Archinect - News

McHarg Center launches blog to support young design writers

2020-01-15T14:41:00-05:00

The McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design of has launched Ian McBlog, a new online publication dedicated to uplifting the voices of "the rising generation of designers who will lead—and are already leading—the response to our overlapping crises of climate, capitalism, and resurgent fascism."

The blog already features two entries, one from McHarg Center director Billy Fleming explaining some of his rationale for initiating the blog.

Decrying the insular, disconnected, and sluggish nature of conventional academic publishing, Fleming writes, "Our conventional platforms for Very Serious publishing remain stubbornly disconnected from the overlapping crises that now shape every rising generation of designers. They too are slow, small, and focused on tweaking our bodies of knowledge. At their best, our peer-reviewed journals force scholars to slog through years of reviews, revisions, and resubmissions, much of which is dictated by the idiosyncrasies and...

Goodbye to "A Daily Dose of Architecture"; Hello to "A Daily Dose of Architecture Books"

2019-01-11T14:39:00-05:00

John Hill started blogging about buildings back in 1999, providing a regularly-updated single-author architecture blog for longer than anyone else I'm aware of, and I've been around the block a few times since starting Archinect in 1997. As 2019 kicks off, it looks like John is pivoting from buildings to books, as evidenced in the new format and title of his blog, "A Daily Dose of Architecture Books".

The new blog replaces his two previous blogs, "A Daily Dose of Architecture" (2004-2018) and "A Weekly Dose of Architecture" (1999-2014). The new blog will feature a book review every day, in a rigid structure consisting of title, author, publisher, date, cover image, publication details, publisher description, photos of page spreads, author bio, referral links, and commentary about the book by the author.

To source, read, vet and review a book every day, even if it's rather brief, as it tends to be with his first few reviews, is quite an impressive feat. Hopefully he'll keep this up...

What comprises a company's culture, physically? News innovator, Quartz, is looking for answers and documenting the process

2016-03-24T14:36:00-04:00

Moving offices can be a pain, but it’s also an opportunity to take stock of how the company has grown and what it could still become. With this move, we’ve put an emphasis on capturing the culture, or Quartziness, that defines Quartz employees and their work: global, nerdy, creative, and so on...This diary is part of a new obsession at Quartz, also called The Office, which is exploring the future of work, from management structures to the gig economy to distributed workplaces to compensation.

From mass-scale organizations like WeWork to four year old "digitally native news outlet" Quartz, the questions of what defines work culture in a largely post-manufacturing, perennially fluid global infrastructural era are still being formulated. Quartz is currently asking how "How do you capture a company’s culture in a physical space?" as they prepare to move into a new office while documenting that process on Medium.

Desai Chai Architecture is designing this as-yet-undefined space for Quartz. Desai is correspondingly basing their ideas not only on the titular physical mineral, but a more abstract notion of what constitutes the company. Citing parallels to Sol LeWitt with the company's tendency to resemble "a structured grid with unexpected deviations," the team has so far defined vital elements of the Quartz culture as incorporating "glitch moments" in an intellectually playful environment. It's a clickable front row seat to the design concept process, as well as an intimate tour ...

Win "Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog"!

2015-12-16T14:12:00-05:00

Lebbeus Woods' blog was the last major work of his illustrious career before he passed away in 2012. He launched it back in 2007 to chronicle his ongoing projects, openly share his ideas, and spark discussions with anyone who was interested. Woods published more than 300 entries by the time his blog ended in summer 2012.

To commemorate the legendary architect and preserve the memory of his final project, the book "Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog" was created.

Thanks to the Princeton Architectural Press, Archinect is giving five copies of the newly published book to our readers!

Read on for more and how to enter the giveaway.

Edited by Woods' longtime editor Clare Jacobson, "Slow Manifesto" features 70 of the architect's most notable articles that let readers peruse his thoughts on architectural theory, education, criticism, and politics.

The book features a multitude of images and Woods' iconic sketches, a foreword written by architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, and an...

I Quant NY: Visualizing NYC's Open Data

2014-07-31T14:54:00-04:00

Quantitative Analysis of NYC Open Data: Every data set that the city releases tells a story. This blog is all about telling those stories, one data set at a time.

Ben Wellington's "I Quant NY" blog is a gem in data-driven journalism's crown. Featuring visualizations of data sets from New York City's remarkable Open Data Portal, the blog covers a wide-variety of civic topics, everything from mapping fire hydrant usage to rate of taxi complaints by borough.

Wellington began using the Open Data Portal as coursework for his statistics class, teaching urban planning students at the Pratt Institute.

h/t to City Lab, who spoke with Wellington about his blog and teaching stats to city planners.

feminist wall of shame

2013-11-15T12:44:00-05:00

New tumblr blog that looks at "outrageously gender-imbalanced lecture series, etc." send observed inequalities to feministwall at gmail dot com.

The Architecture of Villains » An Analysis of the Micro Empires within the James Bond Movie Series

2013-09-10T20:12:00-04:00

The Bond Villain is a manifestation of a paranoid cold war society[...] the Villain who might bomb or use any other technocratic weapon to destroy western society. Since 1962 until 2010, 22 Bond movies were created over a span of 48 years. Even after the Cold War was declared over, Bond movies have remained a veritable catalogue of Cold War villains. Despite this retrospective compulsion, the genre has consistently used the language of modern architecture to visualize future built conditions.

Oh, Moby...

2012-02-02T13:19:00-05:00

oh, to clarify: i’m not saying the architecture is relatively pointless, i’m merely suggesting that my blog is relatively pointless. the architecture is anything but pointless, it’s great, even when it’s banal and mundane. it’s my blogging that is relatively pointless. or so i believe. i guess i should work on my syntax.

A Gathering of Student Work: My Studio at the University of Cincinnati

2011-12-08T19:26:48-05:00

This fall, I co-taught such a studio (with Eli Meiners) at the University of Cincinnati. The project was a real one: the conversion of a former Kroger supermarket building into an open storage facility for the Cincinnati Art Museum, a Montessori school, and studios and display space for artists. The rules of the studio were a bit different: you could do anything you wanted, as long as it was begged, borrowed or stolen; your design did not have to be efficient or buildable...