Archinect - News

John Knight's installation at REDCAT makes you think about the difference

2016-05-15T12:00:00-04:00

His installation invites comparison to other kinds of architectural fakery, including malls, entertainment centers, theme parks and casinos. Many of these businesses serve themselves up as sanitized versions of real cities.

L.A Times reviews John Knight exhibition at the REDCAT in Los Angeles.

John Knight's work is known internationally for its institutional critique and its meticulously investigated in-situ precision opening itself to the series of further questions. What is behind the subjects concerning the things that matter, made visual in the aesthetics of the works which materialize as carefully designed objects, housing critical subtexts anywhere from economics to physical architecture to federal politics of territoriality to the institutionalization of art and other mirrored contexts with penetrating acumen provoking the viewer to "think" as the L.A. Times critic David Pagel quotes in his review title.

"What's wrong with the primitive hut?" explores architecture's origins

2014-03-05T17:38:00-05:00

The Bowerbird is named for its very particular mating ritual, where the male constructs an elaborate bower-structure and decorates it with a shrine of colorful objects in order to attract potential mates. Males will spend hours gathering sticks and shiny things to complete their bower, which tend to follow two basic typologies: a tent-like cone of sticks, or two stick-walls in parallel, forming a little avenue. Whether the bowerbird builds the tent or the avenue depends pretty consistently on the species, but once the bowers are bedazzled, the structures become absolutely unique to that particular bird and its surroundings.

It’s not clear whether the bowerbird’s habits predate the first instance of human architecture, but to imagine that an inception point of our architectural history owes itself to a horny bird throws an interesting irreverence into the thought-piece of “what is the origin of architecture?”. Last Monday at the REDCAT theater in downtown Los Angeles, Pier Paolo Tam...

Parametric smackdown: Patrik Schumacher and Reinhold Martin debate at CalArts conference

2013-11-19T16:05:00-05:00

CalArts two-day symposium on “The Politics of Parametricism” opened last Friday with a conversation between Reinhold Martin, associate professor at Columbia University’s GSAPP, and Patrik Schumacher, partner at Zaha Hadid Architects. Their debate, while at times tending more towards dysfunctional improv theater than academic discussion, revolved around the relationship between architecture and politics -- generally speaking, Martin sees the two as indelibly linked, while Schumacher idealizes their explicit separation. Their debate didn’t concern the visual aesthetics of parametric design, so much as argue about its utility in political systems.

Patrik Schumacher

As an event presented by CalArts’ MA Aesthetics & Politics program, the Martin-Schumacher debate did not explicitly discuss individual architecture projects, but tended more on the side of critical architectural theory. To introduce their debate, both Martin and Schumacher presented papers on their approach to parametr...

“The Politics of Parametricism” conference coming to Los Angeles this November

2013-08-28T12:57:00-04:00

"The Politics of Parametricism" conference at LA's Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) from Nov. 15-16 explores the vast complexities of Parametrics, the evolving design paradigm described as becoming the "avant-garde in architecture and design" and "the next 'grand style' of architectural movements."