Archinect - News

Meow Wolf opens new 95,000-square-foot installation space in small plot surrounded by three highways in Denver

2022-04-01T19:35:00-04:00

Let’s start with a little exercise. I would like you to input “Meow Wolf Denver” on Google Maps (here, I did it for you) and look at where the red pin falls on the map. Do you see it yet, the small, somewhat tear-shaped building tucked inside an interwoven web of highways? That, my friends, is Denver’s newest arts destination—and it sits on a tiny, triangular plot of land at the intersection of three highways.

Meow Wolf, the Sante Fe-based arts and entertainment company that specializes in hosting large-scale immersive experiences, has set up shop in Denver, with a new, uniquely-positioned space that opened to the public in September 2021.

The building, spanning 5 stories and 95,000 square feet, was designed to fill the void between a stretch of I-25 and two off-ramps. Its façade is clad with specialty matte panels to ensure the building doesn’t create a glare for drivers.

Before settling on this location, Meow Wolf had two other potential locations in mind, both located in Denver’s River North Art District. The team decided against these locations because building would have required the displacement of existing organizations in an area that was already experiencing gentrification. Meow Wolf, thus, called upon Denver-based architecture firm Shears Adkins Rockmore (SAR +) and boutique real estate firm Revesco Properties.

The key to utilizing such a constrained space was building the st...

Check out this eye-candy architecture from Africa

2017-08-31T12:45:00-04:00

In this round-up of notable architecture in Africa, Wired takes a closer look at projects from Morocco to South Africa, including the Lideta Mercato in Ethiopia by Xavier Vilalta and the Bosjes Chapel by Steyn Studio. As the piece notes, "Contemporary African architecture is extremely varied: it ranges from sustainable rural developments to luxury apartments and offices; from schools and hospitals to swanky safari lodges; and from huge infrastructure projects to makeshift improvisations. In all of these styles is a sensitivity to local traditions combined with on-the-ground ingenuity." It's also quite visually arresting.

Lideta Mercato by Xavier Vilalta. Image: Gonzalo Guajardo

Summer in Bryant Park rendered as a Voronoi Diagram

2017-08-08T14:40:00-04:00

Instead of the usual snap of people lounging in the sun in Bryant Park, visual effects artist Rod Bogart has created a Voronoi diagram of the outing and posted it to his Twitter account. When asked how he had placed the center points of the diagram, Bogart tweeted that "I used Illustrator to drop points and then just ran a plugin that created the Voronoi for me. It was pretty quick to do, to be honest."

China's transit-elevated bus is officially discontinued

2017-07-06T13:37:00-04:00

Many transportation experts were worried about the viability of the project from its earliest stages, including one of the concept creators, Craig Hodgetts. An architecture professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, Hodgetts told Quartz last August that the TEB appeared be an “immature project” with some “fundamental problems.” He mentioned, for example, the tight space potentially having a psychological effect on drivers who might respond by braking when driving under the bus.

While no clear reason has been given as to why the trial run of the so-called "car-eating" bus has been shuttered, Chinese officials have confirmed that they are removing the electric tracks on which the TEB was running. The trial run was launched last year in August, around which time hopeful videos, such as the one below, were released to demonstrate the concept:

A MAD gallery in Beijing that doubles as "a new facade for the city"

2017-05-30T19:16:00-04:00

Galleries often act as stagnant interior display spaces: their primary function is to host works in a relatively unobtrusive way that is artful without being ostentatious. But what about galleries that are designed to serve another purpose, as the freshly completed Roca’s Beijing Gallery in Dongzhimen by MAD Architects does?

Instead of tacking a few fixed pieces onto the walls, the gallery itself has an interior LED-laden wall that projects images both of gallery visitors and the pedestrians outside in a purposeful attempt to create an interface with the surrounding urban environment. Imagine combining the introspective mirror and looped video concepts of someone like Dan Graham with the aesthetic thirst for juxtaposition of a gallery curator: the rotating series of images, which was designed by art critic and curator Jérôme Sans, changes at varying intervals, and can be glimpsed by those passing by outside.

Sometimes the changes occur in seconds; in others, days go by before the imag...

Dror and Gensler propose underground cruise operation for Istanbul's Galataport masterplan

2017-05-04T18:11:00-04:00

Imagine combining the movable gangway employed for airplane passengers with the slender above-ground urban footprint of a subway station, and you have the basic concepts behind Gensler and Dror's proposed underground cruise operation in their masterplan for the Galataport in Istanbul. Using a hydraulic boardwalk that deploys a rising gangway when and only when a ship docks, the system only takes up 3.5 meters of boardwalk.

The architects wanted to free up the now mainly inaccessible-to-the-public 1.2 kilometer Bosphorus abutting boardwalk while still servicing cruise ships, so they invented this underground system in combination with interdisciplinary firm BEA.

As Dror Benshetrit, principal of Dror explains, “Through the collaboration of our partners, we’ve been able to relocate the cruise terminal in an unprecedented way and design a plan that respects the cultural texture of Istanbul. It is our hope that the revitalized neighborhood will reconnect local residents and visitors with n...

Jose Oubrerie's legendary and innovative Miller House on the market for $550K

2017-04-13T14:34:00-04:00

According to a listing on Zillow, Jose Oubrerie's visually complex, materially innovative Miller House is now on the market for $550,000. Each room is a study in unusual and exactingly executed detail; cabinets transition seamlessly into L-shaped shelving, while doors become hosts for asymmetrically placed conduits latched with what appears to be matte-finished silver nickel. Vivid bursts of color abruptly appear among otherwise natural-toned wood, from an electric blue wall to a wild red kitchen cabinet.

The effect is something akin to traveling through an architect's unbridled imagination; although the house does possess its own internal logic, the constant visual stimulus delivers perpetual surprise.

The Zillow listing possess a link to a 3D photographic tour of the house, which allows one to get a fuller sense of how the elements interlock, and just how dizzying it is to stride from one floor to another.

Carlo Ratti Associati designs a floating plaza at West Palm Beach letting visitors walk on (and beneath) water

2016-11-03T14:25:00-04:00

Using some of the same design techniques used for responsive air chambers in submarines, Carlo Ratti Associati has designed a floating plaza/mixed retail center that will float on and adapt to the water level depending on how many people are currently walking on it. The plaza, which is linked to land via a comprehensive masterplan on the coast of Lake Worth Lagoon, will also include housing (whose property values will hopefully never be underwater). The plaza will also feature "an organic restaurant with its own hydroponic cultivations," making it a potentially self-sustaining enterprise.

The inventive use of underwater vessel technology is, to director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founding partner Carlo Ratti, an entirely new way of conceiving architecture. Ratti describes his project as "carving" into the water. He goes on to say that “with this project, we aim to reclaim West Palm Beach’s connection to the natural elements that surroun...