Archinect - News

Calling all architecture students, participate in the 2022 International VELUX Award competition. Registration closes April 1, 2022

2022-03-15T13:52:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by VELUX

Every second year the VELUX Group invites the students of architecture to participate in the International VELUX Award competition on the theme “Light of Tomorrow. Since the launch in 2004, more than 10,000 students from more than 800 schools from all regions of the world have participated in the competition.

The competition invites students to explore the role of daylight in architecture. The aim is to encourage and challenge students of architecture, and to create a deeper understanding of daylight as an ever-relevant source of energy, light, and life.

For the celebratory 10th edition in 2022, the students will develop their projects in one of the two categories: ‘Daylight in buildings’ or ‘Daylight investigations.’ In order to participate in the competition, students need to register until April 1, 2022. Registration is free, and it only requires an e-mail address. After registering, the next steps are gathering the team, connecting with the t...

The windowless basement apartments of Queens

2019-10-24T19:32:00-04:00

In New York, hope sometimes comes at the price of the sun. The city welcomes poor immigrants, but its housing does not. Most rents are far beyond the means of people like Amado, who arrive looking for a better life or to make money to send back home. So they turn to the basements of Queens.

The New York Times has produced an interactive photo essay profiling New York City residents in the borough of Queens who live in some of the city's windowless basement apartments. The arrangement, derived out of economic necessity and rooted in a desire to stay out of sight, provides newly arrived immigrants with a much-needed (and extremely dangerous) place to get settled in America.

According to the article, there is no accurate count available detailing how many of these units exist, but estimates run into the tens of thousands.

Brooklyn's tallest office tower tops out

2019-10-08T18:23:00-04:00

A new FXCollaborative-designed, 34-story office tower slated taking shape in Brooklyn has topped out ahead of its late-2020 completion date.

The 500,000-square-foot complex, located at 1 Willoughby Square (1WSQ), is billed as "Brooklyn's first ground-up office tower in a generation," and comes designed with oversized windows, column-free 14,500-square-foot floor-plates, and blue glazed brick exterior cladding.

Image courtesy of FXCollaborative.

The tower will be occupied by a school created in partnership with the New York Construction Authority and by the architecture firm itself; FXCollaborative has signed on as the project's anchor tenant. The tower's design was crafted in part by FXCollaborative partner Dan Kaplan as an "industrial loft for the 21st Century," according to a project website, an ethos that combines exposed structural elements, daylighting, and energy-efficient mechanical systems. The tower also features ample indoor-outdoor connections, including a series of ele...

Developer of SOM-designed Nanjing skyscraper found guilty of depriving nearby residents of precious sunlight

2015-12-08T13:40:00-05:00

The developers of the 450-meter high Zifeng Tower in Nanjing have been found guilty of robbing the surrounding neighborhood of precious sunshine, and will have to compensate residents accordingly. [...] The 89-story Zifeng Tower was designed by American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. It is the tallest building in Nanjing, fourth tallest in China and 12 tallest in the world.