Archinect - News

Iwan Baan takes us inside the new National Museum of Norway

2022-06-10T14:07:00-04:00

Ahead of June 11th's anticipated debut of the new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, architectural photographer Iwan Baan has traveled to Norway to preview one of the year's most important cultural projects.

His photos reveal the slate grey 587,700-square-foot vision of architect Klaus Schuwerk, whose creation is the largest of its kind in the entire Nordic region. Said to be a scale so large it is considered hard to comprehend the structure until viewed from above.

Image © Iwan Baan.

The process of consolidating disparate collections of art under one roof took time. Beginning in 2010, the new institution's hybrid collection was taken from its former home in a historic 1882 structure and reimagined inside a new 86 gallery upgrade. The new structure is joined by two preexisting 19th-century buildings that were former train stations. The addition of a rectangular, translucent volume called the Light Hall, can be found on top of the new museum structure which will...

“Beauty in unexpected places”: Hélène Binet looks back on her work ahead of Royal Academy retrospective

2021-10-12T11:22:00-04:00

I am very glad to see the genre of photographing architectural space being lifted to the level of portraiture and landscape photography,” Ms. Binet said. This is “not only a profession, not only a service. It’s also a form of art.

Binet’s work for the late Zaha Hadid features prominently in the show alongside 90 other select images showcasing the genius of Peter Zumthor, Le Corbusier, and others. The photographer’s recent centenary examination of Gottfried Böhm’s Cologne churches will be on view as well.

“I think to shoot is like a performance. You have to give the best of yourself,” Binet told Archinect at the opening of her solo show at Woodbury University’s WUHO Gallery 2015. The exhibition opens its three-month run on October 23rd.

Archinect's Must-Follow Architecture Firms on Instagram for 2021

2021-01-14T12:55:00-05:00

As we look back on the year, there were plenty of things that made days challenging. Social media took the reins as the public turned to these platforms for entertainment and reflection. While the amount of time spent on these apps has also sparked controversy and discourse, many architects, design professionals, students, and architecture enthusiasts helped make the days a bit more bearable.

From beautiful project images, works in progress, and informative posts that addressed architecture's social and political realities, below are firm and studio Instagram profiles to keep an eye on as 2021 kicks off.

*Profiles are listed in no particular order.

WeShouldDoItAll for keeping us socially aware and spatially curious.
More at @weshoulddoitall

View this post on Instagram A post shared by WSDIA | WeShouldDoItAll (@weshoulddoitall)

Cohesion Studio for their blend of textures, materials, and interior spaces.
More at @cohesion.studio

View this post on Instagram ...

Happy Birthday John Lautner! To celebrate, here are 10 projects photographed by Julius Shulman

2019-07-16T19:45:00-04:00

John Lautner's influential architectural legacy is hard to miss. Some of his works, like the Elrod House in Palm Springs or the Chemosphere in the Hollywood Hills, have been depicted in blockbuster Hollywood movies. Other projects, however, live on as humble—and not so humble—structures, fulfilling the uses they were originally designed for. Either way, Lautner’s legacy remains a fixture of American architecture.

Over time, Lautner's projects, each one, a pinnacle of spatial design, material, and detail, have become synonymous with Los Angeles, Googie Architecture, and Mid-Century Modernism, overall. Today, in celebration of his 108th posthumous birthday, Archinect has collected beautiful photographs by Julius Shulman of some of John Lautner’s works from across the decades, thanks to the Getty Research Institute’s Digital Catalog—Take a look!

Desert Hot Springs Motel (Desert Hot Springs, CA) 1947. Image courtesy of © J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Desert ...

Vernacular architectural photographer John Margolies has died

2016-06-16T13:10:00-04:00

Mr. Margolies, who died on May 26, at 76, was considered the country’s foremost photographer of vernacular architecture — the coffee shops shaped like coffeepots; the gas station shaped like a teapot (the Teapot Dome Service Station in Zillah, Wash.); and the motels shaped like all manner of things, from wigwams to zeppelins to railroad cars — that once stood as proud totems along America’s blue highways.

In memoriam, here are a few of Margolies' idiosyncratic finds, many of which were compiled into the 2010 book "John Margolies: Roadside America":

Other architectural photographers who are still doing their signature thing:

Eye candy: enjoy these freshly digitized, gorgeous contemporary photos of Southern California's finest midcentury modern architecture

2016-03-25T18:29:00-04:00

No longer confined to collecting dust in storage rooms, over a thousand slides documenting modern architecture's emergence in Southern California have been digitized by the USC Library, and are now available to view for free online.

The approximately 1300 slides were culled from the collections of Fritz Block and Pierre Koenig, which both belong to the USC Libraries. Koenig himself chose which slides he wanted digitized in the late 1990s, for a project that never fully came to pass, but from which a delightfully dated prototype website is still accessible. The slides feature work by various architects, mostly within Southern California.

Check out the full collection here, and a few select images below:

↑ John Lautner's Foster Residence in Sherman Oaks, from Pierre Koenig's collection.

↑ Frank Lloyd Wright's Millard Residence in Pasadena, from Fritz Block's collection.

↑ Pierre Koenig's Schwartz residence in Santa Monica (1996), from Pierre Koenig's collection.

↑ Albert Frey's Frey Residen...