Archinect - News

University of Kansas students converted shipping containers into housing for community shelter guests in need of quarantined spaces

2021-11-10T19:46:00-05:00

As part of a program at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design, a cohort of students retrofitted twelve shipping containers to serve as private housing for homeless people during the pandemic.

The project, located at Kansas’ Lawrence Community Shelter, is called Monarch Village. It was established in response to the need for adequate quarantine spaces for its population when the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020. The initiative is part of the non-profit Studio 804, a comprehensive design-build program offered through the school where graduate students design and build a LEED Platinum project. Monarch Village is the studio’s sixteenth.

According to Studio 804, the dwellings offer much-needed privacy for families while allowing guests access to services at the shelter. It is hoped that this project will be a precedent to move away from housing the homeless in gymnasium-like rooms full of bunk beds, an arrangement that makes isolating impossible.

Construction on th...

Guangzhou to build huge quarantine facility in response to Delta variant

2021-07-02T17:58:00-04:00

The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is planning to build a 250,000-square-meter quarantine complex in response to the growing threat of highly transmissible Covid-19 mutations such as the Delta variant.

The announcement was made by Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s top epidemiologists, who played a leading role in tackling the SARS outbreak in 2003. According to Zhong, the complex would contain 5,000 isolated spaces for both international travelers and local residents from high-risk areas. According to The South China Morning Post, Zhong believes the quarantine complex is necessary as simply using hotels as quarantine sites would not be enough to halt the spread of the virus due to how much more transmissible the Delta variant is compared to previous ones.

“In the long term, Guangzhou and Shenzhen must build these kinds of facilities. Otherwise when there are lots of cases in the future and we have to quarantine them in hotels, it will affect the economy and we cannot isolate them ...

This new website lets you look through strangers' windows around the world

2020-07-15T12:31:00-04:00

WindowSwap, a new website created by husband and wife duo Sonali Ranjit and Vaishnav Balasubramaniam, two Singapore-based creatives, allows users to look through the windows of people across the globe. According to The Stable, Ranjit said of the project:

Screenshot via window-swap.com. View from London, England.

We were getting quite tired of the lockdown view from our windows. So we created a place on the internet where we can look through an open window somewhere else in the world. My husband, Vaishnav, and I created this little project called to help beat our lockdown blues. Because, let’s face it, it’s going to be a while before we travel again and wake up to a new view outside our windows. So until then, why not voyeuristically travel by looking out of somebody else window for a while?

Screenshot via window-swap.com. View from Singapore.

The site is quite simple. Users visit, and can immediately track through various windows submitted by people around the world. Anyone can submi...

LA Forum interviews Geoff Manaugh on the architecture of quarantine

2020-06-17T16:15:00-04:00

I think that, if anything, the quarantine experience that we’re having is the realization that large-scale, drastic changes are actually possible.

LA Forum's publication Delirious LA interviews BLDGBLOG's Geoff Manaugh on the quarantine as a possible enabler to change in architecture and other conjectures it may bring to architecture and urban design.

"For me, as someone who writes about architecture, it was the idea that there was a way of dealing with disease—which, from a modern point of view, I would associate with vaccines, pills, or surgery—instead you can design a building in such a way that you can prevent the spread of a disease from one person to the next. It seemed like a way to instrumentalize architecture beyond just aesthetics, or beyond just everyday use value such as, you know, this is a restaurant or this is a home. It gives architecture – and the very fundamentals of architecture, including questions of circulation and sequence, and where walls and doors might be placed – a medical effect. And it helps to avoid the need for a vaccine or avoid the need for medical treatment later.

There was something fascinati...

Geoff Manaugh on Quarantine

2020-06-11T14:01:40-04:00

if anything, the quarantine experience that we’re having is the realization that large-scale, drastic changes are actually possible. People will in fact go along with them. And that we’re resilient. We’ll find a new way to make things happen.

UCLA scholar on urban planning Kian Goh interviews Geoff Manaugh on quarantine and ideas it prompts.

"-It seems like every city has its own idea of itself. It makes its own myths through either its triumphs or its crises. Like, New York City now certainly reflects its idea of how it responded to 9/11. In LA we think of events like the Rodney King uprising. And I was wondering if there’s anything particular about LA’s social or spatial history that you think is particularly pertinent now for how we are responding to this crisis.

-Not to downplay the disease, I do think that it’s interesting how easily it’s been to lock off certain neighborhoods from each other and not have the kind of epidemic spread that we see in New York City. It’s almost like Los Angeles was prototyped on the idea of social distancing. We already live in a social distanced landscape. I do think that the spread out nature of Los Angeles means that we’re kind of skating through the quarantine – or through the lockd...

Perkins and Will design kid's fort that acts as a sound barrier

2020-05-21T11:46:00-04:00

The K-12 Education team over at Perkins and Will has designed a blanket fort DiY project that parents and their kids can do together while at home. The project calls for blankets and cardboard that are intended to function as sound barriers to help with conflicting activities throughout the day, such as competing decibels from Zoom calls and playing children.

"The cardboard also doubles as an art platform for the kids to decorate as they want," said Bryan Harry, Designer at Perkins and Will. The fort can be made with wooden dowels and copper pipe fittings. This fort design is a bit more refined compared to the traditional furniture fort. Here, the architectural acumen of the Perkins and Will team show in the strengthened frame design as well as the intentionality of the sound proofing design aim.

Build at-home furniture forts and tents with IKEA Russia's new interactive quarantine campaign

2020-05-19T12:57:00-04:00

Created by Russian agency Instinct, a new campaign launched by IKEA Russia offers parents instructions on how to make indoor forts and tents made from common household items such as chairs, couches, blankets, pillows and much more.

What side projects and hobbies has the architecture community adopted while stuck at home?

2020-05-05T16:21:00-04:00

Working from home has provided some professionals with extra time in the day. With the subtraction of commute hours, the availability to pursue extracurriculars seems more abundant. While many are using that additional time to manage the kids or navigate other ripples of the pandemic, others are using the time to adopt new hobbies or commence some new side projects.

Huge hill in my backyard was covered in weeds. The dirt on the right side down by the wall was sitting above the ridge at the bottom. My wife and I removed all of the weeds and transferred a bunch of dirt from the right side over to the left to level out the dirt that meets the top of the wall. Photos courtesy of author.

After everything was cleared up, my wife and mother-in-law planted new plants. We have a handful of succulents, some lavender, pomegranate, irises, creeping myrtle, and some others. My father-in-law and I dug the holes. Photos courtesy of the author.

I've been recently gardening more with my wife and I was...

Foster + Partners creates interactive architectural activities for kids away from school

2020-05-01T17:37:00-04:00

Foster + Partners has released a collection of at-home activities for kids while they're away from school. Called #architecturefromhome, The collection includes tasks related to drawing, making, playing, thinking, reading, watching, and other activities to keep the kids entertained.

All of the offerings provide free downloadable templates that can be printed and used for the project. Two of the activities include foldable structures that allow students to create their own city or skyscraper.

Check out the Foster + Partners website for the full list. While many are looking to keep the kids busy and entertained right now, exposing them into some of the architectural creativity and thinking many of us experience everyday can be a refreshing way to get their minds working.