Archinect - News

Dutch architects share details of Corbusier-inspired tiny apartment in Rotterdam

2024-09-11T14:48:00-04:00

A 74-square-foot apartment design in Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second-largest city, has captured attention for its innovative use of space, as featured on Archinect.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

The Cabanon, as its architect-owners Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer prefer to call it, takes the 1951 vacation retreat Le Corbusier designed for himself in the Côte d'Azur as inspiration and includes a living room, sleeping pod, and tiny bathroom component with a small toilet, rain-shower, and spa.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

Each of these spaces comes color-coded, an effect that counteracts the apparent cramping quality of the space. A series of built-ins are another pivotal inclusion, affording them space to store items for their guests behind a tangerine-colored wall.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

Ramo and Upmeyer acquired the upper floor residual space in the upper portion of their post-war apartment building in 2013. Upmeyer is the founder of BOARD (Bureau of Architecture, Research ...

Antony Wood steps down as CTBUH President

2024-09-11T11:23:00-04:00

The Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the departure of President and former CEO Antony Wood after 20 years.

Wood, who led a tenfold increase in membership during his tenure, said he was lending to a "future generation of leaders" in stepping down. In a statement, colleague and the CTBUH’s current Chairman Shonn Mills said: "Antony has completely modernized the organization over nearly two decades, while growing it into the significant global presence it is today."

Architect Shigeru Ban named 2024 Praemium Imperiale laureate

2024-09-10T15:35:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban has been named the 35th Laureate of the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award. The 67-year-old architect, originally from Tokyo, follows in the footsteps of Francis Kéré as the latest recipient in the Architecture category, after an eventful two years that have seen multiple installations of his innovative emergency shelters through the Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN), along with completed projects for Tiffany & Co. and the Toyota City Museum, among other notable achievements. Ban's humanitarian work began in the 1990s, with notable efforts like his paper tube shelters in Rwanda and his involvement with disaster relief after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in Japan, which inspired him to establish VAN in 1995.

The Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park by Shigeru Ban. Photo: Satoshi Nagare.

Ban, who established his own namesake firm in Japan back in 1985, is highly regarded not only for his humanitarian efforts but also for key projects such as the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2010), ...

NCARB Workforce Readiness Report outlines key skills suggestions for entry-level architects

2024-09-09T15:59:00-04:00

The latest NCARB Workforce Readiness Report for 2024 has outlined a list of imperatives called key knowledge, skills, and abilities (or KSAs) for students of architecture to gain prior to their entering the professional ranks over the next few years.

Leaning on the input of thousands of current entry-level professionals, the survey outlined the following areas as being most critical to the success of young designers working in the architectural field:

Target: Technical Proficiency

Learn as much and as many BIM design programs (2D and 3D) as you can. Demonstrating proficiency in industry-standard design software can lead to many different opportunities as students move away from the relatively more creative confines of academic coursework and into offices that may require them to focus on a specific project component or unfamiliar typology.
Develop an ease at deciphering and assembling technical drawings, construction documents, etc. in addition to their correct applications in AEC....

Francis Kéré teams with LACMA to design the new Las Vegas Museum of Art

2024-09-06T11:00:00-04:00

Las Vegas and Francis Kéré may seem like an odd pairing, but that’s exactly where the rammed earth pioneer and 2022 Pritzker winner plans to deliver his first permanent American public building for the new Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) in direct partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Expectations are for the plan to begin construction in February 2027. The design yields a total of 90,000 square feet on a lot currently used for surface parking in Symphony Park near downtown Las Vegas. A Rendering appears to show the concept nodding to the desert vernacular in the mold of his other works and in line with the expected extreme heat challenges that will grip the city in coming years.

KTNV quoted a source as saying its design will quote Paul Revere Williams' nearby 1963 Guardian Angel Cathedral as one of its many influences and reported that the plan is to have the museum open by the end of 2028. Kéré says: "It is a tremendous honor, and a highlight of my profes...

Erin Cuevas is the Syracuse University 2024-25 Harry der Boghosian Fellow

2024-09-03T15:49:00-04:00

The Syracuse University School of Architecture will host Erin Cuevas as the 2024-25 Harry der Boghosian Fellow. Cuevas, who follows Christina Chi Zhang as the ninth fellow in the program history, will have the opportunity to teach a studio and two professional electives this year with a focus on mixed media design and her research project ‘Redefining Performance.’

