Archinect - News

Van Alen auctioning a hot-tub roundtable, helicopter rides, birdwatching with famous architects for spring fundraiser

2015-05-11T09:40:00-04:00

The Van Alen Institute and online auction platform Paddle8 recently opened up their 2015 Auction of Art + Design Experiences that lets eager (and wealthy) bidders opt for basically hanging out with some of today's famous architects and designers.

This year's auction boasts an international list of activities with 24 leading creatives, like sitting in a hot-tub roundtable with Charles Renfro in his beach house, biking through downtown L.A. with Michael Maltzan on his daily route, birdwatching with Jeanne Gang, flying in a helicopter with Norman Foster over the River Thames, and testing the smoke ring generator at Copenhagen's waste-to-energy power plant with Bjarke Ingels and BIG partner Jakob Lange.

After bidding closes on May 20, proceeds will support Van Alen's ongoing cross-disciplinary research, public programs, and design competitions. Additionally, Van Alen will host their annual Spring Party on May 13 at The Surrogate's Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

Check out the...

Challenging the space-age Manifest Destiny narrative, as Elon Musk vies to move humans to Mars

2015-05-08T12:26:00-04:00

It’s a myth almost universally believed, that sits at the core of liberal technocratic thought, and has been embedded in practically every other work of speculative fiction for the last half century. You can sum it up like this: 'When we go into space, we will all magically become nice.'...It’s early days, but if we really want to create a progressive new world then issues like these should be at the hearts of our efforts from the very start.

The longtime space-age Manifest Destiny of humans inhabiting Mars and the prominently white, European male perspective that narrative perpetually emphasizes has become a bubbling multi-faceted discussion among science bloggers as Elon Musk's staunch ambitions to ultimately turn humans into a "multiplanet species" continue to develop. Stemming from that discussion, writer Martin Robbins of The Guardian contemplates whether or not humanity's eventual future on Mars can exist without the earthly issues of sexism and racism.

Festivities ensue at the Beaux Arts Ball 2014: Craft in New York

2014-09-25T17:35:00-04:00

The Architectural League of New York hosted another successful Beaux Arts Ball this year at Weylin B. Seymour's in Williamsburg, New York this past Saturday night. In spirit of the ball's 2014 theme "Craft", eight architects and designers collaborated with Nuit Blanche New York in creating digital art projections inspired by the gorgeous interior motifs and details of the historic Weylin B. Seymour's building.

Digitally carved onto the arches of the venue's central domed hall, the installation helped create a festive environment as hundreds of well-dressed guests enjoyed drinks and desserts, and danced the night away with music by pazel. It was a fancy occasion indeed.

Want more insight to the Weylin B. Seymour's building? Check out the ArchLeague's feature on the building's restoration.

Check out photos from the ball and the Benefactors Dinner below.

The Arch League announces 2014 Beaux Arts Ball: Craft, co-chaired by Tod Williams & Billie Tsien

2014-09-04T15:53:00-04:00

The time has come for The Architectural League of New York's annual Beaux Arts Ball, taking place at Weylin B. Seymour's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Saturday, September 20. The 2014 theme, "Craft", celebrates the value of artisanship in architecture and multi-disciplinary collaboration in creating architecture. This year's co-chairs include Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

Drawing inspiration from the recent interior renovations of Weylin B. Seymour's — an 1875 George B. Post and Peter B.Wight-designed former Williamsburgh Savings Bank — nine architects and designers will work with Nuit Blanche New York to create digital projection interpretations that will highlight the "craft" of the building's interior design.

More event details from The Architectural League:

"[Weylin B. Seymour's ] exuberant interior decorations of tiling and mosaics, patterned wallpapers, frescoed domes, carved wood and stone, and bronze and gilt work, recently magnificently restored, will serve as inspiration for ...

