Archinect - News

From the Archinect Outpost: Offshore Studio's Christoph Miler reveals the ideas behind Migrant Journal

2018-06-21T18:43:00-04:00

The first [journal] came out in 2016 and focused on the countryside and the movement of borders. The most recent, the fourth, titled Dark Matter, is about the invisible and illegal aspects of migration. One feature Christoph shows is a photo essay by Javier Corso, documenting the petrol smuggling trade between Nigeria and Benin.

Christoph Miller, a founder of Migrant — one of the journals we are proud to feature at the Archinect Outpost — provides insights into the origins and intentions of his journal as it reflects the culture and politics of 21st century migration.

Koolhaas speaks at the GSD: architecture is "clearly dedicated to political correctness"

2016-10-07T13:05:00-04:00

"I see architecture as almost a political work" [...] “We are in a radically divided world” in which “architecture is not dealing with those political issues in a really sophisticated way,” [...] “I think that both the art world and the architecture world … [are] pretty intolerant in terms of engaging” with political worlds beyond Western democracies."

More recent news from Rem and OMA:

Zaha Hadid lecture at SCI-Arc, circa 1985, "beams out talent, strength, commanding conviction"

2015-12-17T18:18:00-05:00

Actually, I am blinded by this light" Zaha Hadid's first words at the lecture.

"Zaha Hadid reviews her work at the AA with Rem Koolhaas, and, before that, with Leon Krier. She stresses her interest in the Russian avant-garde. She expresses her need to seriously engage with twentieth century culture. She describes her first independent projects after leaving the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. She explores the ideas of dynamics, also referred to by some as hysterics. She argues for the importance of color as a way of manipulating building and space. She discusses her competition project for the Peak Leisure Club in Hong Kong." - archives.

This is when I saw Zaha Hadid for the first time at SCI Arc in 1985. She beams out talent, strength, commanding conviction that she has got it. She is at her best.

When she was doing this she was part of the times you'd be a lone ranger just thirty years ago and she was one of them in the male wolf den. She talks of her precedents, technological inspirations, and Hong Kong Peak project. She shows 4th and 5th student proj...

Building a collaborative practice: Caroline Bos of UNStudio lectures at LACMA

2015-10-30T16:00:00-04:00

Students and professionals nearly filled up the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Tuesday night to listen to guest lecturer Caroline Bos, co-founder and principal urban planner of UNStudio. Bos spoke about UNStudio’s design process that continues to shift even after her 27 years of practice with co-founder Ben van Berkel and their growing international office. In highlighting a selection of the firm's projects, she outlined their focus on collaborative, research-driven design, with the ultimate goal to consistently create inventive, inclusive and “socially aware” architecture.

↑ Caroline Bos and Ben van Berkel of UNStudio.

To frame the discussion of UNStudio's design methods, Bos began her lecture by quoting from Richard Sennett’s 2008 book, The Craftsman. “Knowledge is gained in the hand through touch and movement," and, "Technical understanding develops through the powers of imagination”. According to Bos, the quotes in an architectural context describe the int...

Shigeru Ban: Beauty as a basic human need

2015-06-23T14:56:00-04:00

Aesthetics is a primary concern for Ban—not despite, but especially in humanitarian scenarios. He believes that beauty is a basic need, an aspect of a person’s dignity. Erecting beautiful, if simple, structures can ensure that a refugee camp is not labeled a slum. So, when examining available materials in Kobe, he fussed about the color of the beer crates, choosing Asahi’s more neutral plastic bins over Kirin’s glaring red crates.

Last week, Ban visited several U.S. cities on a brief lecture tour, captivating audiences with his thoughts about "the Temporary and the Monumental." Read Archinect's report from his Los Angeles lecture at LACMA here.

