Archinect - News

KieranTimberlake develops an app to analyze occupant experience in passive architecture

2018-05-08T15:51:00-04:00

Architecture studio KieranTimberlake used passive strategies to cool their new Philadelphia office building and installed 300 sensors to record data on how it was performing. Along with their network of sensors, the firm also developed an app called Roast for their employees to rate how they felt in the building.

The Roast app asks the user, “How are you feeling today?” allowing quick surveys pre-populated questions based on building industry standards.

The app offers an interactive online interface to analyze occupant comfort. Filter results to compare comfort acrosss space over time.

This kind of post-occupancy evaluation focuses not just on the building's stats, but also on how people are experiencing the space. Together with metric data and employe experience feedback, the firm was able to produce an overall better design. The building was awarded the AIA’s new Top Ten Plus Award this month, an annual honor given to a building with outstanding performance data.

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The architecture of grief: inside OMA's "An Occupation of Loss"

2016-09-15T13:09:00-04:00

In OMA and artist Taryn Simon's "An Occupation of Loss," professional mourners create unique performances of grief into an enormous sculpture of eight 45 foot concrete inverted wells that act as "a discordant instrument." It's not just for professional criers: during the day, visitors are encouraged to interact with the sculpture, exploring their own grief while recordings of the previous evening's performance are played in the background.

On display at the Park Avenue Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall through September 25th, the sculpture will be moved to the Artangel in London next year.

As OMA's Shohei Shigematsu noted, “The design was sonically-motivated, focusing on the performative act of loss rather than its physical manifestation, which has been historically marked by multiple scales – from tombstones to the World Trade Center Memorial. The industrial wells were configured into a readymade ruin that responds to both personal and monumental dimensions."

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Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: the Architecture Lobby's uninvited installation takes aim at the field's labor issues

2015-10-22T13:53:00-04:00

Join us for an uninvited Chicago Biennial installation consisting of scenarios depicting the absurdities of architectural practice/labor/work. We seek to expand the current conversation about architecture to include an actionable critique of the real, often tragic circumstances that precarious creative workers face on a daily basis.

Alongside the official installations and programmed events, a host of uninvited and unofficial events have coalesced around the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the first major architecture biennial in the United States. One of the most promising comes from the Architecture Lobby, "an organization of architectural workers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline."

After a reception from 6 to 11 pm next Friday, October 30, the Architecture Lobby will put on the installation (re)Working Architectur e, including a series of performances aimed at generating "new perspectives and possibilities for action on topics ranging from unpaid internships, the mystification of the role of the architect, and how we conceive of the value of our work."

The event also will include an architecture-themed "Beaux-Arts Ball" starting at 8 pm. Architecture Lobby encourages you to bring your dancing shows and a costume. The next morning, join...