Archinect - News

From the Tropics to Winter Wonderlands: Second Home is redefining the workplace

2018-01-23T14:29:00-05:00

“We always want people to think ‘What’s that?’ and be drawn inside our buildings,” says Rohan Silva, the 37-year-old co-founder of Second Home, provider of “unique workspaces and cultural venues for entrepreneurs and innovators”. The company opened its first space in Spitalfields, east London, in 2014 and now boasts users ranging from tiny tech startups to the likes of Volkswagen and auditing giant KPMG.

A winter wonderland, a tropic landscape, a colorful explosion of swirling surfaces and walls of color enveloping even the smallest of spaces— one could say that I was describing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's film sets and yet, this could become the description of the modern day office environment if Second Home, a provider of “unique workspaces and cultural venues for entrepreneurs and innovators,” has its way.

Second Home, Holland Park. Photograph: Iwan Baan

One of Second Home's most potent and provocative concepts is how they produce an atmosphere of collaboration within their spaces. While one would normally associate co-working office spaces with tech companies and internet startups, Second Home has controlled and influenced the sectors that are allowed to inhabit its spaces. As clarified by Second Home “If we just let the market ride, Second Home would be full of tech companies, but we’ve only allowed 10%. The services essential for startups, like lawyers, accountants and...

Fairy Tales 2016 winners highlight real architectural issues through fictional storytelling

2016-03-23T13:48:00-04:00

Fantastical fiction and harsh reality aren't so far apart in the winning narratives of the 2016 Fairy Tales Architecture Competition. Living in a time when the inevitable future is constantly on everyone's mind, this year's stories beautifully visualize and perhaps forewarn of what possibly awaits. Created by Blank Space, the international contest invites architects, artists, writers and the creatively inclined to pen their own architectural fairy tale narrative.

Since Blank Space revealed their first set of winners in 2014, the competition's rapid growth can be worthy of its own story. The 2016 edition reeled in more than 1,500 entries from 67 countries — the largest pool of submissions in the competition's history by far. Plus, the level of creativity was as strong as ever, with poignant tales based on recent real-world incidents to thought-provoking critiques on architecture's current state — and future, of course.

Blank Space's "Fairy Tales: Volume 3"

This year's jury also included...

Console narratives: how games incorporate architectural storytelling

2016-03-16T12:58:00-04:00

Dark Souls and Bloodborne both put the player in decaying worlds and invite them to peel back layers of history. From the ruins of Firelink Shrine and its relationship to the Undead Church above it, to the various connections between Bloodborne’s Central Yharnam, Old Yharnam and Cathedral Ward, Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team of environment designers imply much of the game’s narrative through the clash between one architectural style and another; between one layer of history and the next.

Perhaps you're ready to take a break from diving and dodging through problematic MEP in Rhino to enjoy the scripted unfurling of these (non-deadline driven) complex spatial narratives, some of which are inspired by the work of real-world firms like Herzog & de Meuron.

What's new in architecturally-related game design? This, for starters:

Architecture shapes hyperreal photographic narratives in art collection "Schude"

2015-08-28T00:20:00-04:00

Photographer Ryan Schude's narrative panoramas are as informed by the artist's humor as they are by the structures in which they often take place. Consider "The Saturn," a typical Southern California dingbat that is transformed into a tableau of subjects wondering where they went wrong. There's the man whose belongings are being unceremoniously tossed out of a window by an enraged lover to the woman staring out of her kitchen window to the mildly distressed dingbat itself. At least, that's one reading. Look closer: other stories begin to emerge.

Beginning as an editorial portraitist for a magazine, Schude "wanted to figure out how to do more than just show a documentary aspect of [a subject's] personality. I wanted to tell a story that would be more interesting than the person themselves, and take that concept and apply it to a much bigger scene with actual actors and create another story, depending on the location." The narrative within "The Saturn" evolved as he sought a location....