's excited about taking on more projects, he never wants PAU to grow beyond roughly 30 employees so that he will always know everyone in his office.

"The environment we design, designs us back:" A Conversation with Eran Chen of ODA

2017-02-16T12:53:00-05:00

Founded in 2007 by Eran Chen, ODA’s distinctive residential projects seem to ripple and blossom in the urban realm. From housing to libraries to mixed-use structures, ODA’s design philosophy is both socially inclusive and visually compelling. I spoke to Eran Chen about his ideal city, the challenges behind designing “permeable buildings,” and what he learned from his dealings with Donald Trump.

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.

Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects pumps up the volume with "Amplified Urbanism"

2017-01-24T13:15:00-05:00

According to Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects’ new monograph Amplified Urbanism, not only has Los Angeles arrived as a city with its own idiosyncratic urbanism, but that urbanism deserves bolder, louder expression through architecture.

Art + Architecture: The Los Angeles Nomadic Division Sets Up Camp

2015-03-13T10:13:00-04:00

"The easiest way to grasp what we do and to understand our mission is that we're a contemporary art museum without walls," explained Laura Hyatt, development director of the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), an LA-based organization dedicated to facilitating public art projects. After celebrating their fifth anniversary last year, LAND is settling into its role as a major force in redefining the relationship between contemporary art and its context.

AfterShock #3: Brains and the City

2014-07-24T10:30:00-04:00

Navel-gazing has become a data-driven sport. We are awash in technology that allows us to track our own activities, and then take responsibility for that scrutiny, holding us accountable for calories consumed or credit cards exhausted. The quantified-self movement can be a sandstorm of uselessness, or it can sublimate into constructive action. If we try to focus our navel-gaze to better understand ourselves, it seems imminent that such scrutiny will next focus on the brain.

Screen/Print #18: "New SubUrbanisms" by Judith K. De Jong

2014-06-09T10:16:00-04:00

The American suburbs no longer exist as physically and conceptually peripheral to the downtown, the central consciousness of urban development. According to Judith K. De Jong’s new book, New SubUrbanisms, the suburbs' mainstream designation as places of seclusion, domesticity, superficiality, and safety (set in comparison to their accompanying denser urban downtowns), has collapsed in the wake of a feedback loop between central city and suburbia.

Op-Ed: Response to Screen/Print #6, MONU's "Greater Urbanism"

2014-04-07T17:23:00-04:00

Greater urbanism, the focus of the latest issue of MONU magazine, is a term aiming to describe urban phenomena and strategies associated with cities expanding their territories (“greater” as bigger and more complex); and/or increasing their economic or symbolic power (“Greater” as grander). Revisiting the magazine’s rich content, profiled in Screen/Print #6, this review, by Petros Phokaides, Loukas Triantis and Iris Polyzos, aims to offer critical insights on some of the challenges faced by urbanism today, and a quick reflection on current dynamics/discussions on the future of cities.

CONTOURS: Urbanism, Housing, and the Economy

2012-02-13T15:32:00-05:00

Two issues that effect everyone, whatever social, economic, and professional strata they occupy, are population and urban growth. What’s more, ongoing shifts in population and urbanism across the world, especially in developing nations, have dramatically impacted the building industry. Housing and mixed-use projects in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America are rapidly increasing.