April 2015

↑ 2015 Wheelwright Prize awarded to Erik L’Heureux

Harvard GSD’s $100,000 Wheelwright Prize was awarded to Erik L’Heureux, whose “winning proposal, ‘Hot and Wet: The Equatorial City and the Architectures of Atmosphere’ examines the traditional and modern building strategies in five dense cities in the equatorial zone -- a timely topic when rapid urbanization and climate change are on the rise.”

↑ Jack White studied at the GSD, and other celebrities' hidden architectural pasts

For April Fool’s day, Archinect took a break from tedious reality and instead delved into the architectural “pasts” of some celebrities.

↑ Richard Serra engages with the Qatari desert landscape in his new sculptural piece

Not content to dominate every single ground floor museum space in the Northern Hemisphere with his sculptures (this may be an exaggeration), artist Richard Serra unveiled new Qatari-desert specific artworks

↑ Pompidou responds to "fascist" Le Corbusier claims

This post on Le Corbusier’s potentially fascist leanings/background encouraged people to delve into a debate about classical versus modern architectural styles.

↑ Facebook hires Gehry again for next two buildings in Menlo Park

Frank Gehry: the architect who never sleeps. After designing the Facebook HQ (among a few other notable buildings in the world; Google it), Gehry was picked again to design two other buildings in Menlo Park, helping to cement his legacy well into the 21st century.

↑ Manchester man gets potholes fixed by drawing giant penises around them

Proving that sometimes you have to be a dick to get things done, this Englishman came up with a unique strategy to address chronic infrastructural problems (and Archinect’s audience was up for the discussion)

↑ Patrik Schumacher takes to Facebook "In Defense of Stars and Icons"

One of the most highly commented on posts of the year, this coverage of Zaha Hadid Architects’ own Patrik Schumacher’s Facebook post engaged (and occasionally enraged) the Archinect readership.

↑ ‘Architecture is now a tool of capital, complicit in a purpose antithetical to its social mission’

Another news post that garnered a huge reaction from the online community was this piece about architecture losing its inherent social mission and becoming a tool of the rich. Commentators got into a heated debate about public housing, rent control, and the problems of theory versus reality.

↑ What makes "good" architecture criticism? These writers define the traits

Just what qualifies as excellent architectural criticism? The Archinect commentators, always a feisty, sharp-eyed bunch, leaped upon a perceived lack of diversity in this list.

April 2015

↑ How Architects Can Help Nepal (And Learn From Past Disastrous Mistakes/Successes)

Nepal suffered a devastating earthquake in April, which prompted Julia Ingalls to investigate how architects have historically been able to help survivors in the three crucial stages after a major natural disaster.

↑ Between Sampling and Dowsing: Field Notes from GRNASFCK

Nicholas Korody investigated the frontier of landscape architecture with this compelling profile of GRNASFCK. “While taking on the name and guise of a landscape studio, they are constantly interrogating their own imperatives and preconceptions. Today, we are living in a strange temporality marked by a disjunct between the accelerated tempo of the everyday and an encroaching awareness of geological and climatological timescales. GRNASFCK takes this fissure as an opening…”

↑ Designing the Hyperspace: UCLA studio imagines Hyperloop's future in California

What’s going on with Elon Musk’s proposed Hyperloop, the super-fast 760 mile long transit line between San Francisco and Los Angeles? Amelia Taylor-Hochberg’s thoughtful, in-depth feature profiled the UCLA design process and team (led by Craig Hodgetts) working on what could be a radical change in California’s, and thus the nation/world/universe’s, future.