Archinect - News

Meet crafty collaborators Lang Architecture: Your Next Employer?

2022-06-07T12:47:00-04:00

For the inaugural edition of our Meet Your Next Employer series, we shine the spotlight on New York-based Lang Architecture.

From their studio on Broadway in Manhattan, the firm is led by principal Drew Lang, who started the practice having settled in NYC after his architectural training at Yale University: A journey he outlined in a 2020 feature on Archinect.

Now counting over a dozen members, the firm is currently advertising for three positions on Archinect Jobs: a Project Architect, a Project Designer, and an Interior Designer.

Chelsea Townhouse by Lang Architecture

Through what Lang calls “generational sustainability through connected design,” the studio places a strong emphasis on collaborations, dialogues, and partnerships in its work. This attention to dialogue includes client-facing discussions about needs and desires but also extends into the design community itself. “Collaboration with artists, craftspeople, and the design community is essential to our approach,” Lang no...

Singapore's 13th annual Archifest celebrates craft in architecture

2019-09-30T19:51:00-04:00

Archifest is the Singapore Architectural Festival that began back in 2007. It is "an annual festival for the city to celebrate architecture and the built environment."

The festival is organized by the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) which is a platform "for people from all walks of life to discuss, debate and dream about possibilities surrounding architecture, our city and the built environment at large."

For Archifest 2019, the theme is Craft. An event website poses the following question: "If the broadest definition of craft is about precision that demands laborious attention and skilled handwork, where would we locate it within the realm of architectural production or construction in an age where expediency and efficiency are privileged?"

It's a highly relevant query in today's digital landscape. Throughout the festival the aim will be to explore the idea of craft and "its multi-faceted manifestations through three different allegories, Objects, Time, and Digital, each d...

Training refugees to conserve their monumental heritage

2018-03-20T15:43:00-04:00

The problems: how to conserve extraordinary monumental heritage in Iraq and Syria [...]. The issue is exacerbated by the depletion of skilled craftspeople; once the dust of conflict settles, there will be few able to carry out restoration. At the same time, thousands sit in refugee camps, lives on hold, seeking a future. The solution: train refugees to become the craftspeople and conservators of the future. Give them a skill to help restore their nation’s heritage.

Photo: World Monuments Fund.

Learn more about the World Monuments Fund’s new stone masonry training center for Syrian refugees in Mafraq, Jordan (backed by the UK government’s Cultural Protection Fund) here.

Fearing a drop in skilled workers, Brexit Britain looks to prefab housing

2017-03-16T15:01:00-04:00

The prospect of Brexit choking off the supply of EU workers is reshaping Britain's homebuilding industry, with big companies increasingly looking to factory-manufacture houses in sections that can be slotted together on-site with minimal labour. Many of Britain's leading housebuilders, including Berkeley, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon and Your Housing, told Reuters they were either planning new developments of prefabricated homes or considering doing so.

"You can almost feel the fear among the contractors and housebuilders where they've been surviving on labor from outside the country," says Mark Stevenson, a managing director of construction supplier Kingspan. "We're being pulled in a direction that customers want us to go in, from more work from the building site into the factory."

Stephanie Clark’s embroidered architecture

2015-05-01T13:06:00-04:00

Stephanie K Clark builds homes from swatches of cloth and spools of thread, embroidering tiny dwellings which appear to absorb the sun and moonlight from her small-scale scenes. The structures and their surrounding landscaping appear in vibrant colors while supporting and environment-specific trees, cacti, flamingos, and dogs lay nearby in faint black outlines.

Artist Charles Young crafts mini paper metropolis on the daily

2015-01-27T14:36:00-05:00

No, these aren't props from an upcoming Wes Anderson film. These mini paper structures are all part of Paperholm, a daily project by Scottish artist Charles Young. Constructed by hand with only watercolor paper, PVA glue, the occasional dressmaking pin, along with an eye for detail, Young is building his own cityscape, one intricate building at a time.

Young started making small paper models while he was studying architecture at the University of Edinburgh. After completing his M.Arch degree last summer, he eventually began Paperholm as a motivational way to test and develop his creativity and model-making skills on a daily basis.

So far, he has built an array of treehouses, churches, carousels, cabins, towers, and other urban buildings. "I especially like making the structures with a lot of cut out detail even though these take quite a long time," Young wrote via email. "I quite often find myself coming back to tower structures but I try to keep the models varied to produce a mix ...

Vinn Patararin challenges the possibilities of textile architecture

2014-11-12T14:42:00-05:00

Vinn Patararin combines the craftsmanship, experience, and interests of multi-disciplinary designers Vinn Chokkhatiwat and Patararin Pongprast. Training separately at prestigious architecture and design schools in Thailand and France followed by working with different Parisian haute couturiers, Chokkhatiwat and Pongprast also incorporate cross-disciplinary theories from sociology, history, art, and culture in their design philosophy.

