Archinect - News

Shigeru Ban is on the ground helping war-torn Ukrainian refugees in Poland

2022-03-21T13:38:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban had been working with students from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology on the influx of Ukrainian refugees sheltering in a converted former supermarket in Chelm, Poland, where they were able to construct and install 319 privacy partitions over a four-day span. He now plans to send an additional 800 screens to refugees sheltering within their now war-torn country. The gesture has reportedly had a tremendous emotional impact on the wary travelers, whose plight in turn has captivated the 2014 Pritzker winner well known for working with displaced populations.

“They are called evacuees, but they are ordinary people like us,” Ban told a reporter. “They are with their family members, just like survivors of natural disasters are after emergencies. But the big difference is that Ukrainian evacuees are not with their husbands or fathers. Ukrainian men are basically banned from leaving the country. It’s sad.”

Ban and his collaborators from the Wrocław University of Sc...

Mumbai-based architecture firm NUDES thinks outside the box with an everyday material, cardboard

2019-04-02T15:30:00-04:00

Many may remember playing with cardboard boxes as children. The material is widely common and found almost everywhere. However, it is rarely seen in a contemporary design setting. Now imagine having coffee in a fully functioning cafe built almost entirely out of cardboard. Thanks to Mumbai-based architectural firm NUDES, that idea was made into a reality. The new Mumbai-based cafe Cardboard is turning heads with the use of a familiar, cardboard. From light fixtures to chairs and tables, corrugated cardboard fills the entire landscape of the cafe. The interior is comprised of flowing undulating walls made from carefully sculpted cardboard sections.

Cardboard interior. Image © Mrigank Sharma

Diagram illustrating the relation between the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ elements of the material. Image courtesy of Nuru Karim of NUDES

Many may be thinking what about the moisture and humidity in the area? However, NUDES founder Nuru Karim put much thought into transforming this common material into a ...

A cardboard bedroom making use of Amsterdam's residual space

2019-01-02T16:13:00-05:00

With the ‘Bedsteeg’ – a wordplay on the traditional Dutch sleeping accommodation ‘bedstede’ – Roegiers is now bringing attention to residual urban space that can be used to improve living conditions for the homeless. ‘It is about certain basic human needs that have to be met for a homeless person to become strong enough – both mentally and physically – to regain independence,’ he told local newspaper Het Parool.

As his graduation project for Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Patrick Roegiers created a simple cardboard house. Wedged between two existing buildings, covered in water-resistant coating and 3 meters high, the structure is meant to provide homeless people with a warm and dry place to sleep.

Since sleeping on the streets of Amsterdam is criminalized, the homeless population is often forced to move beyond the city's boarders. Through his project, Roegiers, hoped to give the unhoused an opportunity to safely stay in their neighborhoods while making use of Amsterdam's numerous and largely unused alleyways.

One of the challenges was convincing property owners to allow these makeshift bedrooms right next to their homes. Luckily, the neighbors were willing to cooperate, and after they granted permission, Roegiers tasked himself with finding a bedroom resident for every night of the week. If the prototype is successful, the idea might be picked up by existing homeless organizations.

A cardboard and carbon-emission economy: the long-term effects of our desire for instant gratification

2016-02-16T14:00:00-05:00

A handful of scientists and policy makers are...grappling with the long-term environmental effect of an economy that runs increasingly on gotta-have-it-now gratification [...] The environmental cost can include the additional cardboard — 35.4 million tons of containerboard were produced in 2014 in the United States, with e-commerce companies among the fastest-growing users — and the emissions from increasingly personalized freight services.

As internet retailers compete to provide as-close-to-instant services to satiate our increasing desire for rapid gratification, our collective ecological footprint grows. The problem isn't just the cardboard boxes piling up on your doorstep, but also the carbon emissions required to get that Postmates or Amazon Prime delivery into your hands.

And according to experts (or at least those profiled by the Times), the responsibility lies equally with consumers as it does with the companies providing the services. In short, we need to "slow down consumption," states Robert Reed, spokesman for Recology, the main recycling processor in San Francisco.

For more on the ecological impact of our consumptive patterns, take a look at these links:

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...

Christchurch's replacement cathedral has boosted a fledgling furniture sector

2014-04-22T13:52:00-04:00

Two years after the 2011 earthquake destroyed Christchurch's neo-Gothic cathedral, the building has been resurrected. It has also undergone something of a public transfiguration. [...] In the past few years cardboard has also become increasingly popular in small-scale design. Hipster boutiques, museum gift shops and high profile public events such as the State of Design Festival now stock cardboard lighting, storage units, stools and kids' toys.

Shigeru Ban's Cardboard Cathedral opens in Christchurch

2013-08-07T11:29:00-04:00

The Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand opened its doors to the public for the first time on August 6. Designed by Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban, the cathedral is a temporary replacement of the original Christchurch Cathedral, the city's symbol that was destroyed by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in February 2011. Construction delays prevented the cathedral from opening on its original deadline in February.

Ban's Cardboard Cathedral is nowhere close to the original gothic revival design done by British architect George Gilbert Scott during the later half of the 19th century. The transition structure is in the middle of an ongoing debate whether the new cathedral's permanent design should be a restoration, a modern reinterpretation, or a completely new building.

The Cardboard Cathedral's triangular frame of 98 cardboard-encased LVL beams enclose a multi-functional main hall that can accommodate up to 700 people for church events. In addition to cardboard--a reporte...

Cardborigami: Designed to Help the Homeless

2013-07-31T19:25:00-04:00

Tina Hovsepian of global architecture firm Callison was driven by the need to help homeless individuals in Los Angeles when she designed the first prototype for the "Cardborigami" shelter during her fourth year at USC's School of Architecture. Cardborigami, which has grown into a non-profit organization, provides temporary housing for the homeless as part of a process to help them gradually overcome their state of homelessness.

The Cardborigami shelter balances innovative design and functionality. The application of traditional origami techniques onto cardboard gives the shelter a beautiful form. Before its modified origami form, the shelter was originally a re-design of an Air-stream trailer. "The idea is to deploy a trailer to a disaster site where mass shelter is needed, then the trailer expands to 20 times its length and twice its width to provide instant space," Hovsepian explained over email. "The form was then revised and re-scaled to fulfill its potential as a portable...

Corrugated Cardboard Pavilion by Miguel Arraiz García / David Moreno Terrón

2013-05-07T16:49:00-04:00

We have received photos and a video of a pretty stunning temporary pavilion built with 3,000 corrugated hexagonal cardboard boxes for the annual “Fallas” festival in the Spanish city of Valencia. The pavilion design was a collaborative effort between Miguel Arraiz García of bipolaire arquitectos and David Moreno Terrón of Pink Intruder.

Architecture students compete to build largest cardboard structure

2013-04-16T11:32:00-04:00

More than 50 students will attempt to break the nationwide record of 1,655 boxes, currently held by BYU The battle to build the world’s largest cardboard structure has been an ongoing rivalry between three schools: UNLV, Harvard University, and BYU. UNLV students have been preparing for weeks to manipulate the cardboard into realistic architectural concepts, using lessons learned in a fundamentals of design course.

Crazy Cardboard Towers Bring Ornament Back to Architecture

2012-11-05T13:15:00-05:00

The project, called Night Blooms, is the work of Wil Natzel, an architect with a taste for the eclectically romantic and for unusual materials. “My larger approach to architecture is embedded in the history of architectural ornamentation,” he says, “As an alternative to a city filled with purely performative architecture” — being the boring walls, doors, stairs, pathways, and other bits that define the spaces we use.