Archinect - News

A look inside ANNA Stay, the World Hotel Building of the Year 2022 winner at the World Architecture Festival

2023-01-04T17:21:00-05:00

A modular, wooden cabin from Dutch designer Caspar Schols has won the World Hotel Building of the Year 2022 Award at the recent World Architecture Festival (WAF). Named ANNA Stay, the project is recognized for its sustainable design that allows its guests to reconnect with themselves and nature.

Image: Tonu Tunnel

Image: Jorrit 't Hoen

The building blends into its surrounding environment through its highly flexible design. The structure features two protective sliding shells: an inner shell comprising double glass and an outer shell made of wood. The shells can be adjusted, allowing the space to adapt to various weather conditions, moods, or occasions.

Image: Jorrit 't Hoen

In the cold, the insulated wooden shell can retain heat inside the dwelling. If it becomes too warm, inhabitants can slide and close the wooden layer to keep the coolness within. The glass layer can also be slid open to inject cool air to enter. The glass layer also invites natural light ins...

Anyone can build a model, but can you craft an exhibition-quality model? If so, BIG may need your help

2022-04-06T08:27:00-04:00

The technological complexity behind one of the most fundamental parts of the design process has evolved progressively beyond paper and other rudimentary, hand skills-based ways of form-making to include 3D printing, laser-cutting, and even AR systems as the new and constantly improving tools that go into architectural modeling.

As part of our recurring job highlights series, we recently showcased an opportunity to work as a Signage & Wayfinding Project Manager at the iconic graphic design agency Pentagram or as an exhibition design professional at the biggest and most influential art museum in the United States. This week, we're profiling an industry heavyweight as it searches for the right person to play an important part in this crucial step essential to its philosophical underpinnings and pursuit of new business.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is now hiring a full-time Model Shop Assistant to work alongside its Model Shop Manager running the day-to-day operations at the firm’s Brookly...

OMG! designs "Primitive Hut," a pavilion that will decompose over time

2017-10-19T19:18:00-04:00

In his Essai sur l’Architecture, the 18th-century French architecture theorist Marc-Antoine Laugier developed the concept of the Primitive Hut. Exploring the origins of architecture, Laugier described the primitive man as constructing a shelter to protect himself from nature. The iconic frontispiece of the second edition, by the artist, Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen, made the book's argument clear. It shows an allegorical figure, representing architecture, pointing to the primitive hut, a new structural clarity found in nature.

Essai sur l'Architecture, frontispiece by Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen. Image via Wikipedia.

Drawing by OMG!, inspired by Charles-Dominique Joseph Eisen's frontispiece.

Martin Miller from Antistatics and Caroline O’Donnell from CODA—previously featured in our Small Studio Snapshot series—partnered with one another as OMG! to create their own Primitive Hut. Inspired by Marc-Antoine Laugier’s work, the duo created a pavilion made of decomposing materials tha...

Factory and Office Headquarter Annex by SUBdV Architecture

2017-06-30T14:53:00-04:00

Designed by a Brazilian architecture firm SUBdV Architecture, this Factory and Office Annex in São Paulo, fuses high-tech architectural design strategies with local low-tech construction methodologies.

The façade system references the traditional Brazilian ‘cobogo’ shading screen, which controls the filtration of indirect sunlight through the operable windows on the south and west facades, while also creating a thermal mass which prevents the penetration of hot air in the interior spaces.

Photos by Rodrigo Chust

Generated through parametric scripts, the various geometric configurations of blocks produce different sized openings and differently-angled light reflection planes, allowing for the optimal combination of both shading and illumination.

The building's double-height ground floor contains a material storage facility, first and second floors are dedicated to administrative office space for the factory and a showroom of the factory's products.

De...

Clemson University students develop an easy-to-use, low-tech construction method

2017-02-13T12:20:00-05:00

“With a click of the button, someone could order a custom-cut, flat-packed home online, and construct it by hand with the help of their friends and neighbors in a matter of days,” states Kate Schwennsen, professor and director of the School of Architecture at Clemson University. Students at the school have created a construction method that could significantly ease the building of low-tech sustainable housing.

Comprising an interlocking tab-and-slot connection system, the sim[PLY] Framing System is “intuitive and easy”, according to the press release. The buildings “come together much like a 3D puzzle” without nails. Instead, connections are fastened using steel zip ties and screws. That means disassembly is just as easy.