Cuevas says: "The Boghosian Fellowship is an opportunity for me to expand the traditional architectural discipline through a unique and highly personal concert of elements — dance, architecture, storytelling and creative technology."

A participatory public performance will culminate her research, engaging the whole Syracuse community in an act of what she calls 'collective scenography.' Prior to joining the faculty in Syracuse, Cuevas worked as a director of global retail story design at Nike after teaching at the USC School of Architecture from 2017 to 2022.

Our Get Lectured roundup of the school's Fall public lectures se...

HKS architect Meggie Meidlinger stars for USA women's baseball team

2024-08-30T08:30:00-04:00

[Meggie] Meidlinger has racked up accolades on the pitching mound, including a gold medal as a closer for Team USA. While women’s baseball isn’t a sport in the Olympic Games, she and her teammates added a silver medal to that collection Aug. 3 at the Women’s Baseball World Cup. When she’s not on the field, the 36-year-old helps design sports facilities as a project architect with Atlanta-based HKS.

The Virginia Tech graduate Meidlinger hasn't given up an earned run in two years as the closer for Team USA. Number 13 in your program and Number One in the hearts of her fellow HKS Atlanta office staffers says she wants to be a role model for girls participating in youth sports and the architectural profession. She and her baseball teammates also travel regularly to Uganda to promote the sport to women there as ambassadors.

Message In a Bottle In Sainsbury

2024-08-29T21:36:00-04:00

The false columns in the foyer were part of the intended spatial sequence, conceived as a procession from shadow to light, inspired by the entry to an ancient church. Visitors would enter this crypt-like lower level, proceed up a grand staircase, and arrive in the airy galleries above.

Call it a reactionary's revenge if you want, but "a message in a bottle" was found inside one of the Sainsbury Wing's pilasters during the demolishment activity. It is said to have been written as a time capsule by one of the major donors of the Museum, Lord John Sainsbury.

While the message's author goes as far as to say, “I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect (VSBA) and that we would live to regret our accepting this detail of his design. Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns.”

The Guardian's architecture critic Oliver Wainwright has the last piercing words for the client and their architect doing away with the old design; "More than 30 years later, Sainsbury’s view is shared by the National Gallery’s current administration. Director Gabriele Finaldi has said it is the “heavy grey architecture” and “forest” of thick pillars on the ground floo...

Experienced architect and curator Beth Stryker joins LA's MAK Center as new Director

2024-08-28T18:19:00-04:00

Architect and curator Beth Stryker has been appointed Director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. The Utensil Art + Design Studio co-founder has extensive experience in arts administration, including a recent five-year tenure as the Executive and Artistic Director of a nonprofit ArteEast and other nonprofit LA spaces.

Stryker's C.V. also boasts past experience working with the arts community of Cairo, Egypt, and other creative arts professionals in the SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) region.

Lilli Hollein, the General Director of the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna said: “With her wide-ranging expertise in architecture and art, her cross-genre, cross-cultural approach, and her many years of experience in interdisciplinary discourse, Beth Stryker is the ideal person to further the MAK Center’s avant-garde program and the internationally renowned MAK Center Artists and Architects-in-Residence Scholarship Program.”⁠

...

Foster + Partners chairs Trailblazer Group, the UK's first model maker apprenticeship program

2024-08-22T11:58:00-04:00

A brand new apprenticeship opportunity will grant aspiring workers in the UK's architecture industry the chance to learn professional model-making skills in an initiative chaired by Foster + Partners in collaboration with a group of other British universities and design firms. The three-year Trailblazer Group program is officially a Level 6 qualification (equivalent to a bachelor's degree).

Apprentices will earn a salary and other benefits while they learn. As the firm's announcement notes, this is meant to spur greater diversity in the profession. It coincides with the movement to reform pathways into architecture that has recently been taken up by RIBA and factored extensively in the body of fundamental overhauls proposed by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) last year.

NCARB signs new reciprocal agreement with counterparts in New Zealand and Australia

2024-08-22T10:41:00-04:00

This week, the National Council of Architectural Registration Board (NCARB) signed a new Mutual Recognition Agreement with their counterparts at the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA) and New Zealand Registered Architects Board (NZRAB). The agreement expands on an existing one that’s been on the books since 2016, eliminating a requirement for 6,000 hours of post-licensure/registration experience while accepting the qualifications of architects who obtained a license through alternative pathways.

