Archinect - News

UK to radically overhaul land-use system in the name of "beauty"

2020-08-06T12:27:00-04:00

the government is tearing up the national rule book that has been in place since the second world war to ensure the best use of land, and replacing it with three simple classifications. From now on, all land in England will be designated for either “growth”, with automatic planning permission, “renewal”, with permission subject to some basic checks, or “protection”, preserving the sacrosanct status of the green belt.

Among the drastic streamlining of the planning approval process proposed is a system of automatic approvals that privileges pattern book-style developments that make use of readymade designs similar to those already used in Bath, Belgravia and Bournville, BBC reports.

Why beautiful things make us happy (and, apparently, modernism can make us sad)

2018-11-01T18:32:00-04:00

This video, a collaboration between Kurzgesagt and Sagmeister & Walsh, is part of their upcoming Beauty exhibition at the MAK Vienna which opened on October 23rd.

A glimpse of Ian Gillespie's “Fight for Beauty” pop-up exhibition in Vancouver

2017-10-30T17:40:00-04:00

The exhibition “Fight for Beauty” is a physical manifestation of the book of the same name by Westbank founder Ian Gillespie, who Archinect previously interviewed here. Currently displayed near Vancouver's Fairmont Pacific Rim, the pop-up exhibition — just like the book — celebrates Westbank's evolution into a culture company.

Photo credit: Ema Peter.

Curated by Gillespie, the exhibition pays tribute to Westbank's many creative collaborations. Upon entering the magenta graffiti pavilion, visitors first encounter the poem Fight for Beauty written in neon. The self-guided exhibition features works like an expanded version of Omer Arbel's iconic sculptural glass forest “16.480”, a custom-made “Butterfly Fazioli” piano designed by the late architect Bing Thom, and architectural models like Kengo Kuma's Alberni, the Bjarke Ingels-designed Vancouver house and 2016 Serpentine Pavilion.

Photo credit: Ema Peter

Photo credit: Ema Peter.

Other pieces include vintage couture by Yves Saint Laurent a...

An ode to Brutalism

2016-06-21T15:59:00-04:00

Brutalism will never happen again. Our stock of Brutalism is limited, and sadly under constant attack. The demolition and ‘refurbishment’ of great buildings by Rudolph, I M Pei, Denys Lasdun and other giants of the movement should be taken as seriously as would the loss of buildings by Donato Bramante, Christopher Wren or Frank Lloyd Wright. Brutalism deserves far better than the wrecker’s ball: it was the pinnacle of world architecture through all of history.

Susan Sontag on Beauty vs. Interestingness

2015-01-20T18:52:00-05:00

The perennial tendency to make of beauty itself a binary concept, to split it up into “inner” and “outer,” “higher” and “lower” beauty, is the usual way that judgments of the beautiful are colonized by moral judgments.

Susan Sontag would have been 82 years old this week. Here is a link to some of her illuminating writings as pointed by Maria Popova. We could use some of these ideas applying them to architecture as we, hopefully, move towards more "interesting" criticism after a period of sling-shotting and targeting the walls of the obvious.

Can beautiful architecture inspire Americans to become good citizens?

2014-11-26T14:04:00-05:00

A hundred and some years ago, an aesthetic force called the City Beautiful movement professed the theory that grand public buildings, lovely civic palaces, could inspire Americans to become good citizens. [...] Since the 1960s, though, it seems as if great civic architecture has become an embarrassment. Politicians who love to cut ribbons find it hard to justify paying for beautiful on top of functional. The result is a style I call Sunbelt Stalinism [...].

Enlightenment About Parking: Q&A with Architect Darius Sollohub

2014-04-29T14:30:00-04:00

We might ask ourselves the question, why is it that so many communities want to disguise the utilitarian cell phone tower as a fake tree? They fool no one and actually call more attention to them. Or why are there hundreds of parking structures that have false façades that make people initially think they are foreclosed buildings with all the windows broken? There seems to be much cultural confusion about the beauty of the utilitarian.

Why We Love Beautiful Things

2013-02-27T19:03:00-05:00

window views of landscapes, research shows, can speed patient recovery in hospitals, aid learning in classrooms and spur productivity in the workplace. In studies of call centers, for example, workers who could see the outdoors completed tasks 6 to 7 percent more efficiently than those who couldn’t, generating an annual savings of nearly $3,000 per employee.

Editor's Picks #266

2012-05-28T20:14:00-04:00

In Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center, Alexander Maymind argued the center's "grid-based diagrams instantiate disestablishment effects[2]...hinge on a particular aesthetic reading of architectural ugliness." 18x32 responded "I like where you've gone with the 'Ugly' here, but I don't think this building offers the best example. Nothing about Wexner is viscerally repellant, abhorrent or disgusting."

Alexander Maymind shared his essay Still Ugly After All These Years: A Close Reading of Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center, recently published in One: Twelve Issue 4, April 2012. Therein he begins by suggesting how the center's "grid-based diagrams instantiate disestablishment effects[2] related to the aims of a contemporary art institution sited in a traditional neoclassical campus plan. These effects; critical, discursive and haptic, hinge on a particular aesthetic reading of architectural ugliness."

18x32 responded "I like where you've gone with the 'Ugly' here, but I don't think this building offers the best example. Nothing about Wexner is viscerally repellant, abhorrent or disgusting. Everything is too clean, too precise, too clinical, too withdrawn, too intentional to be grotesque. The 'Uncanny' might be a more accurate descriptor and be more in line with Eisenman's own position (see, for example, his comments on Moneo's Town Hall in Logroño in discussion with Christopher Al...

Brains before beauty: top architecture graduate crowned Miss Universe-Phillipines

2011-04-12T18:45:56-04:00

An architecture magna cum laude graduate from the University of the Philippines who topped the architecture licensure exams in 2010 bested 39 other contestants to win the 2011 Bb. Pilipinas-Universe title at a glittering three-hour coronation night Sunday at the Araneta Coliseum.

Shamcey Supsup, 24, is now a licensed architect and beauty queen in the Philippines. Her portfolio, however, is unavailable online. Her portion of the talent competition involved charcoal pencils and trace paper.