Archinect - News

Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Moscow park sparks wild urbanism on another level

2018-08-24T13:58:00-04:00

As Moscow’s Zaryadye Park approaches its first birthday next month, the city’s chief architect, Sergei Kuznetsov, is defending the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed green space for an unexpected feature: its aphrodisiacal properties. Just a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, the firm’s carefully crafted experiment in “wild urbanism” has lived up to its billing, apparently, becoming something of a hotbed for outdoor lovemaking.

Moscow's one year old $245 million public park by Diller Scofidio + Renfro was meant to bring freedom of exploration and a feeling of comfort within the urban setting. The space provides visitors with an amphitheater, flora-covered terraces, green spaces with views of the city, and a 230 foot walkway over the Moscow river. The public space has also seen a high number of couples caught on park cameras having sex. "Wild urbanism" indeed.

Charles Renfro exclaims, “I love this! What freedom our park has brought to Moscow, and what tolerance it seems to be engendering from the authorities.”

The Archisutra is an architect's manual to sex positions

2017-12-05T17:59:00-05:00

London-based architect Miguel Bolivar recently released his side project Archisutra, an architecture and design take on the Kama Sutra. This manual gives you all the data with annotated scale drawings and informative descriptions including categorizations of 'Typical Location' and 'Sustainability'. Each position is inspired by an iconic building and often incorporates the use of designer furniture.

Truss Me, in 'Archisutra' by Miguel Bolivar. Photo: The Archisutra/Facebook.

Archisustra's precise drawings were inspired by da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Le Corbusier's standard model of the human form, The Modulor. Bolivar explains the project arose from questioning how sex should be considered in design, and furthering the idea that architecture should be centered around human life.

The Pompidou, 'Archisutra' by Miguel Bolivar. Photo: The Archisutra/Facebook.

Too risqué for the Louvre, the Domestikator will be shown at Pompidou

2017-10-13T13:36:00-04:00

After the Louvre demurred, an art installation many consider to be sexually explicit will instead be displayed outside the Pompidou Center in Paris.

The Louvre might not want it, but the Pompidou will take it!

The 40-foot-tall, semi-building, semi-sculpture, "Domestikator," by the Dutch art and design collective Atelier Van Lieshout, was intended to be shown in the Tuileries Gardens, next to the Louvre. But the Museum cancelled the project; the Louvre's president and director, Jean-Luc Martinez explained: “Online commentaries point out this work has a brutal aspect. It risks being misunderstood by visitors to the gardens.”

Joep van Lieshout, Atelier Van Lieshout’s founder, replied, “The piece itself is not really very explicit. It’s a very abstracted shape. There are no genitals; it’s pretty innocent.”

While Louvre faced censorship accusations, the "Domestikator" will find asylum at the Centre Pompidou. Parisians and tourists will be able to see the work from October 18 to 22; we hope they don't misunderstand it.

Louvre pulls "sexually explicit" architectural sculpture; faces censorship accusations

2017-10-03T18:15:00-04:00

Officials at the Louvre have been accused of censorship after withdrawing a work from its Tuileries Gardens in Paris for being sexually explicit. The work by the Dutch art and design collective Atelier Van Lieshout, entitled the Domestikator, was due to go on show later this month as part of the Hors les Murs public art programme organised by representatives of the Fiac contemporary art fair (19-22 October).

The Art Newspaper explains: "[...] the erotic nature of the large-scale architectural structure, the outline of which depicts a couple having sex, prompted the Louvre’s decision to bar the work from the gardens which are overseen by the museum."

Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez tried to defend the decision by pointing to online feedback the installation had received.

UK's second tallest tower's resemblance to a sex toy raises controversy

2017-09-28T13:56:00-04:00

Peaking at 236 metres high, One Lansdowne will be taller than any Canary Wharf tower block and only eclipsed by The Shard, which is 95 floors and 310 metres.

The British are notorious for giving funny nicknames to their buildings. The construction of the One Lansdowne has not yet started, but Londoners have already noticed the tower's resemblance to a Rampant Rabbit sex toy.

Platinum Rampant Rabbit Vibrator

Image CZWG Architects

The asymmetrical horse-shoe shaped complex is composed of two towers of 68 and 41 stories, linked by an 11-story podium. The towers will host affordable housing units, apartments, a hotel, a gym, commerces and office spaces. At 775 feet high, it would be the second tallest building in the UK.

Image CZWG Architects

Croydon approved the design but the plans need to be approved by the mayor of London before construction starts.

