Archinect - News

Oliver Wainwright on RIBA's '100 Women: Architects in Practice,' a new primer for industry-wide change

2024-02-29T13:40:00-05:00

We’re not there yet. In an industry where the gender pay gap has widened in recent years, where all-male panels at conferences are not unusual, and where macho culture still prevails on building sites, a book like this, sadly, still has a place.

Writing for The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright says he hopes RIBA’s new publication 100 Women: Architects in Practice, which we previewed in December, will encourage competition judges, academic panels, awards juries, exhibitions organizers, and rebuke “the headhunters who claim women never apply, [...] the clients who say they just can’t find women with the right experience.”

Many of the architects included in the book, namely Mariam Kamara, Suhailey Farzana, and others, are women whose practices are informed by and in service to decolonization in the developing world à la the 2023 RIBA Gold Medal winner Yasmeen Lari and 2021 Soane Medalist Marina Tabassum. (The profiles are divided into 18 geographical "sub-regions" based on the UN's geoscheme.)

The 320-page book was written by Harriet Harriss, Naomi House, Monika Parrinder, and Tom Ravenscroft, with Alison Brooks responsible for the foreword.

Africa will hold the key to the future at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

2022-06-01T15:36:00-04:00

The theme and title of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale have been announced as The Laboratory of the Future, vetting a decolonized vision of Africa as a petri dish for the hopes of the broader world to come. As the Biennale’s curator, architect and academic Lesley Lokko, explains: “At an anthropological level, we are all African. And what happens in Africa, happens to us all.”

Under the direction of Lokko, the 18th International Architecture Exhibition will focus on the continent’s past history and potential to be a ‘workshop’ (in historian Richard Sennett’s understanding of the word as a ‘laboratory’) wherein the shared fate and destiny of mankind are being forged in areas of urbanization, public health, resilient design, and social justice.

Lokko pointed to models of African history as forerunners of change that ushered into this world institutions like the Tuskegee Institute and social causes such as the Civil Rights movement to the overall betterment of society. The exh...

National Gallery of Canada establishes Indigenous Ways and Decolonization Department

2022-02-17T13:10:00-05:00

There is welcome news in Ottawa, home of the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), a city that has been under a state of emergency the past while due to the ongoing “Freedom Convoy” protest. The gallery, which had closed due to the Omicron surge but has delayed its re-opening because of the demonstrations, announced on 8 February that it had created a Department of Indigenous Ways and Decolonisation [...].

The department will focus on reimagining the gallery’s programming and policies to better reflect Canada’s diversity and its Indigenous populations. Its first Vice President, Steven Loft, who is of Kanien’kehá: ka (Mohawk) and Jewish heritage, will be joined by Michelle LaVallee, who is Anishinaabe (Ojibway) and a member of the Neyashiingamiing Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Cape Croker, Ontario, with Canadian settler heritage from her mother. She will serve as the department’s director, set to start on March 21. LaVallee will work with other senior management, in addition to the curatorial department and the Indigenous art team.

The pair will work to deepen the gallery’s relationship with Indigenous communities globally with a focus on decolonization and reconciliation.

Archinect's Virtual Event Guide for the week of March 17-24, 2021

2021-03-17T16:39:00-04:00

This week's featured virtual event happenings, from Archinect's Virtual Event Guide, are highlighted by Exhibit Columbus' Design Presentations kicking off this Friday. Other events to tune into address topics such as decolonization, surveillance, automation, public and domestic placemaking, healthy communities, and design experience.

Are you hosting a virtual lecture? Presentation? Tour? Interview? Happy Hour? Submit it for consideration by clicking here.

Are you an expert in an arena that's especially important right now? Let us know if you would like to work with Archinect to host an online event.

Sharon E. Sutton: Decolonizing the City-Making Professions: Learning from the Dreams and Defeats of the 1960s
Wednesday, March 17, 2021 | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, FAIA is a distinguished visiting professor of architecture at Parsons School of Design and has also served on the faculties of Columbia University, Pratt Institute, the University of Cincinnati, the Univer...

Thousands of Palestinians Flee Northern Gaza as Israel Continues its Bombardment

2014-07-14T20:49:00-04:00

Several thousand Palestinians, defying the urging of Hamas to remain in their homes, fled areas in northern Gaza early Sunday after Israel warned them through fliers and phone calls of major attacks to come.

Thousands of Palestinians, heeding the warning pamphlets dropped by Israeli jets, are fleeing from Northern Gaza. Many are crowding inside United Nations-run schools. As the death toll rises – entirely on the Palestinian side – a potential cease-fire agreement developed by Egypt will be debated in the Israeli Parliament.

During prior Israeli invasions of Gaza, the toll on the infrastructure of the small region was significant. Israel intentionally targets infrastructure that it understands to support Hamas. Unfortunately, it is often civilians who are both the main casualties and who must suffer in a devastated, overpopulated urban ar ea. And according to the Washington Post, in the recent attacks,"most of the Gazans killed so far have died in their homes."

The frequency and totality of Israeli attacks on Gaza – coupled with the ongoing economic blockade – leave little hope that their will be stability or normalcy for Gazans in the near future. Fundamentally, the devastated infrastruc...

Editor's Picks #275

2012-07-31T01:01:00-04:00

Orhan Ayyüce featured recent efforts towards preservation, by new owner Michael Chapman who commissioned Barry Milofsky of M2A Architects to design the restoration, to The Lukens House, in Soriano's Glen Lukens House: Back to Life and Happy. Therein he asserted "It is important to add here that Soriano was the architect whom photographer Julius Shulman and his wife selected to design their home. As to why, Mr. Shulman did tell me in an unpublished interview that the decision to hire Mr. Soriano was made because ‘he loved life!’ after drinking few bottles of wine Mr. Soriano brought with him to the empty lot Shulmans bought below Mulholland Drive."

News
Mas Context highlighted the work of David Yoon, a writer, designer, photographer, and self-confessed urban planning geek living in Los Angeles, who started documenting existing streets of Los Angeles and narrowing them to see the effects that his manipulations had on the city. Eric Chavkin claimed "PHOTOSHOP URBANISM This is all ab...