The system uses locally-sourced plywood that has been CNC fabricated. All construction plans are digital and can be used by any CNC router.

Digital manufacturing revolution still held back by outdated equipment

2016-01-28T17:25:00-05:00

Most small manufacturers — a big chunk of the nation’s supply chain — are running older, pre-Internet equipment. “One of the issues we have to address,” said Harris, “is this legacy equipment.” The digital thread can be hard to trace in an entrepreneur like Ellegiers’ plan to ship an app for making a desk, instead of a finished product. “Most shops are definitely not ready for this,” Ellegiers said.

While many American manufacturing workshops may still be stuck with legacy equipment, you can learn more about fabricators at the very forefront of the industry—employing cutting-edge technology in creative ways—in Archinect's new Matters of Scale feature series.

Editor's Picks #322

2013-07-02T12:00:00-04:00

News
RIP - Iconic Danish architect Henning Larsen died in his sleep in his home in Copenhagen on Saturday, June 22, 2013. Henning Larsen was 87 years old.

Lonnae O'Neal Parker of the Washington Post reported that after 14 years in the making and despite recent protests over the Gehry design, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission voted "to move forward with the Frank Gehry-designed memorial to the 34th president". have cheered "Hopefully the pious "National" Civic Art Society can now go bankrupt. LOL!"

Orhan Ayyüce posted a link to #occupygeziarchitecture where a group of architects are documenting the temporary structures that were destroyed by the police in Gezi Park, Istanbul. The group explains "The protests in Istanbul indicated one simple thing for architects (designers?): We need new definitions for architecture in situations when architecture is removed from architects.Each unique structure that we encounter in the streets and Gezi Park has its own in-situ design and impl...

“The Future Is Here: A New Industrial Revolution” Coming to London’s Design Museum

2013-07-01T18:53:00-04:00

This summer, the Design Museum in London will be offering a glimpse into the future of fabrication and manufacturing with The Future Is Here: A New Industrial Revolution, a major new exhibition about the sweeping changes in manufacturing that are transforming our world.

PATTERNING LAB - Workshop Impressions

2012-09-04T17:38:00-04:00

Brooklyn-based design studio and research collective Studio Mode/modeLab has sent us plenty of photos from the recent two-day workshop PATTERNING LAB: Parametric Patterns and Digital Fabrication which took place on August 18-19 in Brooklyn, NY. PATTERNING LAB focused on the topic of Parametric Patterns with Grasshopper for Rhinoceros.

Al.Mualla Cemetery Mural / A Matter of Life and Death

2012-05-10T13:41:00-04:00

Germany-based Egyptian architect Ahmed Al.Badawy has shared with us images of the fascinating project "Al.Mualla Cemetery Mural / A Matter of Life and Death" which won the First Prize at the First Islamic Competition for Ornamenting Makkah Al.Mukarramah (Mecca, Saudi Arabia). Next to Al.Badawy, the design team also included Ahmed Enab and Yasser Mehanna.

Manta at SmartGeometry 2012

2012-04-11T20:07:00-04:00

The good folks at SmartGeometry have sent us some impressive images and videos of the installation "Manta," the result of a workshop at the recent SmartGeometry 2012 conference in Troy, New York.

Find many more photos and videos of the fabrication process in the Bustler article.

CNC-Milled Baby Crib by Radlab, Inc

2011-11-01T19:28:59-04:00

Boston-based design and digital fabrication firm Radlab, Inc has sent us an exceptionally cute example of robo milling: a baby crib with a twist.

Here's the project description from Radlab, Inc:

Eli's Crib
Client: Jose and Ashley Silva
Location: Cambridge, MA
Date: 2011

The hybrid crib and youth bed was commissioned with an interest in creating an alternative to the standard crib: solid instead of slatted, low and partially open rather than high and closed off, compelling and integral as opposed to generic and alien. Our response, in an effort to provide a framework for processing these pragmatic and aesthetic concerns, was to explore an interplay of conceptual dualities: dark and light, hard and soft, thick and thin, solid and void, analog and digital. At its core, the project is a simple expression of the convergence between overtly additive and subtractive processes, the building up of many layers of material meeting the excavation of many layers material. The relation...