Between the Temporary and the Monumental: A Review of Shigeru Ban's Lecture at LACMA

2015-06-19T18:29:00-04:00

“I hate to throw things away,” explained the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban to a packed audience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last night. On the projection screen, one of his first works as an architect was displayed: an exhibition of the work of Alvar Aalto, who Ban cited as one of his primary influences. The exhibition was the first time Ban worked with paper tubes, which has become one of his signature strategies. “I couldn’t afford wood like Aalto,” so he turned to the large tubes that had once supported reams of tracing paper. Finding the tubes surprisingly strong, Ban began testing their viability – and the rest has become history.

Throughout the evening’s lecture, Ban spoke with refreshing humility, a quality that often seems lacking among his peers. Many of his most iconic design decisions he attributed to chance, like his use of paper. As Ban worked his way through a retrospective survey of his career, he made frequent quips that enlivened the mood a...

Improvisation and Troublemaking: Frank Gehry in Conversation with Eric Owen Moss at SCI-Arc

2015-03-16T14:16:00-04:00

Despite making recent news for a particularly antisocial public display, Frank Gehry remains a highly influential and crowd-drawing figure, as evidenced by SCI-Arc’s completely full Keck Lecture Hall over an hour before Gehry took the stage on Wednesday, March 4, for a lecture with Eric Owen Moss.

The lecture was the last in a series of five annual lectures honoring late SCI-Arc faculty Raimund Abraham, and opened with memorial remembrances of Abraham by Moss and Gehry. The lecture, “You Can’t Rehearse Something You Haven’t Invented Yet”, was a quote Gehry supplied to Moss from jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. The improvisational quality of Jazz as it relates to Gehry’s process of design was a major thread through the talk. Gehry related the actors required to produce a building – client, contractor, project manager (“we don’t really need those guys though” he quipped), building department, and bank – to the constraining three notes around which an improvisational jazz composition wou...

Tod Williams & Billie Tsien lecture at SCI-Arc emphasizes building "from the ground"

2015-01-16T21:03:00-05:00

At their first lecture at SCI-Arc since 1987, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien charted a simple course. They set out to explain the principles that guide their practice’s approach, regardless of program or site of project, and how those principles have morphed over time and place. Outlined at the beginning of the lecture, those principles are: to be of use, to move slowly, to say no, to connect, and to make work that lasts. That last one stands out, regarding last year’s demolition of their American Folk Art Museum and their official response, but the project wasn't addressed in this lecture.

Generally, architecture lectures seem to tend towards the polemic – the firm fighting for a way to view the world and what should exist in it. This wasn’t the case for Williams and Tsien’s talk, which leaned more towards explaining their priorities as a firm investing in a site’s context – not by trying to blend in, but by integrating history and identity in the details. And in its 40+ year history...

Transparency rules at Sou Fujimoto's SCI-Arc lecture

2014-12-02T20:34:00-05:00

Introducing his Serpentine Pavilion in 2013, Sou Fujimoto described the structure as "between architecture and nature", suggesting an architectural form ethereal enough to change at any given moment, depending on perspective or approach, between the artificial and organic. That phrase has since been adopted to title a series of Fujimoto’s lectures, "Between Nature and Architecture", serving as a general guide to both his style and methods. His latest lecture, held last night at SCI-Arc, showcased a variety of his works that play on this concept, which is still developing over time as the relatively young architect (b. 1971) expands his influence and portfolio.

This past April, Natalie Hein covered his talk at the Cooper Union, where the focus tended towards his architecture’s ability to complicate apparent binaries – forcibly inserting ambiguity and personal choice into how a building is perceived and used. While his SCI-Arc lecture had an (understandably) similar vibe, it also touch...

Bjarke Ingels Will Make You Believe in the Power of Architecture

2014-11-04T13:20:00-05:00

A few years ago, the city of Copenhagen invited architects to submit their ideas for the design of an important new facility—a power plant that will use trash to generate electricity. [...] BIG, pitched a concept in which the plant took the form of a giant artificial ski slope. To Ingels’ surprise, it was selected as the winning submission. Now, it’s under construction, slated for completion in 2017. The power plant was just one of the several projects Ingels shared at WIRED by Design [...].

