Archinect - News

When Facebook and Instagram went dark, architecture Twitter was there for the laughs

2021-10-05T11:46:00-04:00

In my opinion, remembering what it was like before social media and high-speed internet access is a gift. The early days of social media barely resemble the landscape of how impressionable and profit-driven it is today. Data privacy wasn't considered "a thing," and promoting a product or service back then was influential thanks to television, radio, and print media. However, when social media titans Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down, many came flooding back to Twitter to stay connected. Thanks to this 6-hour social media outage, 'architecture Twitter' was there to express what many of us were thinking.

Social media is defined as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)." Today, this term has become synonymous with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Twitter to name a few...

Exploring empty architecture in the age of social distance

2020-03-25T13:14:00-04:00

"I'm going around the world photographing places using live feed cameras," proclaims Twitter user Noah Kalina — kicking off a fascinating and chilling collection of empty streets, vacant squares, deserted piazzas, and desolate agorae.

Public spaces and tourist magnets, once bustling with life, are now, in the sudden age of COVID-19 social distancing and shelter-in-place orders, devoid of the human occupants and civic life they were designed for.

St. Peter's Square. Vatican City. 3/24/2020 13:44 pic.twitter.com/0ZfL3JmfbI
— Noah Kalina (@noahkalina) March 24, 2020 Times Square. New York City. 3/24/2020 08:15 pic.twitter.com/ep4HINXmGF
— Noah Kalina (@noahkalina) March 24, 2020 Trevi Fountain - Rome. 3/23/2020 16:40 pic.twitter.com/N2jDCuXbm1
— Noah Kalina (@noahkalina) March 23, 2020 Bourbon Street. New Orleans, Louisiana. 3/23/2020 14:43 pic.twitter.com/RSteFfcjpn
— Noah Kalina (@noahkalina) March 23, 2020 Milan Cathedral. Milan, Italy. 3/23/202 17:49 pic.twitter.com/xntheacv2n
— No...

Architects, writers, museums, and a Prime Minister remember the life and work of I.M. Pei, 1917–2019

2019-05-17T15:39:00-04:00

It is a rare moment when the words "architect" and "architecture" appear in the elusive list of trending Twitter topics, but yesterday's sighting followed a sad occasion: architect I.M. Pei, the revered master of modernist architecture, had died on Thursday at the proud age of 102.

Architecture critic and writer Paul Goldberger was the first to share the news—triggering a prompt outpouring of sympathy and memories from the architecture community and beyond.

Some sad news: I’ve just learned that I.M. Pei died last night, at 102. The end of an architectural era, truly. A sad moment, but a career—and a life—worthy of celebration.
— Paul Goldberger (@paulgoldberger) May 16, 2019

Michael Kimmelman, the current NYT architecture critic, shared his personal experience with Pei's architecture, writing "Like others, I deeply admire Pei's beautiful and thoughtful Islamic museum in Qatar, respect the sculptural power of the East Building in D.C. and the Pyramid in Paris, among obvious landmarks...

This Architecture is cursed

2019-04-16T13:53:00-04:00

We have profiled many social media profiles on Archinect, but this may be the first haunted account we have come across. Cursed Architecture (@CursedArchitect) has showcased "The best of the worst in questionable design decisions, horrible DIY, and existential terror" through its twitter page with over 800 examples of the built environment gone awry.

pic.twitter.com/SnqF330rzb
— Cursed Architecture (@CursedArchitect) April 11, 2019

@CursedArchitect and other social media profiles have collected material to provide architecture enthusiasts a previously unexplored avenue of design documentation; one that revels in the horrors and failures of the built environment laid out by hasty developers and distracted craftsmen.

pic.twitter.com/7XEVuoRnAa
— Cursed Architecture (@CursedArchitect) April 2, 2019

Architect shares wonderfully Photoshopped Thomas Kinkade and Modernism mashups on Twitter

2018-08-22T13:40:00-04:00

Architect twitter account @robyniko known as 'the "schtick" haver' has started a thread where worlds collide locating iconic modernist architecture in Thomas Kinkade landscapes. Whether or not this should have ever been done is up for debate. These mashups may just be so terrible you can't look away...

Charles and Ray Eames' Case Study Cabin:

Philip Johnson's Glass Cottage:

Check out the whole thread for more blasphemous thrills:

BART and LA Metro battle via Twitter haikus

2016-06-29T18:26:00-04:00

Oh, SF BART Twitter account—back at it again with the going rogue. This time, instead of getting real with folks on the platform, they decided to have a little fun with the Los Angeles Metro account, challenging them to a full-on haiku battle on Twitter this past Friday.

The official Twitter account for the BART isn't sycophantic or pandering: when confronted with customer concerns, it answers them with actual facts, even if those facts wouldn't gel with a traditional PR department. Now, however, the BART account has gone one step further and is outright having fun, challenging the LA Metro and New York's MTA to a haiku battle.

