Katherine Guimapang chatted with Austrian architect Julia Koerner, who has lately worked with both "one of the biggest fashion houses in Paris" and on costumes for the Black Panther movie. archinet thought her work was a perfect example of a "Great way to translate arch. computation skills or even arch. skills to other disciplines."

Plus, Anthony George Morey reflected on the Small Studio Snapshots series and highlighted quotes that provide insight into "the reasons, decisions, and motivations" of nineteen of "today's young, successful and productive" design offices. monosierra concluded

"There seems to be two broad categories of young upstarts: Those subsidized by academia (Teaching in exchange for free work-study labor, fabrication facilities, office space, networking) and the business-minded ones (Who team up with young GCs or developers)."

News

The Financial Times explored the rise of the micro-apartment. Even though kikkidy was inclined to believe that "living in a micro-apartment would actually encourage social interaction," they still had to admit "these micro-apartments make me sad AF. =/"

Readers commented that Sticks II, an extension by Hou de Sousa to their 2016 winning folly at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, NY, was "Beautiful" and "really lovely. SO simple."

Reacting to the final results for favorite Spring '19 architecture school lecture, Ryan Scavnicky inquired about a future "video category?" and posted an example from The School of Architecture at Taliesin, which Archinect thinks was "amazing. We definitely see a future in lecture series videos".

The Princeton University Art Museum has acquired a collection of nearly 5,000 drawings created by postmodern-era architect Michael Graves. While many expressed their appreciation for, and reminisced about their own forays into, prismacolor drawings on flimsy yellow trace, others complained of "Cartoon elevations" and "cartoon architecture". Or questioned "why someone would choose yellow trace over white. especially someone so sensitive to color in his designs."

R.I.P., I. M. Pei "architectural legend". JLC-1 quipped "may the triangles be with him."

CELLS Healthcare of the Future in Milan, Italy by Filippo Taidelli Architetto and Urban installation "Minusoid is Sinusoid" in Tartu, Estonia by Liina Soosaar et al., are just two of the recent top images (in no particular order) from the Archinect Pinterest board Installations.

Blogs/Firms/Work/Updates

Eddie G Melendez Merced recently spent some time working "on the rehabilitation of this building" while Jason Gates worked on a "graphic mountain under construction".

Lian Chikako Chang dropped by (as she admitted "It's been a long time since I've posted") to share some writing on "the possibilities we might find for the built environment when we think from the point of view of our thermal micro-environments and the physics of heat transfer."

Orhan Ayyüce penned a piece/took a photo illustrating URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY and the architecture of contemporary Los Angeles.

For those looking for work,

• In Los Angeles, West of West, is looking for a new Project Architect
• Gunkel Architecture, a 12-person office in Berkeley, CA wants to hire a Project Manager / Project Architect
• Allied Works is seeking an exceptional Project Architect, for immediate employment, out of their New York office
• Lincoln Lighthill Architect, a full-service architecture firm located in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, is hiring for a full-time Project Manager/Architect

Schools/Blogs

Multnomah County engineers enlisted Professor Jeff Schnabel and a class of Portland State University Master of Architecture students to develop proposals for a new, innovative, and multi-modal Burnside Bridge.

There were a slew of hiring announcements in May including;

• Professor Christian Frost as the new Head of Architecture, at The Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University
• Architect and educator, Chris Knapp appointed head of Bond University’s Abedian School of Architecture
• Landscape theorist, designer, historian and double-Graham Foundation awardee, Alison Hirsch, as USC's new MLA director
• Architecture educator, theorist, and scholar Dora Epstein Jones is officially the new Chair of Architecture at Texas Tech University College of Architecture

Will Galloway reviewed the ongoing Plywood Dreams, of Hiroto Kobayashi and his students at Keio University's architecture program, which is all about CNC’d plywood and a "kind of wiki-house like work".

"This is a kind of education that can only happen when the curriculum is project-based, where students are building every year in a concentrated way. The effect is a slow version of rapid-prototyping...so mistakes are caught out remorselessly...still in its infancy. I expect to see a lot more coming from the effort in the next few years"

midlander remarked "these are beautiful...also a good lesson on the richness of expression possible just by subtle tweaks to functional components."

Discussion/Threads

Donna Sink shared an anecdote illustrating gender bias and "a belief - held by both women and men - that women don't really understand how construction happens."

Despite Donna's reluctance "to point out someone else's mistake" geezertect argued "cutting those assholes down to size is one of life's great joys. Why would you deprive yourself of the pleasure?" Personally, JonathanLivingston is "really getting sick of people talking over my female staff and colleagues during project meetings" and has begun to call people out about it during the meeting.  

b3tadine[sutures] asked "Are you seeing the GC using project management software as a crutch? Wherein, they post submittals, and no one on the construction team has any responsibility to do their job, and it's the architects fault?" bowling_ball answered "Yes. 1000% this. And it's led to a lot of confusion, rework, and misunderstandings." curtkram believes this is symptomatic of how "the architect's role in babysitting the contractor's subs seems to be increasing quite a bit.  often it seems the GC/superintendent don't even look at the drawings anymore."

Yet, senjohnblutarsky disagrees that things have really changed "Digital submittals, in general, have made contractors lazy...Procore and similar programs are just a fancy dropbox.  I don't think it's changed much beyond what was being done digitally, before."

Finally, BulgarBlogger started a thread to mourn the passing of I.M. Pei. citizen eulogized "I consider his work at The Louvre to be almost magical. He managed to create something exquisitely beautiful and thoroughly responsive for a site and context that seemed impossible to adequately address." midlander added "What an admirable architect who made elegant things. And I hope his tombstone will be a pyramid."

Additionally

Lydialyle Gibson covered, for Harvard Magazine, a Teju Cole Class Day speech at GSD. Mr. Cole used the occasion to challenge the next generation of designers

"Oppression has always had great use for architects and designers and urban planners. Redlining was a technical skill. And everything that betrays our collective humanity depends on people just like you, with skills just like yours…Will you be one of those who refuse to participate?"

h/t @BlackSpace