Archinect - News

Architects + artists conceive of the world differently than other people, study reveals

2017-07-06T12:39:00-04:00

In a study conducted by UCL and Bangor University researchers in which people were shown a Google Street View, a painting of St. Peter's Basilica and a surreal computer generated image, architects, sculptors and painters consistently conceptualized of the space differently than those with no background in these professions. As this article in Science Daily explains:

The painters tended to shift between describing the scene as a 3D space or as a 2D image. Architects were more likely to describe barriers and boundaries of the space, and used more dynamic terms, while sculptors' responses were between the two. Painters and architects also differed in how they described the furthest point of the space, as painters called it the 'back' and architects called it the 'end.' The control participants gave less elaborate responses, which the authors say went beyond just a lack of expert terminology.

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration

2016-08-18T02:09:00-04:00

Last year, the group released a report documenting more than 4,000 lynchings between 1877 and 1950. After that report, Mr. Stevenson launched a project to collect soil from unmarked lynching sites around the country. The soil will be placed in glass jars that will be on display at the museum.

Campbell Robertson highlights plans by the Equal Justice Initiative, to build a national memorial to victims of lynching and open a museum that explores African American history from enslavement to mass incarceration.

h/t @Rob Holmes

A milkman's drawings capture Bristol through 8 decades

2016-06-02T16:38:00-04:00

[Garth England's] extraordinary drawings, made in Hengrove Lodge care home between 2006 and 2013 and published in a beautiful book called Murdered with Straight Lines, capture the changing city through the eyes of this post-war everyman. Born in Bristol general hospital in 1935, England spent most of his 79 years in the city’s suburban south: in Knowle West, Hengrove, Bedminster and Totterdown...

The essence of a city isn't just contained in its physical brick and mortar, but in the memory of its denizens. Garth England, who managed to see virtually every type of structure in Bristol in his work as a milk delivery man, began to draw his artistic recollections while in a retirement home, many of which are not only of historical architectural value, but incorporate stories of how certain objects and structures played a role in daily, intimate life:

As the piece notes, “There is something very truthful to Bristol’s suburban development in the details, almost like a social history,” says architectural historian Andrew Foyle, who lives in south Bristol. “What struck me was how extraordinarily accurate to specific houses a lot of Garth’s work is. If you put the Grange at 258 Wells Road, Knowle into Google Maps, for example, you can see he’s completely there.”"

For more on the intersection between art and architecture, check out these original Archinect features:

paraSITE: the bandage...

Nobel Prize in Medicine Is Awarded to Three Who Discovered Brain’s ‘Inner GPS’

2014-10-07T13:15:00-04:00

The three scientists’ discoveries “have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries — how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?” said the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which chooses the laureates. The positioning system they discovered helps us know where we are, find our way from place to place and store the information for the next time

Back in 1971, John O'Keefe identified "place cells" in the brain – neurons that were selectively activated in relation to the subject's place in an environment. He concluded these nerves were composing a mental map of the space, and the collection of multiple place cells constituted a spatial memory of the environment.

Then in 2005, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser identified another group of nerve cells, the so-called "grid cells", that create a coordinate system in the brain. Together, place cells and grid cells create a precise understanding of space in the brain, allowing for navigation and spatial memory.