Archinect - Features

Navigating Memes, Selfies and the Post-Digital Landscape with Mackenzie Muhonen

2019-01-24T10:29:00-05:00

Thesis Review is a collection of conversations, statements and inquiries into the current state of thesis in academia. Thesis projects give a glimpse into the current state of the academic arena while painting a picture for the future of practice.

Each feature will present a contemporary thesis project through the voice of those that constructed it. This week, we talk to Mackenzie Muhonen about her thesis, Low Fidelity, recently presented at MIT in the Master of Architecture program.

#ArchinectMeets @shesthearchitect

2019-01-11T13:40:00-05:00

#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 Sophie Chanson, the curator of @shesthearchitect. Put simply, the Instagram page celebrates the works and lives of women architects with exemplary photographs of their finest work. After realizing how difficult it was to name female architects off the top of her head, Chanson began to check the margins of architecture history to pull out rarely-seen treasures.

Extra Extra: #PleaseLoveTheseThings

2019-01-02T09:00:00-05:00

Extra Extra won’t focus on memes but try to illustrate problems through them. To that end, the looser conditions of a column allow for visible cracks in my positions. Unanswered questions are welcomed. Criticisms formed on a mimetic hunch can be built up. Nothing here is too polished, neither is it expected to be.

As architecture culture breaks into architecture cultures, let's explore the fissures. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a constituency.

#ArchinectMeets @hannespeer

2018-12-28T12:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Hannes Peer, the photographer, architect and curator behind @hannespeer. With an eye for "imperfections, nostalgic utopia, and future archeology," Peer captures architectural oddities of the 20th century with aplomb.

#ArchinectMeets @decorhardcore

2018-12-21T10:58:00-05:00

We spoke to Ksenia Shestakovskaia about their Instagram, @decorhardcore. Decoration may be a field associated with elegance and restraint, but the world exposed by @decorhardcore is one of extravagance and indulgence. It is a world that can yield either restraint or transgression, but at its most extreme, in the words of of Shestakovskaia, "Hardcore is not for everybody."

#ArchinectMeets @mmmosarchitects

2018-12-18T12:00:00-05:00

We spoke to MOS Architects about their Instagram, @mmmosarchitects. For the New York firm, Instagram is less a tool for self-promotion than a way of killing time in between important moments. Their Instagram, to put it simply, allows them to reveal glimpses into their lives, both in the office and outside of it, as earnestly as an architecture firm can.

#ArchinectMeets @spomenikdatabase

2018-12-14T13:31:00-05:00

We spoke to Donald Niebyl, the administrator of @spomenikdatabase. After researching and subsequently traveling to and documenting the significant majority of former Yugoslavia's spomeniks, those extra-large monuments to bygone wars, Niebyl shared his findings in a book and through social media (the Spomenik Monument Database book is also available in our online shop).

#ArchinectMeets @lucborho

2018-12-11T12:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Luc Borho (@lucborho), a photographer and art director. Borho has added an ethereal spin to the badlands of SpaceX and the brutalism of his native Paris through his carefully lit photography. His work shows the lives buildings make possible after their construction, in ways their architects or planners might not have imagined.

#ArchinectMeets @nemestudio

2018-12-07T10:25:00-05:00

We spoke to Neyran Turan, an architect and partner at Nemestudio. Through their instagram page, @nemestudio, they get to explore their chosen themes of accumulation and digital waste taken up in their studio through a platform born of those traits.

Screen/Print #68: Phillip Denny Contemplates the Information Overload of Instagram

2018-12-06T15:31:00-05:00

The newest issue of PLAT Journal, "7.0: Sharing," concerns the nature of contemporary sharing that proceeds today with fervor, given the prevalence of social media and screen technologies.

#ArchinectMeets @modarchitecture

2018-12-04T12:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Darren Bradley, the photographer behind @modarchitecture. Bradley began his career as a history major and soon developed a following for his clear and stunning photographs of modern architecture from around the world. When he began collaborating with Sam Lubell in the production and photography of Phaidon's Mid-Century Modern Architecture Travel Guides: East Coast USA and West Coast USA, Bra...

#ArchinectMeets @manvisual

2018-11-30T08:30:00-05:00

We spoke to Jonathan Wilson, the photographer behind @manvisual. Wilson zooms into the architectural details and juxtapositions of London to reveal light and material sensations far too easily missed by first glance.

#ArchinectMeets @zhestkov

2018-11-27T11:59:00-05:00

We spoke to Maxim Zhestkov, the media artist and director behind @zhestkov. Trained in architecture and digital technology, Zhestkov launched a studio/workshop where he with his friends and colleagues developing new forms of moving images and producing motion content for brands and companies all over the world. His videos exist on Instagram to bridge the divide between architecture and the latest in dig...

#ArchinectMeets @chatelp

2018-11-20T12:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Pierre Chatel, the photographer behind @chatelp. A computer scientist by trade, Chatel recently took up architectural photography full time. His work can best be described as 'cool abstraction' thanks to a rare abilities to both discover rare moments in well-known buildings throughout Europe as well as to find the beauty in objects as mundane as storage containers.

#ArchinectMeets @phdonohue

2018-11-16T09:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Phil Donahue, the photographer behind @phdonohue. Donohugh is based in Los Angeles, a city made up of quick structures with short life spans. His task as a photographer has been to capture the city's most timely and ephemeral designs before they vanish in the sands of time. 1980s fast food chains and strip malls have been of particular interest to the photographer, as they might reflect at o...

#ArchinectMeets @town.and.concrete

2018-11-13T09:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Cyril Lancelin, the artist behind @town.and.concrete. Though his work is designed to be experienced in person, it has far more than a full life on Instagram. In fact, Instagram was in part the inspiration for his career as an installation artist. The work and its imagery are equally dreamy; they reflect the demands of the current generation of Instagram models and all-around selfie enthusias...

#ArchinectMeets @krisprovoost

2018-11-09T10:00:00-05:00

We spoke to Kris Provoost, the photographer behind @krisprovoost. As a Belgian based in China, Provoost demonstrates an undying passion for his new home base as he uniquely documents it for his social media. And his background as an architect undoubtedly aided in his ability to photograph buildings as their designers might have envisioned (or wished they had).

#ArchinectMeets @newagecocaine

2018-11-02T11:00:00-04:00

We spoke to Kate Sennert, curator of @newagecocaine. The photographs she finds across her path are from that magical era roughly between 1975 and 1985, which some have described as the 'late-modernist' period. Some of the modernist tenants stayed intact in this era, such as those of expediency and experimentation with new materials, while others had been gleefully rejected, such as modesty and the sacre...

#ArchinectMeets @l_o00o_l

2018-10-30T13:56:00-04:00

Social media has undeniably affected the way we perceive, interpret and share opinions about architecture today. Using 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 as well as their thoughts on social media's impact on architecture.

We spoke with @l_o00o_l, a photographer based in Munich. Given their anonymity, a biographical introduction is hardly in order. Rather, what should be emphasized is their ability to capture the surreal, the disjunctive and the unsettling in the built environment so as to stand out among the typically florescent images in one's Instagram feed.

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#ArchinectMeets @archiveofaffinities

2018-09-13T10:29:00-04:00

We begin the series with Andrew Kovacs (@archiveofaffinities), a professor of architecture at UCLA and owner of the blog Archive of Affinities. Kovacs has treated this blog - divided between Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr - as his own personal strategy for "making architecture from architecture" against a field of notoriously uncompromising budgets, clients and deadlines. History often lays bare architecture t...