Combine cross laminated timber, glue laminated timber, and the desire to connect with nature while providing ample creative working space, and you have the 5 King Tower, a 52-meter timber structure with the strength of concrete and steel (but a much smaller carbon footprint).The 5 King tower... View full entry
One of the most vexing features was the doorways, which Apple wanted to be perfectly flat, with no threshold. The construction team pushed back, but Apple held firm. The rationale? If engineers had to adjust their gait while entering the building, they risked distraction from their work, according to a former construction manager.
“We spent months trying not to do that because that’s time, money and stuff that’s never been done before,” the former construction manager said.
— Reuters
Although detail-obsessed architects can often find working with broad-strokes contractors to be challenging, there's one group of designers with perhaps even more rigorous attention to detail: the team at Apple. According to this article in Reuters, the actual building of the "spaceship" Apple... View full entry
Researchers armed with Ikea furniture, board games, and plastic-wrapped meals, wanted to know how people would handle themselves if airlines swapped those cramped rows of miserable seats for something more imaginative. They tested something A3 [the California-flavored startup-within-a-multinational-corporation at Airbus] calls “Transpose”—a conceptual modular cabin that offers a bevy of in-flight activities: a facial over here, a latte over there, a spin class up front. — Wired
Think that’s weird? Well, once the plane lands, a crew can pop out one interior and toss in a new one, moving things about to create the next flight’s passenger experience.According to the article, this idea might not ever actually take off. There's a host of regulatory as well as logistical... View full entry
The effects of last summer's Brexit are starting to be measured within the architectural community, and they're dramatic: according to a press release issued by RIBA, in a survey of its members 40% of U.K.-based non British EU nationals are thinking about leaving the country, while 60% of RIBA's... View full entry
The newly redesigned Wadden Sea Centre is now in full operation at the Wadden Sea National Park, Denmark's largest national park and a UNESCO-appointed heritage site. Copenhagen-based Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter, who designed the Sailing Tower in Aarhus and won the Träpriset prize for the... View full entry
How does Santiago Calatrava's Oculus encapsulate the complex history and significance of its site? In this brief video from filmmaker Jeff Durkin, Calatrava's elaborate transit hub canopy is sited in its aesthetic and social contexts via a series of carefully selected voice-over news clips and... View full entry
Fifty-two stories, four visually distinct sections, and one playful, gaping hole constitute the major components of Gensler's proposed new 300+ unit residential building for downtown Los Angeles, which would rise from the ashes of a (soon-to-be) former auto dealership on 1600 South Figueroa... View full entry
A study conducted by Indiana University's National Study of Student Engagement reveals that architecture majors spend the most time outside of their classes studying, beating out even engineers. On average, an architecture major will spend 22.2 hours a week working on projects and generally... View full entry
The Fairy Tales Architecture Competition concluded another successful edition Monday evening with the anticipated reveal of its 2017 winners. The competition had its biggest winners announcement yet in front of a live audience at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.Like every year, the... View full entry
University lectures and research exhibitions are starting up for the new year.Here is your list of things to do in Chicago over the next couple of weeks.Lecture: Yvonne Farrell | February 15Image credit: Grafton ArchitectsYvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects has been invited to speak at IIT this... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry
Photographer James Ewing was given a studio and several weeks to creatively photograph architectural models made by students of the Columbia GSAPP between 1994 and 2003. The resulting work will form a show, "Stagecraft: Models and Photos," that opens at the GSAPP on February 9th.Featuring... View full entry
Not content to be merely groundbreaking, Bureau Spectacular's imaginative work is increasingly becoming prestigious. The SFMOMA will display "insideoutsidebetweenbeyond," a large-scale installation the museum specifically invited Bureau Spectacular to design, from February 11th through August... View full entry
How can architects transform the driving economy of a preexisting city? The team of de Architekten Cie. + Felixx Landscape Architects & Planners won The City Administration of Chelyabinsk's competition to redesign the historical center of their formerly industrial town based on a scheme... View full entry
TU Delft recently won the overall winning title in the first phase of SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod competition, which the aerospace company launched in 2015. Students and independent engineers worldwide were invited to design a human-scale Hyperloop pod, as a way to help accelerate SpaceX's development... View full entry