Image CZWG Architects

Cuba to bring back hourly rental "love hotels"

2017-07-05T14:05:00-04:00

The authorities in the Cuban capital, Havana, say they are restoring a network of hotels where rooms are rented by the hour to lovers. State-run "posadas", or love motels, disappeared during Cuba's economic crisis in the 1990s, when they became hurricane shelters. Private householders filled the gap in the market, but at exorbitant prices. Officials say the posadas will be cheaper and will help end the practice of love-making in Havana's open spaces.

Banal Sex Mansion: talking about sex and architecture with Aaron Betsky, on Archinect Sessions #62

2016-04-28T13:56:00-04:00

This week we’re joined by special guest co-host Aaron Betsky, author of Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire and Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture & the Construction of Sexuality. As a strong presence in the architectural discourse of gender and sexuality since the 1990s, Betsky discusses with us a few of our recent Features published under April's special editorial theme, Sex, including:

Betsky was last on the podcast in his current professional capacity as the dean at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin, to talk about the school's then-uncertain future. You can li...

The enduring influence of "Playboy Architecture"

2016-04-14T20:25:00-04:00

Elmhurst Art Museum presents the U.S. debut of Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979, featuring an extensive collection of photographs, films, architectural models and more from Playboy magazine’s inception in 1953 through the 1970s. Curated by Professor Beatriz Colomina and Pep Aviles ... the exhibition showcases how architecture and design played a role in creating the Playboy fantasy as well as how Playboy magazine came to influence the world of architecture and design.

We no doubt have Hugh Hefner and the Playboy empire to thank, in no minor part, for today's standards of architectural photography, and the preeminent role many midcentury designers, featured in their present day in Playboy, enjoy in today's culture.

Got your own take on how sex and sexuality intermingle with architecture? Submit to our open call for our current editorial theme, Sex Aware Design. Click here to submit.

Related on Archinect:

Open Call for Submissions: Sex Aware Design

2016-04-13T15:32:00-04:00

With April comes springtime, and a proliferation of reproduction symbols laden with the sticky pollen of the universal allergen – sex. We're devoting our next editorial issue on Archinect to themes of sex and sexuality in architecture, and we want you to submit (to our open call).

Effective immediately, we're accepting written and design work under the following guidelines:

》EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS: Architecture "Penthouse" Letters
A skyscraper is never just a skyscraper – architecture, in its lines and curves, interiors and textures, is a sensual object. Its space and substance are all around us, and we spend our lives in a passionate, long-lasting relationship with it. Now, we want to hear how that admiration, devotion, fantasy, fetish, straight-up procreation – or whatever gets you going – intertwines with architecture. However architecture and sex become one in the same, send us your tales of architecture erotica.

》PROJECT SUBMISSIONS: Sex Aware Design
We're looking for projects that w...

Do these buildings turn you on? The psychology of curvy architecture

2013-11-26T12:34:00-05:00

Oshin Vartanian and his colleagues slipped a group of people inside a brain-scanning machine and flashed hundreds of interior designs -- some curvy, some angular -- in front of them. They then had the choice of describing each room as either "beautiful" or "not beautiful." The study found that participants overwhelmingly preferred interior spaces with curving coffee tables, meandering sofas and winding floor patterns to rooms filled with angular furniture and rectilinear design.

Building for a better Sex Life

2013-07-01T01:13:00-04:00

It’s odd how little architects have had to say on the subject of sex. If they’re routinely designing the buildings in which sex happens, then you might expect them to spend more time thinking about it. Buildings frame and house our sexual lives

Richard J Williams (Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures at the University of Edinburgh) is the author of Sex and Buildings: Modern Architecture and the Sexual Revolution (2013). In a recent piece he explores the relationship between sex, communal living and architecture. Mr. Williams, believes that architecture can improve our sex lives.

Design Crime: An Office Shaped Like Lady Parts

2011-09-28T12:05:23-04:00

The showpiece is a staircase smack dab in the middle of the first-floor work room that leads to a second floor with a gaping white void painted red inside. Taranta says it's “reminiscent of a large droplet of water ready to fall from the ceiling.” Uh, yeah. If a “large droplet of water” looks exactly like a vagina.

Karim Rashid Rates Dildo Designs

2010-07-17T18:50:00-04:00

German newspaper die Welt asked superstar global design machine and Fun Factory sextoy shop designer Karim Rashid to comment on dildos. For the one called Dinky Digger he said, "this is a small animal, huh?" Welt Online

TMN on Love Hotels

2007-01-17T11:21:00-05:00

The Morning News has a great photo gallery of Japanese Love Hotels.

Unlike the dank motels where Americans allegedly seek anonymous sex, Japan’s love hotels are playful and unapologetically sexual. Photographer Misty Keasler shows the humor, desire, and even the loneliness of these empty rooms.