Click here to watch the full video of Ingels' presentation.

Sou Fujimoto discusses limbo, dichotomies and nature in his architecture

2014-04-18T13:47:00-04:00

This past Tuesday, The Architectural League of New York hosted a lecture at Cooper Union by architect Sou Fujimoto, entitled “Between Nature and Architecture”. Despite the great number of practitioners and students in attendance (almost a full-house), the event felt more like an intimate conversation with the architect, as he shared his unique brand of architectural investigation. Each project he presented helped substantiate his lifelong interest in blurring the boundaries of established architectural conceptions. Fujimoto explained that he is inspired by dissolving such falsely dichotomous themes as: nature and architecture, the house and the city, complexity and simplicity, or inside and outside, in order to examine the new possibilities that exist “in between.”

The lecture progressed rather linearly, tracing his practice's themes from their conceptual foundation in his “younger ideas” through to their mature forms. As he talked us through some of his earliest conceptual sketches,...

MAD founder Ma Yansong celebrates opening of LA office with lecture in Hollywood

2014-04-11T15:43:00-04:00

Co-presented by Hennessey + Ingalls, the A+D Museum and the Cal Poly LA Metro Program, Ma Yansong lectured last night on MAD's history and the trials of Chinese architecture. Now with offices in Los Angeles and Beijing, MAD is poised to fulfill the high expectations bestowed on it as a Chinese firm cultivating a style unique from any western exceptionalism, while also building outside of Asia. Yansong's talk took place at Space 15 Twenty in Hollywood -- a public, outdoor courtyard surrounded by hip storefronts and eateries. Free to people wandering through, the venue was refreshingly informal for an event type usually restricted to hallowed academic halls.

Yansong presented works from throughout MAD's existence, focusing particularly on each project's context and relationship to nature -- whether or not it was ever built. Considering that many of MAD's projects in China are located in new, developing cities, where the urban context can run quite thin, the building's relationship to n...

Stanford Spring Lecture Series 2014: Origins

2014-04-01T14:02:00-04:00

The series features landscape architects, architects, engineers and artists working together in the building and design industry. Past speakers have included Tom Kundig, Steven Ehrlich, Joshua Aidlin and David Darling, Richard Olcott, Ricardo Legorreta, Sr. Norman Foster, Peter Bohlin, and Peter Busmann. The lectures are free of charge and open to the public. All lectures are Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., April and May, location - Clark Center Auditorium and Cemex Auditorium (for Symposium 5/21/14).

From the program that brought you football fans Andrew Luck, Stanford Architecture announces its 2014 spring lecture series hosted in the Norman Foster designed James H. Clark Center underground rotunda.

GSAPP Lecture Addresses Architecture's Role in New Democratic Systems

2014-03-31T18:31:00-04:00

GSAPP continued its spring lecture series last Thursday night with the Belgian political philosopher Chantal Mouffe. The talk provided a brief interlude away from pure architecture and explored Mouffe’s theories on counter-hegemonic radicalization of democracy by the multitude through agonistic pluralism. Considering the entire lecture was as dense as the previous statement, Mouffe began with a much-needed summary of post-modern political philosophers ranging from Negri to Virno. She pointed out how they all advocated a general strategy of withdrawal, using exodus from established hegemonies as a form of political action. While Mouffe didn’t directly address the architect’s role within this paradigm, she noted how artists with political intentions abandon traditional institutions (museums, galleries, etc) to instill their work with radical meaning.

Mouffe formulated her lecture to bring up two essential points to her theories of agonistic pluralism, the first elucidating how withdraw...

The Living and Surfacedesign Inc. give first lecture in 2014's Emerging Voices series

2014-03-07T17:46:00-05:00

Emerging Voices is an annual award given by the Architectural League. It is an invited portfolio competition, identifying eight firms in North America that are influencing the current condition of architecture, landscape design and built environments. To see a full list of this year’s award recipients, click here. The winners will present their work weekly in a lecture series hosted by the Architectural League of New York during the month of March. For more information about these events, click here.

