Archinect - News

Issey Miyake, the feted 'architect' of high fashion, has passed away in Tokyo aged 84

2022-08-09T21:10:00-04:00

A remarkable intellectual titan of contemporary fashion and high culture has passed away as multiple outlets are reporting the death of iconic Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake on Friday, August 5th after a battle with cancer.

A pioneer of the pleat and use of technologically-driven design, Miyake became a symbol of radical interventions in fashion. He was championed by photographer Irving Penn, Artforum, and many other art world mainstays who formed his early client base, which would later famously include Apple founder Steve Jobs.

In an industry ruled by form, proportion, and silhouette, Miyake used a complex understanding of architectural concepts to design garments that were sculptural in structure and unrepeatable in their unique ability to convey movement and the fluid body. Noted as the first Asian designer to "storm Paris runways in the '70s," his work continues to transcend contemporary fashion. His research-based Pleats Please and later Homme Plissé Issey Miyake lin...

RISD students are helping NASA develop its Artemis mission uniforms for 2025

2022-02-04T10:44:00-05:00

A perfect fusion between fine artists, fashion designers, and rocket scientists is taking flight in New England thanks to the ambitious efforts of some of The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) nerdier undergraduates. NASA and the prestigious design school are now teaming up to outfit astronauts on the agency’s upcoming Artemis I lunar expedition.

Artnet News is reporting that students in a course offered by the school’s apparel design department are now responsible for workshopping prototypes for the high-tech gear that the 18-member crew will incorporate into their uniforms during the 30-day mission.

Designs by undergraduate senior Avantika Velho focused on utility in zero gravity. Image courtesy RISD.

The mission will place an American on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program was deactivated in 1972. Importantly, the mission will see the first time that an American woman and person of color walk on the moon in what has also been thought of by some as a potential ...

Material Bank pushes the future of material discovery and sampling

2020-06-16T12:30:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Material Bank

Material Bank is the world’s largest material marketplace, providing the fastest and most sustainable way to search and sample materials. It simplifies the complex process of material search and sampling by enabling architecture and design professionals to search hundreds of thousands of materials such as paint, flooring, and textiles across hundreds of brands on a single site.

Streamlining the material sampling process, Material Bank focuses on the client and their needs through an expedited search and sampling system.

Image courtesy of Material Bank

Architecture and design firms spend countless hours searching for the right textiles, flooring samples, paint options, and more. Through Material Bank's propriety database, the need for fumbling through large, clunky catalogues will cease to exist thanks to the company's powerful database and ultra-fast logistics hub. Having samples ready for next day presentations can make or break signing ...

Frank Lloyd Wright Textiles on Display at The Met

2019-08-07T11:54:00-04:00

Can architects design wallpaper as arresting as their building facades? In 1955, celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose buildings received UNESCO protected status last month, launched a range of affordable home products for the general public which included a line of fabrics, wallpapers, furniture and paint. An exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York showcases these creations.

New carpet collection by Zaha Hadid Design on display for London Design Festival

2018-09-19T13:35:00-04:00

A new carpet collection by Zaha Hadid Design will be displayed in the studio's London gallery during this year's London Design Festival. Created for Royal Thai, the RE/Form carpet collection consists of 22 designs inspired by four prominent themes in the studio's work: striated lines, ribbonlike projections, pixelated landscapes, and organic cellular shapes.

RE/Form collection by Zaha Hadid Design, pixel design © Zaha Hadid Architects

The designs introduce custom new colors for Royal Thai commercial carpets, with hues of turquoise, red and green in their color palettes.

RE/Form collection by Zaha Hadid Design, cellular design © Zaha Hadid Architects

Translated into Axminster-loomed and hand-tufted designs, each design represents reconfiguration and transformation—the theme itself a reflection of Royal Thai’s recent reformation.

RE/Form collection by Zaha Hadid Design, ribbon design © Zaha Hadid Architec...

Rugs and Textiles go Vertical as Wall Art

2018-06-14T08:00:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by COVER.

As a way of bringing warmth and texture into an interior, people are increasingly likely to use a textile or rug on the wall of their home. Lucy Upward goes in search of the textile makers who are designing for our wall spaces.

During Milan Design Week, I got talking to one Dutch designer, Milla Novo, about how people are becoming more open to the idea of using textiles as wall decoration. ‘I see more designers buying textiles to decorate spaces like hotel rooms and interior projects instead of using paintings,’ she explained while showing me her macramé wall hangings that I could easily picture in a cool white walled interior setting.

In a recent presentation at ABC Carpet & Home, Dutch trend forecaster and champion of contemporary textile design, Lidewij Edelkoort announced that ‘Textiles will govern the century.’ Softwear, Edelkoort’s installation with Google at Rossana Orlandi for Milan Design Week, revisited her 1998 prediction of how we w...

David Adjaye talks about woven architecture and his new D.C. museum

2015-07-02T16:00:00-04:00

Adjaye is overseeing the newest installment of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s “Selects” series, which spotlights the little-known West African textiles in the museum’s permanent collection. [...] It also offers the celebrated architect a chance to explore the surprising connections between textile making and building design. “What’s interesting to me is this idea of fabric and weaving as a kind of abstraction of making places that people come together in,” he says.

A competition entry for Evolo 2015 that doesn't include a skyscraper

2015-05-13T00:39:00-04:00

We have new technologies in architecture those makes us feel excited when we see them applied on a facade, a roof etc. or simply used for designing. That gives us ideas about what we can design with which technologies. And we honestly believe that designing a building with high ecologic qualities is the only responsibility we have. In most of the cases that's correct. But do you really not responsible what happens while that building is being constructed.

In a construction site thousands of vehicles brings you materials. Those lorries, trucks etc. are not eco-friendly at all! You construct support structures only to construct the main thing and you say you can recycle those. Recycling is a good deed but the process itself has lots of disadvantages like unsafe and unhygienic recycling sites, and the recycled materials starts to have a shorter lifespan. And do you have any excuse of having people work on dangerous construction sites, especially when you construct a skyscraper! Even tho...

Wooden textiles & low-poly landscapes

2015-02-17T14:57:00-05:00

[...] "wooden textiles" by designer Elisa Strozyk are a beautiful and surprisingly simple rethinking of the idea of a textile—and they have some interesting implications for terrain modeling and even gaming [...] Strozyk writes that she wanted to find "a new tactile experience" for wood, which she achieved by producing wooden tiles that "are then attached to a textile base. Depending on the geometry and size of the tiles each design shows a different behavior regarding flexibility and mobility."