Can we start by exploring your process of developing an initial idea for a project? You all have very different backgrounds, specialising in metalwork, industrial design and architecture. How do these backgrounds integrate? Can this culmination of different abilities become challenging?
It is extremely challenging integrating our different perspectives – based on our specialties, you can encounter all phases and scales of project development simultaneously
— Modern Matter
Creating a 3D map of a room could someday be as simple as randomly placing four microphones within the space, then snapping your fingers. Researchers from Switzerland’s EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) have recently done so on a limited scale, and are now excited about the technology’s possible applications. — gizmag.com
"There are certainly critical voices that doubt the building’s value. These begin with that of MoMA itself . . . While others claim the AFAM should be preserved because it’s a great Modernist building, and therefore part of the MoMA collection, rather than its campus, no one has unequivocally answered the question of why it is so. The discourse as yet remains one of opinions asserted as imperatives: I love it / I never liked it / it must be saved / tear it down." — Design Observer (Places)
David Heymann in his critical article explores the deeper issues at play in the American Folk Art Museum controversy. As he mentions, the stances taken for or against the AFAM are clear, however; too much attention has been paid to the object itself and not to reality that it sits empty as a... View full entry
I should have know it was too good to be true. One of my first job applications and my first job interview with a firm not even hiring...landed me a job 3 weeks after graduating. This was my dream firm because of their world renown work, highly published design philosophies, in an awesome city in the Northeast without having to sweat too much competing with my peers who were graduating later at the end of the spring term. — archinect.com
Anonymously authored (obviously) by ohhh_architecture, Nightmare job is a new blog set up as a place to vent about a job opportunity turned bad. This should be good. View full entry
Back in the real world, the married-partner model has proved powerful, not because it fosters a homey atmosphere of concord and compromise but because it allows two loyal but opinionated people, with compatible levels of obsessiveness and drive, to feed off each other’s energies — NY Magazine
In the latest issue, Justin Davidson uses the recent discussion regarding Denise Scott Brown's Pritzker Prize or lack thereof, to examine the myth of the solitary auteur and the growing reality of the married-partner model. View full entry
Three Gehry towers will replace low-rise brick warehouse office buildings and the Princess of Wales Theatre. The new buildings will contain condos, a new OCADU campus, and gallery space to house David and Audrey Mirvish's significant collection of modern art. — urbantoronto.ca
For the 145th consecutive year, the American Institute of Architects is holding its annual convention this week, June 20-23. It is the biggest gathering of Architects and designers each year, and it is always held different host cities. This year, Denver is the location. Traveling to the... View full entry
In this comic, Grant Snider of Incidental Comics illustrates a variety of architectural forms and their corresponding dances. Which one is more your style — Bauhaus Bounce or Cubist Shuffle? — mashable.com
"Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles," Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly said. That looseness -- a spirit of experimentation, a refusal to be bound by convention -- will be on display June 23 when the MAK Center for Art and Achitecture hosts a tour of groundbreaking modern homes by Frank Gehry, Neil M. Denari Architects, Eric Owen Moss and artist Peter Alexander. — latimes.com
Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes hit a significant milestone in June, surging eight points to a reading of 52 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. Any reading over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. — nahb.org
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the May ABI score was 52.9, up dramatically from a mark of 48.6 in April. This score reflects an increase in demand for design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 59.1, up slightly from the reading of 58.5 the previous month. — calculatedriskblog.com
For the latest edition of the Student Works: series Archinect featured the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) library pavilion, located on a sloping lawn on the temporary Dover Campus. The gridshell structure designed by City Form Lab had to accommodate three mature trees... View full entry
This study considers the question of how Louis Kahn’s development as an architect was
shaped by the influences of Robert Venturi. The personal and professional interaction between these two historically significant architects began late in Kahn’s career and early in Venturi’s.
— Sam Rodell, WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY, Thesis 2008
If my friend Kurt Dillon has not sent me the link for this significant thesis by then Master of Science in Architecture candidate Sam Rodell in Washington State University in 2008, I would have my suspicions hanging in the air without proper documentation. It is a great reading for folks who are... View full entry
It's not your everyday real estate deal. A team of young entrepreneurs persuaded about 50 deep-pocketed investors to help them purchase a mountain. The deal just closed in April, and development on Utah's nearly 10,000-acre Powder Mountain is now underway. [...]
"We were inspired by the core concepts of the Sundance Film Festival and the Aspen Institute. You can build place around a shared ethos."
— npr.org
“Cities today have become far too large,” Wang said in an interview while visiting New York in April. “I’m really worried, because it’s happening too fast and we have already lost so much.”
Wang, a sturdy 49-year-old, has built his small architectural practice as a riposte to this heedless destruction. With his wife, architect Lu Wenyu, he runs a 10-person firm called Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city southwest of Shanghai.
— bloomberg.com