The Emerging Voices lecture series kicked off last night with presentations by The Living (David Benjamin) and Surfacedesign Inc (Geoff di Girolamo, James Lord, and Roderick Wyllie). Despite the differences in the scope of work between both offices, the pairing offered complementary insights into alternative approaches to designing built environments. David Benjamin’s work is inspired by experimentation and synthetic biology, employing a cross-disciplinary approach to undertake responsiv...

Wolf D. Prix reflects on Raimund Abraham, as both friend and visionary

2014-03-07T11:02:00-05:00

Wolf D. Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au gave the 4th annual Raimund Abraham memorial lecture this past Wednesday night at SCI-Arc, honoring Abraham with a congenial discussion of his friend and peer’s work. When Prix first started Coop Himmelb(l)au over 45 years ago, Abraham served as a strong influence, and the two developed a strong (if not somewhat combative) relationship as co-conspirators and fellow Austrians. Prix’s lecture reflected on a variety of Abraham’s work, alongside pieces from Günther Domenig, Hans Hollein, Walter Pilcher and others.

After Eric Owen Moss’s introduction, describing both Prix and Abraham as “those who lived on an island where no one else lived”, Wolf’s lecture focused on the lasting futurism of Abraham’s work and its continuing relevance in the context of a digital society. While so few of his designs were built, his drawings’ “were architecture -- why do we have to build these buildings if they’re already described so perfectly?”. Prix touched upon the conce...

The Architecture of Abortion Clinics

2014-02-26T15:28:00-05:00

Though abortion and the legal disputes that often surround it are visible media topics, abortion clinics are often pushed to the fringes of communities where access is the most crucial. But what if they were integrated into the mainstream of our everyday space: clinics in malls, clinics on military bases, clinics on high school campuses, and open access to preventative care?

Lori Brown explores this topic in her book Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals and delves into politics and architecture and how they manufacture landscapes with regard to reproductive healthcare access.

Brown, an architect herself, will be giving a public lecture about researching abortion clinics tonight in New York at Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Knowlton School Blog reports on last month's lecture by Laura Kurgan

2013-11-15T12:41:00-05:00

One project she presented was titled “Million Dollar Blocks” in which they were looking to discover the “spatial patterns that link, poverty, racial segregation, and incarceration” within in New York City. Working with the municipal court they were allowed access to a data set which tracked the flow of prisoners in, out, and transfers to other prisons.

Hitoshi Abe on place-making and layered formalism at UCLA

2013-11-05T17:11:00-05:00

How can we understand a place, and seek to define it? What elements do we identify as components of that place, and how do they interact with each other? In a recent lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, Hitoshi Abe, chair of UCLA’s Architecture and Urban Design department, approached these questions through a study of Atelier Hitoshi Abe, his design practice located in both Los Angeles and Sendai, Japan. Drawing on Japanese ideas of place-making, Abe conceptualizes his structures not as monoliths of positive and negative spaces, but as a system of layers that collectively define the building.

The concepts of “space” and “place”, as conceived by Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, are part of the objective reality that an individual uses to define themselves -- but instead of that objective reality being based on discrete physical forms, the sense of self arises from a reactive relationship with the space, rather than in opposition to it*. Highlighting internati...

Hitoshi Abe to lecture at UCLA, November 1

2013-10-28T20:16:00-04:00

Hitoshi Abe, the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA and principal at Atelier Hitoshi Abe Sendai/Los Angeles, will lecture on the UCLA campus this Friday, November 1.

Atelier Hitoshi Abe is known for producing both structurally inventive and and spatially complex architecture, with offices in both Sendai, Japan and Los Angeles. Since winning first prize in the Miyagi Stadium competition in 1992, Dr. Hitoshi Abe has maintained an international practice alongside lecturing and publishing. He became Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA in 2007.

As A.UD Chair, Abe has developed programming to be more cross-cultural, technologically innovative, and critical, while also establishing the new M.Arch II program, SUPRASTUDIO.

