Archinect - News

OPEN Architecture's new performance venue offers us a study in acoustical petrology

2021-12-01T15:04:00-05:00

A fascinating addition to the Chinese cultural program has come online this week with the completion of OPEN Architecture’s Chapel of Sound in Chengde, Hebei Province.

Overlooking the ruins of one of China’s most important historic sites, the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall, the concert hall is made entirely of concrete and enriched with an admixture of minerally-heavy local rocks, encasing a semi-outdoor amphitheater, viewing platform, green room, and outdoor stage. A striated envelope is formed via a series of staggered cantilevers which rise from the rocks below to create an organic-looking profile its designers say is in perfect harmony with the surrounding landscape and sky above.

Inside the building, a slate of winding staircases meanders their way through the structure leading up to the rooftop which offers dynamic views of the valley and the nearby Great Wall.

The building’s form is derived principally from the outsized value the arc...

Global warming is redrawing national borders

2016-06-16T12:35:00-04:00

"Climate change is happening so fast and on such a huge scale that it's forcing us to change the borders of a country," said head of the mapping expedition, Marco Ferrari... The borders of a country are "something we always consider as stable, as a political device, the foundation of the modern state, the most sacred thing, but this huge natural transformation makes clear how disruptive and alarming these changes are," he said.

"Even the biggest and most stable things, like glaciers, mountains—these huge objects, they can change in a few years. We live on a planet that changes, and we try to make rules, to give meaning, but this meaning is completely artificial because nature, basically, doesn't give a shit."

Global warming is one of the most visible aspects of the Anthropocene, a name for the era in which humans activity registers on the geological record. For more on the Anthropocene and its relation to architecture, check out past some past Archinect coverage:

Were Neanderthals the first architects?

2016-05-27T15:51:00-04:00

[...] the stalagmite rings were older than any known cave painting. It also meant that they couldn’t have been the work of Homo sapiens. Their builders must have been the only early humans in the south of France at the time: Neanderthals. The discovery suggested that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than anyone had given them credit for. They wielded fire, ventured deep underground, and shaped the subterranean rock into complex constructions.

How fault creep is (very slowly) tearing one California town apart

2015-04-17T17:45:00-04:00

South of San Francisco, a whole town is being deformed by plate tectonics. [...] This is Hollister, California, a town being broken in two slowly, relentlessly, and in real time by an effect known as “fault creep.” A surreal tide of deformation has appeared throughout the city. As if its grid of streets and single-family homes was actually built on an ice floe, the entire west half of Hollister is moving north along the Calaveras Fault, leaving its eastern streets behind.

Geology and the Art of New York City Subway Construction

2014-11-03T13:27:00-05:00

The Second Avenue Subway is the stuff of legend in New York City, the locomotive who cried wolf. Plagued by funding shortages, the project has been stop-and-go since the 1920s. Now construction is back to go; in late September, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) [...] requested $1.5 billion [...]. Michael Horodniceanu, head of construction for the MTA, has stated that the long-awaited line may be ready by 2029. In the meantime, the MTA is learning about, and acting on, geology.