Archinect - News

Peach Fuzz is the 2024 Pantone Color of the Year

2023-12-07T14:37:00-05:00

Pantone has selected "Peach Fuzz" as its official Color of the Year for 2024. Twelve months after announcing "Viva Magenta" as its selection for 2023, the New Jersey-based company continued with the springtime palette with a light and bright color they claim will have an impact on an increasingly turbulent and divisive world.

"In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance," the Pantone Color Institute’s Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman describes. "A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless."

A staple of many modern-day cosmetics boutiques, coffee shops, startup offices, and other retail spaces has also become a runway favorite of late, according to CNN. The company has faced a fair amount of criticism over the 25 years of its program’s development, though as the institute’s Vice President Laurie Pressman explained...

The Crumple and the Scrape: Two Archi-Textures in the Mode of Queer Gender

2020-03-05T20:59:00-05:00

Texture is the condition of possibility through which our bodies meet environments; like gender in its relationality, texture is palpable only in becoming. So did the blue carpet in my childhood bedroom enmesh gender between my toes? And if we alter texture — including how we talk about it — might we transform gender in both minute and brash ways?

Whether or not they realize it, architecture critics generally build a body into their writings. And we must allow ourselves, and others, to write bodies other than cis, straight, white, able ones into the affect of our analyses. Changing words — say, crafting new architectural metaphors for trans and queer embodiments — can alter our perceptions of bodies and buildings alike.

Lucas Crawford, the latest recipient of the Arcus/Places Prize for innovative public scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the built environment, explores how the language of architectural criticism influences the ways that we discuss the design of built space.

The Arcus/Places Prize is an ongoing collaboration between Places Journal and the Diversity Platforms Committee of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley.

Architecture critics take on the Chicago Architecture Biennial (and each other)

2019-10-02T05:00:00-04:00

As critical reaction to the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial continues to pour in, Archinect has collected some critical highlights from a collection of design writers and critics. (See here for Archinect’s 2019 CAB picks.)

And while this year’s takes on the biennial have been relatively level-headed, the entire affair was kicked off with a searing bit of friendly fire from multiple sources.

For one, the recent opening of ArchiteXX’s Now What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances in American Architecture since 1968 exhibition at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago was launched as an act of opposition to the Chicago Architecture Biennial itself. The group is officially boycotting CAB due to the financial sponsorship of the event by fossil fuel corporation BP. Though the Now What?! exhibition is open roughly concurrently with CAB, it is officially unaffiliated.

View of a postcard by Kay Janis advertising More Than the Sum of Our Body Parts, an exhibition in Chicago in 1993 by CARYATIDS...

Is architecture notorious for praising bad design without reprimanding others?

2019-09-30T12:10:00-04:00

Where is architecture missing the mark when it comes to awarding praise to "successful" designs? In a recent piece by Charles Rosenblum from the Pittsburgh City Paper, he expresses concern for the lack of outside architectural critique from organizations like the AIA. "If we don't speak up, we are on track to get more."

Other than visual aesthetics, the notable architecture critic from Pittsburgh highlights the issues with specific organizations praising projects and design proposals that poorly execute a good design. Rosenblum points out variables such as affordability, landscape, traffic, and parking are no longer in the discussion when assessing and awarding projects.

"Why are the designers proposing a kind of building that has been discredited nationally when better design approaches are available? Why does the profession praise its achievers, but not self-police its laggards, hacks, and profiteers?" explains Rosenblum. "No one goes to a restaurant run by nice people if it has b...

Zaha Hadid Architects director defends criticisms of the London tower design

2018-01-22T14:17:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has defended proposals for a high-rise, mixed-use scheme in London – described as a ‘breakthrough project’ for the practice – following criticism over its size and location. Shortly before Christmas, the firm submitted plans to Lambeth Council [...] The scheme, the practice’s first major mixed-use residential and commercial development in the UK, has been dubbed a ‘two-fingered salute’ by opponents, who claim the proposals are too big for the site.

Zaha Hadid Architects combatted criticism of their proposal for the Vauxhall Cross Island site in London. Critiques of ZHA's plan claim the design overcrowds the area with towers that are too tall overshadowing the surrounding area and creating traffic congestion.

ZHA director Jim Heverin responded to the criticisms dismissing claims of congestion stating the design fits within a masterplan overseen by Transport for London (TfL). Heverin justifies ZHA plans asserting the design does not create more overshadowing than what is already permitted in surrounding development plans.

Heverin revealed the importance of this project for the firm stating, "We had been keen to show that we can do this type of project and how the office is moving in this direction."

Accusing architects of prioritizing looks over feel—Moby edition

2016-09-12T17:13:00-04:00

“I have an issue with architects and designers who think about how is the space going to look when it's on an architecture website, rather than how it’s going to feel for the people who either live there, work there or patronise it,” [...] “I had a couple of nights in Madrid staying in a hotel room that Zaha Hadid Architects had designed. It looked amazing, but was the least comfortable space I’ve ever inhabited... Literally sleeping in a dumpster would have been more comfortable.”

More design forays by the rich and famous:

DS+R's Berkeley Art Museum is a conceptual success

2016-01-27T14:07:00-05:00

Although the renderings and Twitter pics of Diller Scofidio +Renfro's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive produced a heated response on Archinect, evaluating the museum from a programmatic standpoint makes it appear as less of a "giant TV on the sidewalk" and more a clever fusion of needs into an elegant, if perhaps somewhat muscular, form. The museum is part art exhibition space, part film gallery/archive. DS+R have chosen not to mask these separate identities into an amorphous form, but rather to architecturally demarcate these two mediums. Viewed from the side, as in Iwan Baan's photographs above and below, this choice results in an elegant exterior wrap that offers visual intrigue with the glassed-in multipurpose space peeking out between the two halves. This asymmetrical glimpse of the interior gives the building a muscular quality, as if it is in motion.

There are perhaps inadvertent throwbacks to Renzo Piano's BCAM at LACMA throughout the interior, not only with the ...