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SCI-Arc launches "The Arc" podcast hosted by History + Theory Coordinator Marrikka Trotter

2019-12-18T16:42:00-05:00

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) has launched its own podcast, The Arc.

The podcast is hosted by SCI-Arc History + Theory Coordinator Marrikka Trotter. Each episode, according to the school, "juxtaposes a contemporary architectural idea or concern with related concepts from other disciplines, ranging from science to sports, in casual, unscripted, and intimate conversations."

So far, two full episodes have been released in the series, including one episode on Scale that focuses on examining the effect of size on architecture, experience, and design thinking. The episode features guest appearances by SCI-Arc Undergraduate Program Chair Tom Wiscombe, neuriscientist Dr. Yawende Pearse, and Bill Boes, a Hollywood production designer and art director.

A second episode, Roughness, interrogates the recent turn in architecture toward texture and alternative or unintended uses for objects, ideas, and conventional forms of practice. The show positions this turn as...

Within and Without Architecture

2017-01-11T17:36:00-05:00

The imaginative possibilities of miniature things lie not in their being shrunken versions of a larger thing. The world of the miniature opens to reveal a secret life.

Sometimes you encounter a thing that is not “properly” architectural, but which yet has something profound to say about the discipline. In her latest article for Places, columnist Naomi Stead is drawn by a cartoon from The New Yorker to consider the relationships between the miniature, the uncanny, and mise en abyme in architecture.

See downtown Los Angeles in Legos

2016-10-04T13:15:00-04:00

Take away the conceptual heft of Chris Burden's Metropolis II and substitute in a grade-school love for pre-fabricated plastic building blocks and you'd have something like Jorge Parra Jr.'s eight-years-in-the-making Lego model of Los Angeles, which portrays a detailed swath of the city's downtown. Here's a video tour, including scale-model billboards, a working Metro train, and a faithful representation of its latest skyscraper:

The Miniature Model Behind ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’

2014-03-03T00:34:00-05:00

To get a sense of the kind of hotel they wanted, Mr. Stockhausen did extensive research with Mr. Anderson. This included looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots. They also looked through hotel archives and studied the architecture of locales like the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.

Scott Weaver's Rolling through the Bay

2011-12-21T16:48:01-05:00

Scott Weaver's amazing piece, made with over 100,000 toothpicks over the course of 35 years, is a depiction of San Francisco, with multiple ball runs that allow you to go on "tours" of different parts of the city. It will be on display in the Tinkering Studio until June 19th!

Via Surfstation

A model architect

2011-11-18T10:27:12-05:00

While only a few of Yona Friedman's designs have come to fruition, he is responsible for the tiered Spatial City movement, which had a big impact on his field, and his ideas have inspired planners around the world.

Honey, I shrunk the Flughafen

2011-05-05T17:13:56-04:00

"that is just fantastic ..."

The sole credit for the maker in this news article goes to "German" as in "German builds world’s largest model airport."