Archinect - News

The power of play, how childhood toys inspired architects and their designs

2019-04-08T20:14:00-04:00

Everyone can recall their favorite toy as a child. For some, these childhood toys inspired interests and passions that led to specific career pursuits as an adult. Thinking back on one's own experience with toys like LEGO and Lincoln Logs, these simple pieces of wood and plastic led to endless amounts of fun and creative possibility. As a child, I recall spending hours playing with Little Tykes Waffle Blocks and Playskool's colored wooden blocks.

1982 Vintage Playskool Colored Wood Blocks

Play-based learning, especially with blocks or other building-focused models, enhances a child's ability to problem solve and stimulate creative decision making. These simple, tactical objects allow for children to experience and understand the world around them, especially the built environment. Through stacking and connecting, these types of educational toys enable children to experience trial and error through forms of continuous self-assessment. The anticipation of stacking one more block on t...

European space scientists experiment turning lunar dust into building blocks

2018-08-24T16:25:00-04:00

Scientists with the European Space Agency (ESA) have created a terrestrial simulation of moon dust to practice making bricks with. And it appears lunar “soil” is significantly different from its terrestrial equivalent, as it can be crushed, burned and compressed to form building materials, or used as the raw material for 3D printing.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is experimenting with lunar dust as a building material with goals to avoid lifting hefty materials from Earth into space. Lunar dust is electrically charged and primarily composed of basalt (like volcanic rock) with 40% of its mass made of oxygen. ESA is testing this unique material to create solid blocks, which could potentially construct launch pads or lunar habitats.

Swiss startup Energy Vault stacks concrete blocks as an efficient way to store energy

2018-08-20T20:05:00-04:00

Once the crane arm locates and hooks onto a concrete block, a motor starts, powered by the excess electricity on the grid, and lifts the block off the ground. [Designed to withstand wind, the crane arm] can smoothly lift the block, and then place it on top of another stack of blocks—higher up off the ground. The system is “fully charged” when the crane has created a tower of concrete blocks around it.

A tower of the concrete blocks — weighing 35 metric tons each — can store a maximum of 20 megawatt-hours (MWh), which Energy Vault says is enough to power 2,000 Swiss homes for an entire day. According to Quartz, the Swiss startup is planning to build their first commercial plants starting early 2019.

Celebrating concrete architecture in a mini "block party"

2015-07-15T13:04:00-04:00

Long inspired by historic modernist concrete structures throughout the last century, Mumbai-based product designers Nitin Barchha and Disney Davis of Material Immaterial made an artful ode to concrete's lasting architectural influence in "SPACES", a collection of miniature blocks cleanly carved into charming homes.

The designers made each humble yet sophisticated abode using a particular concrete mix to replicate the material's smooth finish. Each of the nine pieces — which measure at 62 x 62 x 51 millimeters — has its own design of volumes and voids that enable numerous arrangements when grouped altogether in the central "Kund".

h/t Ignant

Check out more of these crafty architectural designs on Archinect:

Stephanie Clark’s embroidered architecture

Artist Charles Young crafts mini paper metropolis on the daily

These "Stalaclights" are a witty tribute to the forever-growing skyscraper

Deconstructing architectural icons, with gifs!

"Birdbnb" exhibits elaborate birdhouse replicas of over 50 ...

MVRDV approved to redesign the '70s Vandamme Nord block in Montparnasse, Paris

2015-02-25T15:28:00-05:00

MVRDV officially got the green light from the City of Paris for their plans to restructure the Vandamme Nord at Gaîté-Montparnasse in Paris' 14th arrondissement. Built in the early 1970s by French architect Pierre Dufau, the mixed-use complex is located on a triangular island bordered by Rue Mouchotte, Avenue du Maine, and the rail tracks to Gare Montparnasse.

The Vandamme was once a landmark as one of the largest urban projects at the time, but -- with dying malls continuing to be the norm -- its glory days faded away as it failed to keep up with a changing urban society.

Aiming to renew a sense of place within the Montparnasse district and improve public accessibility, MVRDV plans to give the building a new façade as well as completely reorganize and open up the building's internal program. The complex will be broken up into a collection of "boxes" inserted in the existing structural frame that will vary in size, program, color, and materials, and will also be flexibly designed for...

Brutal London cutout replicas commemorate iconic brutalist structures

2015-02-04T19:09:00-05:00

Assembling those paper cutouts from the back of the cereal box is a delightful childhood memory for many. Poznan-based design studio Zupagrafika brings back that pastime with their "Brutal London" paper cutouts that would look good on any shelf or desk. Following the Warsaw-inspired "Eastern Block" collection, Brutal London is Zupagrafika's latest addition to cataloging modernist architecture at risk of extinction -- be it demolition in England or thermomodernization in Poland.

The collection features five illustrated mini models of 1960s-1970s brutalist structures in the Camden, Southwark, and Tower Hamlet districts of London: the iconic Balfron Tower and Space House, the demolished Robin Hood Gardens and Aylesbury Estate, and the prefab Ledbury Estate. Made out of 100% recycled paper and cardboard, the models depict original details from the buildings' facades, down to the graffiti.

Young ones could perhaps learn a quick fact or two about brutalist architecture as they cut out a...