Archinect - Features

Investigating the Relationship Between Public Art and Public Space with LAA Office

2021-12-13T15:25:00-05:00

When public art is incorporated into a design space, how does it interact with its surrounding architecture and landscapes? For Lulu Loquidis and Daniel Luis Martinez, the importance of bridging the gap between public space, community-driven design, and the built environment is essential. The duo are co-principals of the multi-disciplinary design studio LAA Office based in Columbus, Indiana.

After living and working in New York City for several years, their move to the Midwest helped foster an eye-opening opportunity for creating positive design interventions. They explain: "Some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed relate to social, economic, and cultural inequities that privilege certain groups over others. Specifically, in our work, we're hoping to find ways of making art and design accessible to folks that can't normally afford it or who see themselves removed from the processes that shape the built environment around them."

To learn more about LAA Office's path to s...

B.Arch Graduate Jose Lacruz Vela Modernizes the Spanish Countryside

2020-08-24T13:40:00-04:00

IE School of Architecture and Design B.Arch graduate Jose Lacruz Vela designs a new, enriched landscape that focuses on dismantling the idea of "rural picturesque" views and focuses on creating interactive and performative architectural landscapes that respond to their inhabitants. Unearthing issues facing the rural countryside of Spain, specifically in the town of Docenario in Extremadura, Spain Lacruz, Lacruz Vela uses his thesis project Rural Alchemy to "transform the landscape into holistic artificial natures, from hyper-productivity to third natures."

Lacruz Vela shares, "The proposal aims to challenge depopulation, an issue affecting the Spanish countryside, by retaining and attracting talent through providing jobs of diverse educational levels, while generating a new local economic model." Archinect connected with the recent grad to dive into his thesis project and learn more about his experience entering the workforce after graduation. Lacruz Vela's project was awarded Best...

MIT M.Arch Graduate Angeline Jacques Designs a New Conceptual Framework for Glacier National Park

2020-08-13T12:40:00-04:00

Recent MIT M.Arch graduate Angeline Jacques focuses her thesis project, Mission 2066, on the state of National Parks, specifically Glacier National Park in Montana, and how our perceptions and interventions within these parks might change for the future.

According to Jacques, her thesis seeks to, "adapt and deploy a series of interventions that augment and artificialize melting glaciers. These interventions not only assist in easing the speed of change to ecologies and economies reliant on the glaciers but also provide new inhabitations of the park." Archinect connected with Jacques to discuss her thesis project as well as her experiences entering the workforce during a pandemic. As one of the lucky students able to secure a job post-graduation, she shares with us her experiences as a young designer learning how to start her professional career remotely.

Archinect's Spotlight on 2020 Thesis Projects: 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year for architecture graduates. Stud...

Tulane Graduate Jacob Smiley Creates "Symbiotic Design Strategies" for Redwood Conservation

2020-07-09T13:23:00-04:00

After exploring Northern California's iconic redwood forests and their history with unsustainable logging, land, and real estate development practices, graduate student Jacob Smiley has proposed Restorative Forestry, a new way for people and the built environment to interact with forests. According to Smiley, "The thesis presents itself as a case study within the Muir Woods National Monument, a federal preserve located just 10 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge [...] this thesis primarily focuses on the study of redwood as a structural material as well as the incorporation of biomimetics to closely mirror the ecological niche of the redwood and support the ecology, all of which to be packaged under formal guise of a tower."

Archinect was able to connect with Smiley, a recent Tulane University School of Architecture graduate, to learn more about the semester's transition from in-person to digital presentations and to hear his perspective on the job market for graduates in 2020.

Ar...

UCLA AUD Master of Architecture II Students Interrogate the Climate Risk of LA Real Estate

2020-06-23T09:00:00-04:00

Wenhan Dong, Linyi Zhang, and Xiyan Wang are students in UCLA Architecture and Urban Design's Master of Architecture II (M.Arch.II program). Archinect caught up with Dong, Zhang, and Wang to discuss their final project within the school's IDEAS - Urban Strategy program. Led by Associate Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Inaba, Gillian Shaffer, and David Jimenez Iniesta students unpack the city of Los Angeles and the effects climate change will have on land-use and development in the year 2050.

The research-based projects at UCLA's IDEA's campus, according to the educators, push students to not only conceptualize possible outcomes through data and prototyping but also foster solutions for possible futures in land use.

Archinect's Spotlight on 2020 Thesis Projects: 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year for architecture graduates. Students were displaced as schools shut down, academic communities had to adapt to a new virtual format, end-of-year celebrations were canceled or change...

Brillhart Architecture’s Eponymous House Pays Homage To Florida's Architectural Vernaculars with a Tropical Modern Flare

2020-03-19T18:52:00-04:00

The South Florida-based architecture practice Brillhart Architecture has cemented itself as the region's experts on Florida's local building traditions by highlighting its roots within the realm of Tropical Modernism. Within Florida's humid, rainy climate, Brillhart founders, Jacob and Mellisa Brillhart, emphasize the importance of incorporating the surrounding landscape into their buildings while also working to fine tune each space's ability to evoke emotional responses from its occupants.

One of the firm’s most recognizable and celebrated works is the duo's own private residence, the Brillhart House. When asked about the details and motivations behind the project, they explain, "The design for our house relies on a back-to-the-basics approach – specifically studying old architectural models that care about good form but are also good for something. Each design decision was organized around four central questions that challenge the culture for building big: what is necessary; how...