“We know Australian architects are sought after around the world for their high level of skill and creativity. This new agreement provides a wonderful opportunity for architects of all levels of experience to work overseas faster,” AACA President Dr. Giorgio Marfella said.

More on the important issue of architectural licensure can be explored in our ongoing Archinect In-Depth: Licensure series, including a detailed look at another reciprocal agreement between NCARB and th...

Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s

2024-08-16T16:13:00-04:00

The story of modern architecture in St. Louis is complex and often contradictory.

Beginning in the 1930s, internationally known architects such as Eric Mendelsohn, Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki — alongside important regional and national figures like Harris Armstrong, Charles Fleming, Joseph Murphy and Gyo Obata — created iconic structures that embodied new ideas about form and, in many cases, democratic social organization. Yet the period also was marked by racial segregation and by large-scale demolitions throughout the urban core.

This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s.” With nearly 300 architectural drawings, models, photographs, films, digital maps and artworks, “Design Agendas” is the first major exhibition to examine how interlocking civic, cultural and racial histories, as well as conflicting ideological aims, reshaped the city.

“I lived in Pruitt-Ig...

Bernheimer Architecture union member notes the need for industry-wide change

2024-08-12T18:17:00-04:00

While the numbers are relatively small, these victories represent a massive shift in how designers see themselves: We went from being a privileged set of artisans to workers seeking solidarity with other workers in all industries. Learning from the workers and organizers who have put in the hard work before us, designers need to continue to take advantage of the current climate and organize more workplaces.

Chris Beck is an architect and member of the newly formed BA Union at New York-based Bernheimer Architecture, which recently ratified a collective bargaining agreement as the industry’s first union at a private-sector U.S. architecture firm.

Writing for The Progressive Magazine, he says their mission would be considered a failure if not moved successfully from their office and into others across the industry. As other attempts have failed controversially, Beck claims architects’ influence within the building industry has eroded and that "technology is completely dominant, strangling out the artistic skills fostered in the studio environment." Those criticisms echo many brought up in our coverage of Architectural Workers United and other labor groups.

The terms of the BA Union’s ratified contract have yet to be publicized, though they will undoubtedly serve as a primer for the ten or more union efforts thought to be underway currently as architectural workers take note. Less than 1...

Kate Wagner: Rescinding progress means architects must become the agents of change

2024-08-12T12:23:00-04:00

Organizing at the community level and putting pressure on politicians can go a long way, but it’s not enough. Architects have to start seeing themselves as political actors with high stakes in the same way communities and unions do. Architects are workers and they depend on work. The fight for climate justice, resiliency, and workers’ and tenants’ rights are only going to get harder in an era of political decay, cronyism, and systemic crisis.

The fight over congestion pricing and residential building retrofits in New York City are just a couple of the many flashpoints architects should involve themselves in heavily in order to better advocate for the profession, critic Kate Wagner writes. Rightly, she states, “The field’s most meaningful efforts to combat climate change are actually quite mundane.” Progress on a number of fronts, including the decarbonization of the building sector, is being either stalled or eroded at the hands of real estate and other interests. Now professionals face the choice of further subjecting their labor or pushing back via activism or other means.

$600,000 Mellon grant will help public programs for the Paul Revere Williams Architecture Archive at USC

2024-08-07T12:27:00-04:00

A $600,000 Humanities in Place grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will help bolster Paul Revere Williams’ archive at his alma mater, the University of Southern California. The trove of important documents that had for a long time mired unattended in storage in Los Angeles was since recovered thanks to the efforts of USC faculty members (incl. former School of Architecture Dean Milton S.F. Curry) and Williams’ granddaughter.

Curry will join fellow USC faculty Valéry Augustin and Amy L. Murphy in leading the administration of the public-facing grant. Activities to be funded reportedly include future exhibitions at the USC Fisher Museum, two faculty research fellowships, a biennial publication, an annual memorial lecture series, a symposium, and other community events.

Now housed at the Getty Center, the archive, which was jointly acquired by USC and the Getty Research Institute in 2020, includes: "Over 37,000 plans, including 10,000 drawings, blueprints, project diazo types, ...

Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford tapped to design new Bronzeville Center for the Arts in Milwaukee

2024-08-06T12:45:00-04:00

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford will design the city’s new Bronzeville Center for the Arts for 2028. The 50,000-square-foot, $54.9 million project is set to take shape at a 3.4-acre former state Department of Natural Resources office with design and technical support from HGA.

The project, which follows Ford and BrandNu Design Studio's work on the new Hip Hop Museum in the South Bronx, New York, is meant to serve as the first home for the BCA after its formation in 2020. The firm's founder says the scope of his design will "both represent the rich history of the neighborhood and forecast its future."

Editor's Picks #561

2024-08-05T19:55:00-04:00

Following its over-quarter-century run, Rene Peralta bid A Bittersweet Farewell to Woodbury University School of Architecture in San Diego. Janosh echoed his sentiments "Woodbury's SD campus represented an unusually thoughtful and conscientious moment in Architectural education".

Plus, Niall Patrick Walsh argued a "new DOE definition of a ‘zero emissions building’ is not only devoid of regulatory power; it is also a weak definition."

News

The Oklahoma City Council approved a request for unlimited building height by the development team behind the proposed 1,907-foot-tall Legends Tower. monosierra is a skeptic: "still think the ultimate plan is to just build the low to medium rise podium buildings and leave it at that. But to get financing...the developer decided to hype up the project...for maximum PR. The trick to getting financing is to convince skeptical FOMO investors".

‘Nectors reacted to the "Allegations of executive misconduct on the part of American Institute of Architects (...

Assessing an unequal Accra in the wake of David Adjaye's recent controversies

2024-08-05T17:53:00-04:00

The firm’s website still tags the National Cathedral, the Du Bois Museum Complex and others as ‘current’ projects, in contrast to on-the-ground reality. In the midst of a lack of transparency, and accountability, what remains clear is the mistake we make when we expect global celebrities who have cut their teeth in the transactional corridors of the corporate world to switch to an opposite ethic in the name of local solidarity or values.

Adjaye had faced criticism from numerous political figures in Ghana over alleged favoritism and high-profile public commissions even before being swept up by the sexual misconduct allegations that shocked the architecture world last summer. Now, writer Anakwa Dwamena reports that his visions for an increasingly unequal Accra have gone largely unrealized, leaving behind 17-acre “eyesores” in place of the controversial Ghana National Cathedral project and looming threats to two important heritage sites imposed by his Marine Drive redevelopment vision — both of which have yet to be built.

Annabelle Selldorf in Vogue: 'I aim to do no more than what needs to be done, but no less either'

2024-08-05T15:24:00-04:00

Until I worked with Ian Wardropper at the Frick, I don’t think I made it clear to myself that I’m a practical person. I’m a visual person. I think about how things go together. I have very strong opinions about what is beautiful, but at some point I realized it’s about something bigger than that. Architecture is such a real profession, and we can imbue it with all kinds of theoretical thinking, but it’s pretty basic when you’re working in the public realm.

Annabelle Selldorf is working remotely from her summer home in Maine these days, she tells Vogue. Among the projects covered are her debated Sainsbury Wing redesign (“Many years down the road, this will be remembered as a Venturi, Scott Brown building and not as a Selldorf building [...].”) and the completed residential component of the One Domino Square redevelopment on the Williamsburg waterfront. The new Frick Collection expansion gets even more of the quotes, centering on the highlight 220-seat Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium before its anticipated debut towards the end of this year.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for an open Fall 2024 Architectural Intern position in its New York office.

Lydia Kallipoliti named Columbia GSAPP's new Advanced Architectural Design program director

2024-07-29T19:49:00-04:00

Columbia GSAPP has appointed architect, engineer, and academic Lydia Kallipoliti as the new director of its Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design program. She joins the Morningside Heights campus from the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, where she has been working as an Associate Professor and Senior Associate at the Institute for Sustainable Design.

Kallipoliti, a noted ecological design expert known for her distinctive “immersive scholarship” approach, will also teach students as a tenured Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation beginning in the Fall of 2024. She recently served as Head Co-Curator (with Areti Markopoulou) of the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale and taught previously at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Syracuse University, the University of Technology Sydney, and her alma mater Princeton in addition to leading the New York-based ANAcycle design+writing studio.

The GSA's emerging building technologies chief talks about the advent of its Green Proving Ground program

2024-07-29T15:28:00-04:00

During two decades with GSA, [Kevin] Powell has had a front seat view of how technologies in facilities have evolved over the years. As electrification and decarbonization efforts continue to emerge for buildings, Powell remains excited about seeing the future of buildings unfolding.