While it's safe to say that both the BART and the LA Metro should keep their day jobs, having a playfully-minded transit system is not necessarily a bad thing.

When not writing haikus, here's what else public transit is up to:

Roll call of Chicago Architecture Biennial participants on Twitter, Facebook, and by world region

2015-09-30T18:39:00-04:00

Whether you're attending this weekend's Chicago Architecture Biennial in person or virtually, Jessica A.S. Letaw's comprehensive alphabetical lists of biennial participants on Twitter, Facebook, and by World Region makes it easy to quickly update yourself on who's doing what, where. Here are the links to get started:

• Chicago Architecture Biennial: Roll Call - Twitter

• Chicago Architecture Biennial: Roll Call - Facebook

• Chicago Architecture Biennial: Participants By World Region

Are apps the virtual gateway to physical gentrification?

2015-08-05T18:26:00-04:00

Laundromats have recently been closing down in San Francisco, which prompted a Google employee to tweet in response "cost of disruption: washio and others have removed need for laundromat on every block." Who needs laundromats when there's an app for that? Well, people who can't afford to spend $15 a pop on washing their socks, for starters. The tweet prompted a thoughtful article in Tech.Mic, in which the short-term gains of disruptive app inventors are speculatively played out to their potential society-eroding ends, especially in the arenas of transit and health care. In this case, the article points out that the laundry delivery app in question is exactly that: a delivery service that still uses third-party launderers to actually clean the clothes, but charges for the convenience.

Apparently, the San Francisco laundromats are closing mainly because of the usual gentrification pressures in the form of desirable cheap real estate, not necessarily because of apps. However, assuming ...

Old Guy Fight! Tribune’s Blair Kamin vs. Donald Trump

2014-11-20T17:14:00-05:00

Watching two grown men in a social media hissy fit over a building sign is actually a lot more amusing than one might think. In this corner, Donald Trump, rich guy, who, in the view of one esteemed newspaper critic, has defiled our fine city by slapping his name on the side of his silvery, shiny building. In the other corner, Blair Kamin, decorated architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune and defender of building aesthetics.

Twitterbot can now warn UK residents when river-levels are rising

2014-07-23T13:53:00-04:00

A unique collaborative project has been launched, bringing a constant stream of live river level data to anyone who needs to stay up-to-date with environmental conditions. Shoothill GaugeMap brings the real-time status of England and Wales’ rivers and tides from Environment Agency monitoring stations, to people in an accessible and user-friendly manner. It works via the web and Twitter, and is available on all major desktop browsers, tablets and smartphones.

Twitter installs 19th century log cabins in San Francisco HQ

2014-03-03T15:12:00-05:00

In keeping with the designer's forest-themed interior motif, a pair of homesteader cabins from the late 1800s are being installed in Twitter's new digs in the historic Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart building, a 1937 art deco landmark on Market Street. [...] In this spirit of reuse and reclamation, Lundberg saw the cabins as a novel way of breaking up the wide open spaces of a gutted floor in the old furniture mart that will become a casual dining area.

Taking architectural anachronism to a whole new level, Twitter turns the open-plan office on its head by installing original one-room wood cabins from Montana as lunching spaces. Designers for Twitter's offices feel the choice is coherent with the company values of reuse and reclamation, while also strengthening the brand's bird imagery as related to the forest/nature.

What's left behind is the sour sense of irony coating such a move. In a city fuming with affordable housing and gentrification disputes, it's a bit hilarious for Twitter to insert original homesteading-iconography into its own HQ.

Goldberger on Architectural Criticism in the Age of Twitter

2012-11-29T14:56:00-05:00

Goldberger addressed the disappearance of journalistic hegemony and the advent of electronic media. While mainstream publications with an ongoing commitment to architecture criticism continue to possess a degree of authority, they are struggling to make themselves heard in this noise. It is clear to Goldberger that “the playing field may be level, but the players are not equal.”

Neighbors to Twitter co-founder: Cease and desist

2012-08-14T18:09:00-04:00

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and his wife were trying to find a nice San Francisco neighborhood for their young family to call home... they found what they were looking for, a 6,300-square-foot lot occupied by an early 1900s home that they now want to demolish to make way for a new house... The planned tear-down has ignited a Page Six controversy, pitting the rights of new tech money against an old community... trying to stop change on one of the city's most idyllic streets.

Twitter is his city, his favorite city

2012-08-13T13:32:00-04:00

Ai Weiwei: No. Beijing's greatest problem is that it never belongs to its people. Though it's a city of more than 10 million, people living here are like people living in a hotel.

Beijing's best-known dissident, architect, and creative provocateur tells Jonathan Landreth what's wrong with China's frenetic capital.

China artist Ai Weiwei 'banned from using Twitter'

2011-07-12T11:38:00-04:00

Mr Ai has already said he cannot talk to the media, and he is not allowed to leave Beijing without permission. He is also reportedly banned from using the microblogging site Twitter. His account has been dormant since April.