Archinect - News

MAS Context LEGACY is now accepting entries until December 1

2014-10-27T19:39:00-04:00

MAS Studio is back with their latest competition, MAS CONTEXT: LEGACY. The open competition explores how the most influential people, places, buildings, ideas, films, etc. have affected -- and continue to affect -- the way we experience the urban environment. And LEGACY not only looks to the past, it also theorizes what legacies may define the future.

Submissions can be in the form of critical essays, photo essays, analytical studies, data visualizations, visual explorations, films, or interviews.

So get started on those entries. The deadline to submit is Monday, December 1, 2014.

Learn more important competition details on Bustler.

The TALL DC: New Monumentalism exhibit questions Washington D.C.‘s building height restrictions

2014-08-04T19:10:00-04:00

The recent "TALL DC: New Monumentalism" exhibition took a critical approach to how outdated urban building standards -- specifically in D.C. -- can affect the built environment and the field of architecture, even as social demands and technology progress. Graduate students of Emerging Technologies and Media at The Catholic University of America proposed three skyscrapers among D.C.'s historical monuments to further encourage the questioning of this notion and the definition of "a monument".

More photos and other details on Bustler.

Critical irony in Russia’s special mention “Fair Enough” pavilion in 2014 Venice Biennale

2014-07-18T20:59:00-04:00

The "Fair Enough" exhibition of Russia's 2014 pavilion at the ongoing Venice Biennale gives a clever response to the Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014 theme that Biennale director Rem Koolhaas assigned to curators. Curated and designed by the Strelka Institute, Russia received one of three Special Mentions out of 84 national pavilions during the 2014 Biennale awards ceremony.

"The Russian pavilion's 'Fair Enough' exhibition responds to Koolhaas’ curatorial theme by the concept itself: 20 Russian architectural ideas are presented, using the universal language of the international trade fair...'Fair Enough' is not a fair of products, but an Expo of ideas."

Win a copy of "Behind the Green Door - A Critical Look at Sustainable Architecture through 600 Objects", published by Rotor and the 2013 Oslo Architectural Triennale

2014-07-18T13:04:00-04:00

In need of a fresh perspective on sustainable design that goes beyond the ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all things deemed as green? The book Behind the Green Door - A Critical Look at Sustainable Architecture through 600 Objects could help with that. And Archinect is giving away five copies to our readers!

For a chance to win, fill out this survey by Friday, July 25th. Winners will be selected at random. Good luck!

The book's title says it all. Based on the acclaimed exhibition and one year-long research of Belgian creative collective Rotor for the 2013 Oslo Architectural Triennale, Behind the Green Door questions the concept of sustainability, its paradoxes, and its widespread influence in architectural development and urban planning in recent decades.

Six hundred supposedly sustainable objects from Rotor's exhibition -- including building models, samples, specialized construction tools, campaign posters, and footage of lobbyist gatherings -- are presented and contextualized in the book. In ...

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...