Archinect - News

Brooklyn-based Almost Studio provides a new interpretation of mobility with their winning competition proposal 'That's a Wrap'

2021-04-13T14:06:00-04:00

Co-founders Dorian Booth and Anthony Gagliardi established Almost Studio in 2018. Along with junior designer Isabella Calidonio Stechmann, the team considers a successful project "as never complete and always becoming: exposing unknown cultural, social, and spatial potential as time passes." With this design methodology, the team has become well known for projects such as "Playground for a Fashion Designer," RADICAL, House for a Sojourner, and Tent in a Vegetable Garden. The design studio entered the Ragdale Foundation's annual competition, the Ragdale Ring competition, and selected as winners for their design "That's a Wrap."

Original 1912 Ragdale Ring by Architect Howard Van Doren Shaw. Image courtesy of Ragdale Foundation

The Ragdale Foundation is a national artist residency program located in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 2013, the Foundation launched a competition to "reinterpret the Ragdale Ring" designed by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1912. Shaw's ring design helped spring...

Community-built market completed in northern Ghana by [a]FA

2020-04-21T15:24:00-04:00

The New Guabuliga Market is a recent design-build project that has been underway from [applied] Foreign Affairs ([a]FA), a transdisciplinary lab at the Institute of of Architecture of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Based on research done back in 2018, a team of students designed this modular market structure with the goal of attracting traders to the remote community of Guabuliga in northern Ghana to strengthen the socio-economic health of the region.

Photo by Toms Kampars.

Construction began in early 2019 and the market opened in August 2019. The design consists of a "floorscape" and "roofscape" ad utilizes an integrated water source, furniture, and a market shop for locally made products. The structure takes inspiration from the traditional grain silos of the region.

Photo by Juergen Strohmayer.

The market was built with local labor and professionals who relied on the direction and expertise of the project partners. Everyone from local masons and welders to seasoned design ...

Space Saloon prepares for round two of experimental design-build workshop set in California's High Desert

2019-03-13T15:44:00-04:00

Last summer, students from SCI-Arc and INDA ventured out to the Morongo Valley to take part in a week-long course in which they designed and built a series of exploratory units. Titled 'Landing', the mobile educational camp was the brain child of Danny Wills and Gian Maria Socci, who set up the workshop in order to explore new formats for education.

After a successful first run, the duo (who co-founded the design laboratory Space Saloon) are gearing up for round two. For their second annual iteration, titled 'Fieldworks', the team will look at the cumulative methods of scientific field research, questioning the approaches, techniques, and processes used to collect raw data outside of a laboratory setting.

Design-build projects this year will be led by Andrew Kovacs of Office Kovacs, Zeina Koreitem & John May of MILLIØNS, and Kyle May (KMA). Additionally, daily workshops will be hosted by a range of professionals, from sound and media artists to historians and architects.

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Architecture students' Dunescape-inspired design-build project transforms Iowa State University College of Design atrium

2016-03-04T12:54:00-05:00

Seventy-seven architecture sophomores in their second architectural design studio at Iowa State University spent the first month of spring semester developing an installation intended to redefine the College of Design atrium as a public space.

"Our interest was to challenge the conventional uses of the space, introduce new activities, etc. The only conceptual constraints were that the project must be practical, it must remain accessible to the public and the existing uses must somehow be preserved within the new design," said Assistant Professor Nick Senske, coordinator of the Department of Architecture's second-year studios.

Constructed almost entirely of 2x2 lumber and deck screws, the 25-foot-by-20-foot "TwoXTwo" project has transformed the college atrium by offering new opportunities for group interaction and individual activity. Throughout the three-week installation (Feb. 17-March 11), students are documenting via photos and video how people actually use the new elements within ...