The architect behind the U.S. General Services Administration’s Green Proving Ground program is Berkeley CED graduate Kevin Powell, who spoke recently with FacilitiesNet about emerging technologies and decarbonization efforts in the building sector. As the manager of the country’s largest portfolio of buildings (the GSA has some 8,400 nationwide), Powell is in a unique position. He says his office has proven 30 new products, touting the program as a "once-in-your-career moment" that will augur positive trajectories for building standards for the next generation.

"The program really helps a lot of the industry innovators bridge what folks call the Technology Valley of Death because we’re really taking that first user risk," Powell told the outlet. "We’re the first buyer, and then we’re validating that it works, and that helps both us and the commercial real estate industry. The facility community can have confidence in what to invest in, and that’s what it’s all about."

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Ellen van Loon departs OMA after 26 years

2024-07-26T19:10:00-04:00

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) announced the retirement of Partner Ellen van Loon from the firm after 26 years.

The announcement says: “Ellen has indicated that she wishes to enter a new phase in her life in which she will have more time to herself. It goes without saying that we deeply regret her decision. Ellen has been a trusted colleague and powerful force within our firm for decades. She also is, and will remain, a dear friend to all of us.”

Van Loon, who was born in the Netherlands and educated at TU Delft, joined the firm in 1998 after working at Foster + Partners. OMA is approaching its 50th year in 2025. Partners Shohei Shigematsu, Jason Long, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, David Gianotten, and Reinier de Graaf remain in charge along with founder Rem Koolhaas, who turns 80 in November.

Bernheimer Architecture union ratifies collective bargaining agreement, the industry's first

2024-07-26T14:01:00-04:00

The historic effort by staff at Bernheimer Architecture to form the industry’s first union at a private-sector U.S. architecture firm is now complete after their ratification of a collective bargaining agreement in the firm's New York office this week. The vote on Thursday was unanimous. Founder and 2023 AIA NY Medal of Honor recipient Andy Bernheimer is said to have worked openly with organizers to meet a mutual understanding on the contract, whose finalized terms are still forthcoming.

The process began in the summer of 2022 following the failed effort of workers at SHoP to form their own union, an episode that vaulted the conditions of architectural labor into the broader national media spotlight. The BA Union, as it is so-named, is part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), which has over 646,000 active members in the United States and Canada.

Groups such as Architectural Workers United are hailing its formal establishment as a major vic...

Learning from the last of Louis Kahn’s important sketchbooks

2024-07-13T10:00:00-04:00

The architect who designed some of the 20th century’s great buildings kept a notebook with intimate glimpses into his creative vision. Now it’s his daughter’s final goodbye. [...] We’re reminded of the nuts and bolts of architecture — how legends, too, are susceptible to so-called value engineering.

Sketches for posthumously completed projects for the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park in New York City are included in the recreated facsimile, which Kahn’s daughter Sue Ann put together for the 50th anniversary of his death with help from Swiss publisher Lars Müller.

The result, Sam Lubell writes for the Times, is a "remarkable creation." (It's important to note that these are separate from the Kickstarter-funded push for another facsimile copy of earlier sketchbooks from Designers & Books.)

Conservation work on the YCBA, meanwhile, is expected to wrap up later this year.

The architect of New York’s ‘loft movement’ has some lessons for would-be conversion architects today

2024-07-08T18:53:00-04:00

Today, the ideas Mr. Lombardi pioneered nearly 50 years ago are serving as a template for addressing twin problems: the city’s enormous office glut and its growing housing crisis. Mr. Lombardi, now 84 and still running a 16-person firm, is part of a wave of architects and developers now undertaking the mammoth work of converting financially distressed office buildings into multifamily housing.

A lengthy Times profile on the legendary New York conversion architect Joseph Pell Lombardi traces his early career efforts in SoHo and the Financial District to the contemporary challenges posed by office buildings and the impetus to remake them into housing in spite of the difficult parameters and feasibility of such designs.

One tenant of his crowning late-70s Liberty Tower conversion said: “He painted a picture of the neighborhood as a residential mecca, which no one else could see at the time.” Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Tang Architects adds: “His foresight inspired a lot of architects. He showed what was possible.”

