Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects' new Chengdu Science Fiction Museum has opened in China

2023-10-24T17:41:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has shared photos and a video to coincide with this month's inauguration of its new Chengdu Science Fiction Museum project in China.

The culmination of the firm’s now 15-year-long foray into the country that has produced multiple science and cultural sector designs in addition to the new Beijing Daxing International Airport complex has yielded an over 635,000-square-foot structure replete with a variety of flexible interior spaces meant to showcase the region’s extraordinary contributions to the literary genre and located in the heart of Chengdu’s Science & Innovation New City Pidu district.

Photo: Lan Dongjie

The firm says the project is designed to emulate a nebula constellation with a star at its center, allowing visitors to embark from within a ‘star cloud’ that disperses energy directionally into different zones housing its various programmatic elements.

Photo: Arch-Exist

Inside, a skylit central atrium welcomes users into the museum experi...

Zaha Hadid Architects reveals Chengdu Science Fiction Museum design in Sichuan Province

2023-01-26T18:57:00-05:00

The next major cultural project from Zaha Hadid Architects has been revealed after the firm published the first images of its under-construction Chengdu Science Fiction Museum to coincide with the announcement that it will play host to the Hugo Awards later this year.

In the form of a solar nebula, the 59,000-square-meter (635,000-square-foot) museum is designed for maximal programmatic flexibility with the intention of “creating a journey of discovery that weaves between indoor and outdoor plazas at multiple levels.”

Rendering: Atchain, image courtesy ZHA

A skylit central atrium holds the key to the interior design, with gallery spaces, a large theater, and concert hall emanating from its node. Finally, the museum’s hybrid ventilation system combines with a roof canopy array of photovoltaics to help the project attain the maximum 3-star rating achievable under the Chinese Green Building Program.

Rendering: Atchain, image courtesy ZHA

Rendering: ...

Colin Cantwell, the architecture lover who designed the Death Star, has died

2022-05-24T09:00:00-04:00

Designer Colin Cantwell, who was responsible for the design of the Death Star and several iconic ships in the Star Wars saga, has passed away at the age of 90. The news was confirmed by the designer’s partner, Sierra Dall, and reported first by the Hollywood Reporter.

Born in San Francisco in 1932, Cantwell earned a degree in animation from the University of California, Los Angeles. Cantwell was in fact the first animation graduate in the history of UCLA, having suggested to the school that they add an animation major.

In tandem with his love of space and animation, Cantwell described architecture as his other major passion. During his studies, Cantwell spent months creating building designs with the goal of attracting the attention of Frank Lloyd Wright. Cantwell ultimately traveled unannounced to the architect’s School of Architecture at Taliesin, Wisconsin to personall...

Liam Young presents vision for high-density sci-fi metropolis with 10 billion inhabitants

2021-10-08T11:40:00-04:00

The director and speculative architect Liam Young has launched a new project, speculating on the future of urbanism within the context of climate change and urban sprawl. The project, titled Planet City, presents a future world in which urban sprawl is reversed, and humanity retreats to one densely populated city, allowing the world beyond the city’s borders to re-wild and rejuvenate.

The hypothetical project is presented through a 15-minute short film and an associated book publication. Young also presented the project in a TED talk released in August of this year. The film presents scenes from life in the city, which sees a population of ten billion people supported by renewable energy sources, pumped hydro storage, and the utilization of algae as a food and filtration system. Young has designed the city as a “closed-loop system” which is waste-free and constructed entirely of recycled materials.

Algae lakes. Image: Liam Young

For Young, the city is a critique of hundreds of years...

Remembering Syd Mead and his futuristic visions of the built environment

2020-01-03T14:04:00-05:00

Revered as a legend in the field of science-fiction, the American industrial designer Syd Mead has given the world memorable and inspiring designs of what the future could be. Recognized for his contributions on the silver screen, he produced conceptual art for blockbuster Hollywood films like Tron, Alien, Star Trek, Short Circuit, and Blade Runner, to name a few. After graduating from Art Center College of Design, Mead started his career as an automobile illustrator for the Ford Motor Company in 1959. He eventually became a sought after illustrator creating architectural renderings and drawings for clients all over the world.

Image from Mead's U.S. Steel Series. Image © Syd Mead.

Beyond his numerous accolades and unforgettable artwork inspiring retro-futurists and science-fiction enthusiasts alike, what strikes me the most is Mead's commitment to transforming possibilities of the built environment. According to Mead, in a 2008 i...

Syd Mead, visionary futurist illustrator, has passed away

2019-12-30T19:39:00-05:00

Syd Mead, the legendary science fiction illustrator responsible for concocting the retro-futurist conceptual drawings that inspired movies like Blade Runner, Aliens, and Tron and other seminal sci-fi films, has passed away at age 86.

Mead passed away in his Pasadena, California home on December 30, 2019 according The Hollywood Reporter. Mead’s death follows a three year struggle with lymphoma, according to Mead’s spouse, Roger Servick, THR reports.

Mead studied at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena after three years of service in the United States Army, graduating in 1959. Following this period, he designed cars for Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Studio before setting out on his own as a freelance illustrator, a career-altering trajectory that eventually situated him as a conceptual artist for Hollywood-produced films, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Tron, Aliens, Mission to Mars, Mission: Impossible III, Elysium, and Blade Runner 2049, among man...

