Archinect - News

This experimental project in South Korea by On Architecture utilizes concrete infused with rice straw

2023-07-07T15:54:00-04:00

Korean practice On Architecture INC. has created a project that aims to regenerate a village with an aging population in Icheon-si, South Korea, renowned for rice and flower farming.

Named NONSPACE, the project proposes new possibilities through an experimental cross-cultural facility or “cross-space,” as described by the architects, enabling interactions between diverse cultures. It intends to be a site for a variety of programs, going beyond the functions of a typical commercial space.

The architects employed an experimental construction technique by combining exposed concrete with rice straw to form an indoor atmosphere that feels like a straw-woven space.

Before concrete placement, bundles of rice straw were laid on the slab form and drenched with water in order to absorb the concrete’s moisture. The form and bundles were eventually removed, leaving the rice straw embedded in the concrete. Over time, the atmosphere of the space will transform as the straw undergoes changes.

NON...

Matter Design and CEMEX unveil new research on concrete at TED 2019

2019-04-15T14:53:00-04:00

Famous for their popular talks, TED's 2019 conference, which kicks off today in Vancouver, promises thought-provoking speeches from the likes of people such as Twitter's chief executive Jack Dorsey, and the journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who broke last year's Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Amongst the tech innovators and political activists, Brandon Clifford of the Cambridge-based firm Matter Design will be unveiling new research on concrete forms alongside CEMEX Global R&D. Clifford is a 2019 TED Fellow, selected by the program for his research into ancient buildings techniques and technologies.

Walking Assembly. Courtesy of Matter Design.

An MIT architecture professor, Clifford researches early methods of construction, translating them into a modern context and applying them to contemporary buildings and projects. Past research has delved into Bronze Age stone-stacking techniques, which Clifford and his team used to explore new uses of construction waste.

His latest focus is on megali...

Checking in with Scarlet Architects' social living experiment ten years later

2019-03-25T15:01:00-04:00

In 2009, Jane Aimer and Lindley Naismith of the Auckland-based firm Scarlet Architects decided to embark on a social experiment. Rather than the typical single family home, Aimer and Naismith wanted to design a co-living space for their two separate families.

Friends since the second year of architecture school, the two were interested in exploring the notion of intensification and community. "We could see a way we could all support each other," Aimer recalls to the New Zealand site, Stuff.

The result was a set of adjoining townhouses that provided each of their families with separate living spaces while having shared facilities such as a front lobby, a large roof deck, and back gardens integrated throughout.

Ten years later, the families are still living side by side, and their unique housing typology has been perfectly adaptable to the growing realities of multigenerational living as their aging parents lived next door, and their adult children returned home.

The concept of co...

Barbara Bestor on the Jamba Juice “Innovation Bar” she redesigned in Pasadena

2016-06-28T15:34:00-04:00

Usually, you go to these fast casual things and you're in and out in a minute...In all of the commercial projects that we do, the reason that we do them and the reason that we probably get hired to do them is that we are interested in this idea of making a joyous space for everyday activities... It's not so much about the brand name being reinforced everywhere as much as it is to provide this urban amenity living room.

Most people don't rave about the interior design in the average Jamba Juice. But Barbara Bestor and her practice might have changed that in the expanded Old Town Pasadena location they recently revamped. Bestor chats with KPCC's Alex Cohen in this 8-minute conversation about the new “Innovation Bar” concept store, in addition to her other projects around LA.

You can also listen to this previous Archinect Sessions episode featuring Barbara Bestor:

Archinect Sessions #5: Barbara Bestor, The Michael Graves School & Material Witness

Experimental architecture history exhibits spaces with smell

2013-10-11T15:42:00-04:00

In conjunction with the symposium, "Test Sites: Experiments in the History of Space", the California College of the Arts (CCA) Architecture Division will stage the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the recent works of artisans and historians who harness scents, essences and fragrances in the reconstruction and preservation of historical spaces — An Olfactory Archive.

Probably the most under-appreciated sense in the experiential toolbox (unless you count proprioception), smell is often maligned by aesthetic criticism as too ephemeral, too fleeting, to substantiate anything meaningful. But what if it opened the nostrils and minds of the sniffers to imagine architectural space in a new way, or represent a place's atmosphere as it once was? An Olfactory Archive: 1100 - 1969, presented by the Architecture Division at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, explores the atmosphere of historical spaces through smell, in an exhibition that displays reconstructed scents authored by perfumers, architects and artists (and others) who have all worked with smell in the recent past.

The work is part of Test SItes: Experiments in the History of Space. A selection of the featured scents is as follows:

curator Aaron Betsky + Herzog and deMeuron: "Rotterdam - Olfactory Object" (2004)
perfumer Christophe Laudemiel: the Straight of Bosp...