Archinect - Features

Algorithms & Images. Architecture's History Archivist.

2018-09-15T09:00:00-04:00

The role of Archinect’s series Cross-Talk is to bring forward the positive aspects of the polemic and allow for the resulting conflict to bring to life an otherwise still and comfortable climate of creativity—if there can be one. Cross-Talk attempts—if to only say that it did—to allow text the freedom that the image has accepted and embraced. Cross-Talk attempts to force the no, to contradict itself, to anger, to please and then anger again, if only to force a stance, to pull out the position of the self, of the discipline and of the hour as a means to begin and maintain conversations moving forward.

In this installment we hear from Phoebe Webster & Jack Stewart Castner. Phoebe is a Los Angeles-based designer raised in Maryland and is a current Master of Architecture candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jack is a Los Angeles-based designer, raised in Philadelphia and holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Southern California, where he was awarded t...

Is the Rigidity of the Architectural Profession Constraining Innovation?

2018-08-16T09:00:00-04:00

When I started designing a door handle in my last practice, I was told not to bother. The firm had a standard door handle design that they used in all their projects. I soon discovered it was not just door handles that were standardized. Standards included elements such as materials and junctions between them, lighting concepts, entire layouts of bathrooms; everything from micro to macro had been standardized. It became apparent that my job was to mechanically arrange the standard details into a new arrangement, as if picking elements from a prefabricated home catalogue.

Remix and Reconfigure: the Radical Cut-Up Method of Lukas Feireiss

2017-05-17T12:12:00-04:00

For all the haranguing and hand-wringing about originality and novelty in the discipline, architecture is, at its core, a remix practice. Most elements in a building have existed for centuries, and the most celebrated “innovations” are usually iterations, fundamentally indebted to a concatenation of predecessors. That applies to structure, but also to form. In other words, there is a language of architecture and, like all languages, every utterance is assembled from a pre-existing vocabulary: at once a repetition and a unique assemblage. A peaked roof isn’t necessary in sunny California—but it still signifies ‘home’. For Lukas Feireiss, the logic of the remix—or, in his parlance, the “radical cut-up”—has suffused his work to the point that even his practice itself is something of a collage of disciplines, straddling the worlds of design, art, publishing, pedagogy, and curation.

Never Meant to Copy, Only to Surpass: Plagiarism Versus Innovation in Architectural Imitation

2017-04-13T12:15:00-04:00

Wangjing SOHO, a three tower complex in Beijing penned by Zaha Hadid, became a worldwide sensation when it was revealed that the scheme was being allegedly plagiarized by a construction team in Chongqing, southern China. Despite the subsequent outcry from the professional design world, Hadid responded that if the ‘copy-cat’ designs displayed innovative mutations, “that would be exciting”. While many architectural icons are commissioned precisely for their artistic originality, the design response is often non-site specific, which raises interesting questions when such icons are reproduced around the globe. What does it mean for architectural originality and innovation, when a ‘copy-paste’ strategy is normalized?