Japanese photographer Hisaharu Motada envisions a post-apocalyptic Tokyo

2018-09-10T15:38:00-04:00

The work of Japanese photographer Hisaharu Motada envisions what Tokyo might look like in some version of the future. Offering glimpses of doomsday, Motoda's lithographs depict deserted cityscapes, crumbling buildings, monuments overgrown with weeds, and other markings of a post-apocalyptic world. Picturing familiar Tokyo landscapes devoid of humans and overrun by plant life, Motada captures a sense of both the world′s past and its future. In another series, titled Neo-Ruins, he gives the same treatment to notable works such as the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and the Sydney Opera House. Below, a selection of some of his work.

Revelation: Kabukicho I; 2004. Hisaharu Motoda.

Revelation: The Kaminarimon Gate; 2005. Hisaharu Motoda.

Indication: Opera House, Sydney; 2010. Hisaharu Motoda.

30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin); 2017. Hisaharu Motoda.

The final frontier: wheelchair accessibility in science fiction

2018-08-01T15:29:00-04:00

Space remains a vast, untamed place, penned in only by the limits of our own imaginations. So why the hell are there so many staircases in space? [...] Once you start realizing how many stairs there are stopping you in real life, it becomes impossible not to notice them existing in the sci-fi you adore. Turns out they’re everywhere [...] our sci-fi imitates a real-world reliance on steps and stairs in our architecture.

With Staircases in Space: Why Are Places in Science Fiction Not Wheelchair-Accessible?, Ace Ratcliff pens an excellent analysis of the pervasive presence of staircases in sci-fi that appear to foreshadow a future where universal accessibility for wheelchair-bound people like herself—and beyond that, the full inclusion in society—remain utterly unachieved.

"Unfortunately, 50 years worth of Federation starship manifestations also means half a century of inaccessibility," writes Ratcliff. "The original USS Enterprise bridge has enough steps you could take the equivalent of an aerobics class just trying to get from the turbolift to the Captain’s chair. The same level of inaccessibility goes for both the USS Voyager and USS Discovery, and if you’re a wheelchair user, you better not try to grab an after-shift bottle of bloodwine at Quark’s Bar unless you plan on dragging yourself up several steps to get there. In fact, the bridge from The Next Generation’s Enterprise is the only one that...

The Corner of Lovecraft and Ballard

2017-06-20T17:22:00-04:00

For Lovecraft, the ubiquitous angle between two walls is a dark gateway to the screaming abyss of the outer cosmos; for Ballard, it’s an entry point to our own anxious psyche.

H.P. Lovecraft and J.G. Ballard both put architecture at the heart of their fiction, and both made the humble corner into a place of nightmares. Will Wiles delves into the malign interiors of their imagined worlds and the secret history of the spaces where walls meet.

Designing "a dystopian edge" into the 1970s consumerism of J.G. Ballard's "High-Rise"

2016-03-10T05:10:00-05:00

graphic artists Michael Eaton and Felicity Hickson designed a wide range of props, from books and cigarette packs to the entire contents of a supermarket ... to help cement the look and feel of 1970s apartment living [...] the film follows Dr Robert Laing ... as he adjusts to his new life as a tenant on the 25th floor and explores the relationships between the building’s various social groups and the tribal mentalities that emerge as the tower gradually descends into chaos.

In any discussion of poor doors, newly urbanized class structures, or gentrification, there's a spot for J.G. Ballard's "High-Rise" (1975). Check out the trailer for the film adaptation, directed by Ben Wheatley, below.

Future cities of the past

2015-04-29T18:17:00-04:00

But supplementing that aesthetic of “the future” sketched in imaginary edifice, the full SF vision of the future city is a mosaic, constructed from fragments of the cities that we recognize, including symbols that are decidedly from the past. [...] If SF functions by taking the world we know and altering it with a constructed future fantasy, the Statue of Liberty serves as the junction point, the axis where the speculative fantasy begins and ends.

Architecture publication CLOG releases gorgeous "SCI-FI" issue

2013-08-30T19:48:00-04:00

Rod Serling, creator of the 1950s television series "The Twilight Zone", defined science fiction as "the improbable made possible." The same might be said for the practice of architecture. After all, architects by trade conceive of spaces, places, and worlds that do not (yet) exist. Furthermore, the ability to make the improbable possible is held in especially high regard today and is oftentimes what defines an architectural practice as “innovative” in the first place.

Contemporary architecture publication CLOG has released its seventh issue, SCI-FI. In the digital glow of the internet age, architectural discourse has become both bountiful and ephemeral, oftentimes muddling the lay of the land. In response, “CLOG slows things down. Each issue explores, from multiple viewpoints and through a variety of means, a single subject particularly relevant to architecture now. Succinctly, on paper, away from the distractions and imperatives of the screen.”
With its precise curation and focused content, CLOG’s SCI-FI examines the mutually-affecting relationship between architecture and science fiction in a variety of ventures. SCI-FI honors this “two-way artistic influence between architecture and science fiction” while provoking readers to consider future architectural aesthetics and the aesthetics of futurism. Previous issues have showcased themes surrounding BIG, Apple, and Brutalism. SCI-FI features over forty contributors from the architecture world ...