At least 64 building owners have 'expressed interest' in the city's new Office Conversion Accelerator since the program was launched last summer. According to a RentCafe data analysis, 5,215 units are currently in the city's project pipeline after the local market experienced an 18% growth from the preceding calendar year.

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa professor Cathi Ho Schar named 2024–2025 ACSA President

2024-07-08T18:09:00-04:00

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has announced University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture associate professor Cathi Ho Schar as its incoming president for 2024–2025.

Ho Schar is also the inaugural director of the eight-year-old University of Hawaiʻi Community Design Center (UHCDC), where she has gained valuable experience working with legislators, state agency directors, and faculty principal investigators to establish partnerships with over 30 public and non-profit organizations while generating $8 million in community-engaged research.

Those efforts were instrumental in helping the UHCDC win the 2020 AIA/ACSA Practice and Leadership Award. Ho Schar says: "As an island-based educator and practitioner, I am shaped by Hawaiʻi’s Indigenous, immigrant, and multicultural community and aligned with ACSA’s commitments to equity and inclusion."

Chris Williamson elected as RIBA President

2024-07-02T13:39:00-04:00

Chris Williamson has been elected as the next RIBA President. The co-founder of London-based practice Weston Williamson + Partners prevailed over fellow presidential candidates Funmbi Adeagbo and Duncan Baker-Brown.

From a total of 4,462 votes from RIBA members, Williamson received 1,760 votes in the first round of the election, while Baker-Brown secured 1,502 and Adeagbo 1,200 votes. With Adeagbo eliminated and her votes redistributed in the second round, Williamson edged out a small advantage with 2,008 votes over Baker-Brown, who gathered 1,898 votes.

When asked about his top three priorities by The RIBA Journal during the election campaign, Williamson outlined: "Communications: Our members represent many of the world’s best architects. Increase influence, positioning the profession’s knowledge centre stage; Advocacy: Better support for all practices -helping all Members in their businesses; Education: Make the letters R I B A mean something: provide a real competitive advantage ...

Shigeru Ban on design, ethics, and constraints

2024-07-02T12:03:00-04:00

Q: Is there a design ethic? A: I just hate wasting material, time, and energy. When I started developing structures with humble, recycled, reusable material in the middle of the ’80s, no one—including myself—was considering any ecological and environmental problems. I just do not waste anything.

The Eames Institute's Kazam! Magazine in conversation with Shigeru Ban.

Architects would do well to apply lessons from philosophy in the age of AI, says Nayef Al-Rodhan

2024-07-01T17:39:00-04:00

New AI architecture tools will, in the short term, make good design affordable and accessible. But AI will still fall short when it comes to understanding human nature as well our emotional and dignity needs. Dignity means much more than just the absence of humiliation. It also requires recognition, manifested through nine critical human needs: reason, security, human rights, accountability, transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation, and inclusiveness.

"Looking to the future, tomorrow’s architects will need to be equipped with transdisciplinary tools such as Neuro-Techno-Philosophy, a framework I have introduced to understand the AI-neuroscience-philosophy nexus underpinning our society today," Oxford University's Nayef Al-Rodhan argues in a new treatise on the uses of academic philosophy in today's AI-driven design field. "Doing so will help ensure that the buildings of the future are in tune with our neurobiological predilections, neurobehavioral needs, aspirations and values for collective peace and prosperity."

Architecture is at a critical juncture as disruptive technology is remaking the industry wholesale. A litany of issues (housing justice, etc.) worldwide nonetheless commands its attention. As Foucault famously said in the 1970s, society "must be defended."

David Chipperfield on Fundación RIA and regional planning efforts in northern Spain

2024-06-27T19:54:00-04:00

A strength of Galicia, Chipperfield believes, is the extent to which technocratic versions of modernity have passed it by. “When we were growing up, we sort of knew what progress was. It was silver and shiny. Now we’re not so sure."

In a new interview with Rowan Moore, last year’s Pritzker winner David Chipperfield details his work in Galicia, Spain. In this seaside locale, he says, he’s found a restored sense of "normality" after relocating his life and family there for the summertime beginning in 2020. From there, he established his Fundación RIA, a "little research group" that has been instrumental in helping guide a territorial plan with aims that can be applied to many core issues (a lack of transportation options, livelihood in city centers, and disused structures) plaguing other small cities in the EU and North America.