Archinect - News

Squint/Opera announces merger with Journey as the industry-leading experience designers look to scale up digital production

2022-11-02T13:54:00-04:00

3D experience pioneer Squint/Opera has been acquired by the digital agency Journey in a move announced on November 1 by the newly-formed entity.

The merger will enable both to pursue an expansion of their services at a time when the industry is seeing an increase in demand thanks to the advent of metaverse design and other forms of media.

“The opportunity to join Journey was momentous.” Julius Coke, the CEO of Squint/Opera, explained in a statement. “Over the last few years Squint has experienced significant growth, as the demand for immersive 3D experiences grows and new platforms and technologies enable a new level of creativity tapping into our storytelling, virtual production and creative media skills.”

Previously on Archinect: BIG and UNStudio's investment in co-working platform SpaceForm signals a tide-change in architectural practice

Founded in London in 2021, Squint/Opera has since then, it has garnered a reputation through groundbreaking projects like The Observatory at The ...

BIG and UNStudio's investment in co-working platform SpaceForm signals a tide-change in architectural practice

2021-07-13T20:01:00-04:00

BIG is making a huge investment along with partners UNStudio and Squint/Opera in a new virtual platform that responds to the demands of the post-pandemic world with a digital presentation tool aimed at increasing effective collaboration on and reducing the carbon footprint of future projects across the world.

Video courtesy of Squint/Opera, UNStudio & BIG

The new project, called SpaceForm, promises to drastically reduce costs of project development by offering users the ability to present 3D models with up to 100 co-workers in real-time, saving resources with its multi-device ability to connect with widely-used visualization software like Rhino, Rivet, Sketchup, and Unreal seamlessly.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, firms had been mostly expanding their footprints, growing a web of connections between offices that has become obsolete in the minds of some thanks to the changes caused by the pandemic. Now, with the onset of virtual workspace becoming all the more apparent, BIG has cou...

There is nothing so stable as change: Nick Taylor, director of BIG's 2WTC video, and McShane Murnane of Project M Plus on Archinect Sessions #34

2015-06-18T18:22:00-04:00

Easily the biggest news of last week, and probably of this year, was the unveiling of BIG's design for 2WTC. For a project of such status, on such a highly charged site, representation must be handled with expert care – so to dig a bit deeper into the splashy video introducing 2WTC, we spoke with Nick Taylor, co-founder of Squint/Opera and director of the BIG video. We cover Squint/Opera's historied relationship with architects and how creative vision is managed across many powerful stakeholders.

Paul and Amelia also sat down with McShane Murnane, architecture director and co-founder of Project M Plus, a husband-wife creative studio out of Los Angeles' Silver Lake. Often viewed as a case-study for gentrification in LA, Silver Lake has established a highly specific aesthetic within the Californian sensibility, that has its pros and cons – we speak with Murnane about how he's dealt with issues of developmental displacement head-on.

And in the news, we discuss how Tadao Ando is faring am...