Event details:

Where: Perloff Hall, Decafe, UCLA Campus

When: 6:30pm, Friday, November 1

Video from Jacque Herzog's Columbia Lecture

2013-09-16T13:41:00-04:00

I think it is a compliment that our very best architects make people seem stupid.

Video of Toyo Ito's lecture, "What Was Metabolism? Reflections on the Life of Kiyonori Kikutake"

2012-10-18T12:46:00-04:00

The Metabolist Movement in the 1960s established the foundation from which contemporary architecture in Japan has emerged up to the present. Even today, the visionary architectural and urban projects created by the leading Metabolist Kiyonori Kikutake continue to shine brightly, according to Toyo Ito. In this lecture, he will consider Metabolism’s significance today through his rereading of Kikutake's works of that time.

After March 11th, Kengo Kuma's Lecture at GSD

2012-10-11T18:21:00-04:00

The great disaster of March 11, 2011 differed from any other catastrophe since the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake. In the age of advanced technology and "strong" buildings, the tsunami flattened Tohoku coastline in seconds. The nuclear accident that followed further revealed the vulnerability of "big and strong" architecture. In the face of radiation, materials such as concrete and steel were insufficient, even though nuclear energy had been a solution for our drive to be bigger, stronger...

To follow up with Lian's exceptional, as always, live coverage of Kuma's lecture, we present you with the video.

The Yale Daily News summarizes last night's WORKac lecture

2012-09-07T12:50:00-04:00

“We don’t believe architecture can solve anything,” Andraos said of the relationship between environmentalism and design in WORKac’s creations. “Rather, we feel this is a question of impacting culture. In the architect’s Sisyphean relation to power, we believe in the visionary, and his agency to radicalize and to move culture.”

Marc Simmons, "Process Performance"

2012-04-06T18:34:00-04:00

With the firm Front, in which he is a Partner, Marc Simmons has collaborated on projects with OMA, Asymptote Architecture, ARO, Beyer Blinder Belle, Gehry Partners, Herzog & De Meuron, Kengo Kuma, KPF, Mack Scogin Merril Elam Architects, Renzo Piano, Sejima + Nishizawa Associates, Steven Holl Architects, Toshiko Mori, and many other architects. His lecture will explore themes in his recent work, including the speculative and experimental potential of the facade specialist.

Via Lian's GSD blog

Watch Live: Digital Systems: Theory + Practice; Keynote by Greg Lynn

2012-03-29T19:27:00-04:00

The Panelists will explore the theoretical approaches to Digital fabrication and tooling systems, as well as the various implications and practical applications of digital fabrications and their impact on the practice and pedagogy of architecture.

Barbara Bestor: Blue Sky Curricula For the Next Century

2012-02-07T14:37:00-05:00

Architect and Woodbury School of Architecture professor Barbara Bestor presented an optimistic vision of architecture—one grounded in entrepreneurial practice and creating new opportunities—at the 2011 ACSA Administrators Conference: Old School/New School in November. (Co-chaired by Dean Norman Millar.)

Post(card) Ideological Icons

2011-11-28T05:14:00-05:00

What about revisiting the hardcore shapes of the avant-garde?

It has been almost a century since the air was heavily saturated with the combustible gas of ideology. Almost a hundred years have passed since everything from film, through art and architecture, to urbanism was susceptible to the slightest friction in the atmosphere sparking endless manifestoes and multiple visions of the perennial “new beginning”. But what happens when the ideological fire that fuels urbanism is extinguished, and in its place just smoke remains? What is left after the idealistic energy of the avant-garde has vanished and we are left with necrophilic icons of dead ideologies? Why aren’t we able to see the striking similarities and contrasting disparities between the avatars of yesterday’s ideological urbanism and today’s pop-architectural icons?

In the twenties imaginary taut wires, steel trusses, and structural concrete gave form to the muscular monuments of a Potemkinesque avant-garde. Utopia had...