A preview of the VIS-Á-VIS performance series at Materials & Applications in Los Angeles

2014-08-06T15:07:00-04:00

Materials & Applications in Los Angeles has some fun social Saturday night events lined up for the entire month of August! The four-part VIS-Á-VIS performance series will include dance, music, a video and sound installations, and a film screening.

Starting August 9, all events will take place in the Materials & Applications space at the La Cage aux Folles, a 346-piece metal pipe temporary playground installation designed by Warren Techentin Architecture.

August 9: LA Fort Presents: Daedelus (DJ set), Lawrence Lindell, Matt McGuire and Will Walden (StaG) - experimental + electronic music performance

August 16: Tracy Abbott Szatan / IN/VISIBLE - video installation and performance

August 23: bel-air / New York Memo - sound recording installation

AND Ear Cleaning Workshop with Greg Ruben, based on the teaching methodology by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (spaces limited)

August 30: Eugene Kotlyarenko presents: "Nobody Wants to Play With Me" (Werner Herzog)+rare feature film - a film screening curated by L.A. filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko.

Head over to Bustler to learn more about each event.

Unfolding southamerican utopias: the Clip/Stamp/Fold in Santiago.

2013-06-25T14:35:00-04:00

Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X – 197X takes stock of seventy little magazines from this period, which were published in over a dozen cities. Coined in the early twentieth century to designate progressive literary journals, the term “little magazine” was remobilized during the 1960s to grapple with the contemporary proliferation of independent architectural periodicals.

This month the boundary has been finally crossed. It is because the exhibition and ongoing research project Clip/Stamp/Fold has landed in the south hemisphere by this month until July 2013. Santiago has had the chance for this first landing. The local version of the project became real due to the remarkable work of Fernando Portal, Pablo Brugnoli and Andrea Lathrop, whom gave shape to the Chilean participation on the architectural radical magazines of the 60’s and 70’s.

The selected local magazines were proposed according to the main outline: “radical architecture of little magazines”. In this regard, AUCA was immediately considered as one of the first ones due to its invaluable role as one of the bravest publication according to the social impact in the hard days Chile was facing. Architecture, Urbanism, Construction and Arts configure its name as well as the matching with the aboriginal (mapuche) word, which means Rebel. Also AUCA bore a respectable name because it born in t...

Autodesk Acquires Socialcam for $60 million

2012-07-18T19:54:00-04:00

Autodesk is known for architectural and design software, but in recent years has started offering products aimed at ordinary consumers. Besides $60m for Socialcam, which makes video authoring and publishing software, Autodesk paid $32 million for Instructables... And it purchased a company called Pixlr, which is an online photo editor, for an undisclosed sum. Autodesk also developed consumer software for drawing and painting online, which it calls SketchBook.

Ediciones Vibok awarded with FAD Thought & Criticism 2011 prize

2011-05-31T07:49:07-04:00

Ediciones Vibok has been awarded with FAD Thought & Criticism 2011 prize for the book Collective Architectures, edited by the architect Paula Alvarez FAD Awards (Promoting Architecture and Design) were created in Barcelona in 1958 with the aim of promoting cutting-edge trends and recognize the quality of new approaches and open researches in contrast with traditional languages.

We are pleased to share with you very good news.
Ediciones Vibok has been awarded with FAD Thought & Criticism 2011 prize for the book Collective Architectures, edited by the architect Paula Alvarez

Collective Architectures, Vibok first title, has its starting point in an initiative by Santiago Cirugeda (Urban Recipes) which mobilized dozens of groups to recycle 45 containers-homes from a dismantled temporary settlement, into a multitude of self-built and self-managed spaces that were distributed throughout the Spanish territory. What began as a map of war of the Iberian peninsula, soon became a cooperation network extended to Latin America.

This book captures the whole adventure through a selection of ten projects developed between 2007 and 2010, as well as written contributions from different authors in what constitutes a coral essay on the possibility of connecting politics, life and architecture.

Paula Alvarez's edition commitment it to narrate this experience...