Miami's Urban Robot Associates on Creating Fun, Multidimensional Architecture

2020-03-10T13:28:00-04:00

Miami-based Urban Robot Associates strives to create memorable projects within the realms of landscape, hospitality, residential, and interior design. Led by Giancarlo Pietri, Sebastian Velez, Justine Velez, and JJ Wood, the firm's work showcases a mix of formal playfulness and meticulous, detail-oriented design.

Founded in 2009, Urban Robot Associates has since become one of Miami's powerhouse firms as the team pursues its stated goal of creating "something memorable that's also multidisciplinary in nature, while also referencing the context within which we design."

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect chats with JJ Wood and the rest of the team as they collectively share their experiences of running and growing an integrated, design-oriented architectural practice .

The Conflict Between Nature and Architecture: an Interview with Diana Agrest

2019-09-06T10:50:00-04:00

How should an architect situate their work against the natural environment? This has been a central question posed to those in the profession since its principles were first established in Vitruvius’ Ten Books of Architecture; The question has gained a unique urgency in the 21st century. Diana Agrest, a highly influential theorist and long-time professor at The Cooper Union school of architecture, is the latest to challenge common attitudes towards the built and natural environments by considering their interchangeability.

Agrest’s newest book, Architecture of Nature/Nature of Architecture, collects the student work of Agrest’s eponymous studio at The Cooper Union over the last eight years. Asked to represent geologic forces with the same attention to detail and use of tools they had otherwise ascribed to architecture, Agrest’s students have expanded the limits of architectural representation by including scales of time and space too vast to be comprehended in human lifetimes. I in...

#ArchinectMeets @shitgardens

2018-10-23T11:23:00-04:00

#ArchinectMeets is a series of interviews with members of the architecture community that use Instagram as a creative medium. With the series, we ask some of Instagram’s architectural photographers, producers and curators about their relationship to the social media platform and how it has affected their practice.

Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. While we use our own account, @Archinect, as a site for image curation and news content, we wanted to ask fellow Instagram users how they navigated the platform.

We spoke to the curators of @shitgardens, a curated selection of the worst landscaping the internet has to offer. A viable theory suggests that there is more to learn about humanity from the deplorable than the exemplary, either because it is in much greater numbers or it reveals basic human desires with less inhibition. As subscribers to this belief system, especially as it applies to our relationship ...

Branch Studio Creates a Stunning Residential Extension With Raw Charcoal-Rammed Earth, Timber, Steel and Glass

2017-08-31T00:20:00-04:00

“A Pavilion Between Trees” in Balnarring, Australia stands out nicely in its rural landscape without being overbearing. Designed by the aptly named Australian practice Branch Studio Architects, the 85 m2-building is a new, private residential extension comprising a bedroom, an ensuite, and incorporated ancillary spaces that allow its occupants to take a breather and slow down. The structure's quiet atmosphere reflects on idyllic, simpler times long before the days of our tech-driven lifestyles.

Getting to know London Landscape Architects Gustafson Porter + Bowman

2017-05-05T04:46:00-04:00

Gustafson Porter + Bowman are a landscape architecture firm based in Camden, London, with work ranging from conservation of significant sites to innovative re-thinking of urban brownfields.

The unbranded, hybrid approach of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape

2016-04-08T05:01:00-04:00

This past January, Suzanne Ewing became the head of Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Prior to the post (which is held on a rotating system among academics at the school), she served as a Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design and Theory. I paid a visit to the school to interview her and to find out more about her role, the academic connection between architecture and landscape, and her ambitions for the school's future.

Between Sampling and Dowsing: Field Notes from GRNASFCK

2015-04-30T13:10:00-04:00

In case the name didn’t tip you off, let it be said that GRNASFCK is not your average landscape architecture studio. Whether producing disjointed travelogues in Celebration, Florida or organizing rallies for extremophile bacteria in San Francisco, GRNASFCK operates almost like an industrial dredge, unsettling easy or comfortable ideas about the relationship between architecture and ecology, and covering impressive conceptual (and geographic) ground.

ShowCase: Fall House by Fougeron Architecture

2014-04-30T16:33:00-04:00

The California Coast is a dramatic fluctuation of cliffs, redwood trees and sand dunes, at once powerful and peaceful. California’s famous Pacific Coast Highway winds down the state, with alternating western views of ocean and forest, with little else visible from the narrow road. But draped over a precarious hillside on Big Sur’s south coast, Fougeron Architects’ Fall House is a frontier-cabin like no other, on the very edge of the country overlooking the Pacific.

ShowCase: Pocinho Rowing High Performance Center by Alvaro Andrade

2014-01-21T10:00:00-05:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.

We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message.

CONTOURS: Designing the Green Roof

2012-02-20T15:52:00-05:00

In Germany, approximately 12% of all buildings have green rooftops. Here in the U.S., the percentage is far less and in fact, that number is not even officially documented. But it is on the rise. Some more well-known examples include the California Academy of Sciences and the American Society of Landscape Architects' HQ. These are indeed admirable, but they are costly and difficult to replicate. Trying to persuade a client about the benefits of relatively inexpensive, passive, more sustainable building strategies is difficult enough and honestly a green roof is anything but.