Vinn Patararin's garments don some seemingly common traits of architecture-meets-fashion pieces — like emphasis on material choice, utilitarian details, pared-down colors, etc. — but the designers add their trademark with their lattice-patterned textile.

Vinn Patararin wanted to create an architecturally structured textile pattern that can adapt to the functional needs and expression of the user. Whether the textile is worn on a human body, used as furniture accents, in art installations, or even applied as a building façade, the designers wanted to chall...

Winners of the Beaux Arts Ball 2014: Craft ticket giveaway

2014-09-16T14:34:00-04:00

We're excited to announce the two lucky winners who will get to attend the Architectural League of New York's Beaux Arts Ball 2014: Craft, happening at the historic Weylin B. Seymour's in Brooklyn, NY this Saturday!

The winners are:

Brian P., NYC
George D., NYC

Congrats to you both! Hope you (and your guests) have a splendid evening at the ball. Last but not least, thanks to everyone that participated in the giveaway.

Win tickets to ArchLeague's Beaux Arts Ball 2014: Craft in New York on September 20

2014-09-12T15:19:00-04:00

The Architectural League of New York's Beaux Arts Ball 2014: Craft on September 20 is coming up! Tickets to the festive event are currently on sale, but guess what: Archinect is giving away two pairs of tickets to two lucky readers! (two tickets for each winner)

TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY: In the comment section below, give at least one example of a building or architectural detail that exemplifies the art of "craft". Two winners will be chosen on Monday, September 15.

Read on for more details...

Taking place this year at the historic Weylin B. Seymour's in Brooklyn, the ball's 2014 theme "Craft" celebrates the value of artisanship and multi-disciplinary collaboration in creating architecture. Nine architects and designers will work with Nuit Blanche New York to create digital projection interpretations that will highlight the "craft" of the interior design of Weylin B. Seymour's, which is an 1875 George B. Post and Peter B.Wight-designed former Williamsburgh Savings Bank.

For the next two w...

The Arch League announces 2014 Beaux Arts Ball: Craft, co-chaired by Tod Williams & Billie Tsien

2014-09-04T15:53:00-04:00

The time has come for The Architectural League of New York's annual Beaux Arts Ball, taking place at Weylin B. Seymour's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Saturday, September 20. The 2014 theme, "Craft", celebrates the value of artisanship in architecture and multi-disciplinary collaboration in creating architecture. This year's co-chairs include Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

Drawing inspiration from the recent interior renovations of Weylin B. Seymour's — an 1875 George B. Post and Peter B.Wight-designed former Williamsburgh Savings Bank — nine architects and designers will work with Nuit Blanche New York to create digital projection interpretations that will highlight the "craft" of the building's interior design.

More event details from The Architectural League:

"[Weylin B. Seymour's ] exuberant interior decorations of tiling and mosaics, patterned wallpapers, frescoed domes, carved wood and stone, and bronze and gilt work, recently magnificently restored, will serve as inspiration for ...

Timea Tihanyi's Constructs - Not Printed, Made

2014-04-22T21:12:00-04:00

...the little structures will remind you of every last thing: foreclosed houses...the Olympic stadium in Beijing...the Colosseum, the crumbling ruins next door to the Colosseum. Each building maps a path through Tihanyi's mind, and yours. You visit every teeny room...climb every ladder...Then you return to your big self, looking down on layers of sheen and pale color emanating from the surfaces, as if layers of translucent skin have been laid on top of flesh. How could you not love these?

Art critic Jen Graves (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize ultimately won by Inga Saffron) reviews the tiny building-like constructions made by artist Timea Tihanyis. But while architecture aficionados will find these little structures initially reminiscent of 3D printed models, their laborious, fragile craftsmanlike construction reveals them as being made of Merleau -Ponty's "the flesh of the world". In other words (fighting words?), revealing them to be much more like architecture.

She came to find her memory

2013-01-07T15:32:00-05:00

"In offering an alternative view, Wang disputes that the power and prevalence of huge new building projects are the only or inevitable architectural products his country has to offer"

Last year Rowan Moore had a chance to speak with Wang Shu (winner of the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize) when he was in London for the Sustaining Identity conference at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The conference sought to bring together acclaimed international architects whose work resists homogenisation by prioritising place, the senses and memory. Their discussion published early last month, touched on the temporal nature of China's massive building projects, the influence of but not strict adherence to traditional building methods and forms, along with the reason the studio has Amateur, in its name.