"The design of a school itself might matter as much as something like a gym class. 'The environments in which we live affect not just our behaviors, but our lifelong attitudes about things like healthy eating and active lifestyles...It's also clear that it's so much better to help prevent children from becoming obese than to try to help adults lose weight.' — Fast Company
More on Archinect:Abandoned schools = new development opportunities"Active design" movement wants to trick you into taking the stairsJason Danziger heals psychosis with designNew Parsons-led collaborative aims to make affordable housing healthier View full entry
Although fashion magnate Tom Ford does not make much of the fact that he studied architecture at Parsons The New School for Design, that early influence can still be felt in his body of work, as it can with Daniel DuGoff, an architectural alum of Washington University in St. Louis turned... View full entry
Although jaded art critics might argue that there is nothing new under the sun, they are overlooking the fact that there is important work that has been shaded by time. Concrete poetry, an art form that emphasizes the physical arrangement and visual presentation of poetry as much as its literary... View full entry
In the 1920s urban "futurists" believed that Americans would be living and thriving in high-density vertical cities. Architect Harvey W. Corbett’s “May Live to See, May Solve Congestion Problems” is one such proposal that sees everything from homes, offices, schools, green space and even aircraft landing fields stacked on top of each other for the ultimate metropolis. — 6sqft.com
There's a thin line (or radius, in this case) between what enhances a design and what simply makes it look like it's trying too hard. In the case of buildings with circular openings on their exterior facades, the effect is often visually arresting, but is it good architecture? The COR building in... View full entry
It is believed that all mammals, including humans, have a ‘figural primitive’ in the brain, a pattern with two dots representing eyes, a vertical line representing a nose and a horizontal one for the mouth, at the ready to perceive upright face-like input instantaneously. [...]
So when we look at buildings that suggest a face, we feel a kinship, maybe a little love, maybe in reunion with an extended family member.
— metropolismag.com
As advancements in neural imaging technology allow for more accessible and legible understandings of our brain, architectural theory has begun borrowing more and more from neuroscience. The two disciplines' explicit collaboration is part of the agenda of the Academy of Neuroscience for... View full entry
Founded five years ago, Assemble forged their reputation using otherwise valueless materials (demolition waste, reconstituted foam) and places (the abandoned gas station, the nook beneath a highway overpass) to develop ingenious temporary venues [...]
Their practical vision has more to do with how buildings are used than with their grandeur; and it is often the users, as much as the architects, who steer the projects.
— T Magazine
Assemble has been gaining a lot of attention recently for the inventive, recession-friendly approach to architecture. From converting an abandoned gas station into a cinema to placing a folly under a highway overpass, they're discovering new and unexpected modes (and locations) for architecture... View full entry
Germany might still be a car-obsessed country, but it's starting to build an Autobahn for bikes. — Fast Company
From the U.S. to Germany, urban planners and major corporations are starting to purposefully design for bicycles instead of individually operated cars. In Munich, a proposed network of two-lane bike paths would radiate out from the city center to the surrounding suburbs, creating 400 miles of... View full entry
Herzog & de Meuron have the widest approach to architecture varying their style for each job. In this sense they epitomise the global search for an architecture of pluralism, one flexible enough for very different cultures...The high quality of the work is as notable as the wit; the amount of production as much as its personality. -RIBA President Stephen Hodder — architecture.com
Herzog & de Meuron, whose works include the recently approved yet controversial Tour Triangle in Paris and the redevelopment of Berlin's Tacheles cultural center, received the 2015 RIBA Jencks Award for being a practice "that has recently made a major contribution internationally to... View full entry
The BlockWorks studio proves, yet again, that architects can use Minecraft as a design tool to produce rather magical results with impressive detail. The team of architects, designers, and animators envision mystical cubic worlds in response to what they refer to as "Briefs", which include... View full entry
After the dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000, there was a sense that cities were “back,” and that the era of urban decay—marked by riots, violent crime, and abandonment—was drawing to a close. Unfortunately, despite the relative lack of public notice or awareness, poverty has re-concentrated. — Paul Jargowsky for The Century Foundation
The Century Foundation publishes a Paul Jargowsky paper laying out the facts and statistics of decline and poverty's impact on American cities. Paul Jargowsky is a fellow at The Century Foundation where he writes about inequality, the geographic concentration of poverty, and residential... View full entry
Goldfinger’s [brutalist] buildings were decreed “soulless.” Inhabitants claimed to suffer health problems and depression from spending time inside of them. Some of Goldfinger’s buildings were vacated because occupants found them so ugly. Yet, architects praised Goldfinger’s buildings. [...]
This divide—this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects—tends to be the narrative around buildings like Goldfinger’s. Which is to say, gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete.
— slate.com
Roman Mars, host of the design-centric podcast "99% Invisible", blogs for Slate on the polarizing quality of brutalist architecture – beloved by architects and hated by pretty much everyone else. Discussing the history of concrete in building architecture, Mars also puts brutalism in perspective... View full entry
Instead of being mainly a weight distribution problem for architects, library book stacks are increasingly becoming art installations in cavernous contemplation halls. This is especially evident in Wolfgang Tschapeller's renderings for the Ho Fine Arts Library at Cornell University, in which an... View full entry
In 2007, [São Paulo] Mayor Gilberto Kassab implemented the Clean City Law, labelling outdoor adverts a form of “visual pollution”. In a single year, the city removed 15,000 billboards and 300,000 oversized storefront signs. [...]
The ubiquity of outdoor advertising means that we have come to take it for granted; accepting both its presence and its purpose as natural features of the urban environment.
— theguardian.com
Previously on Archinect: Rethinking Billboards as homeless shelters, and as land art projects in Art + Architecture: The Los Angeles Nomadic Division Sets Up Camp. View full entry
This 21st century trend started with Sweden's 2005 Turning Torso building, then quickly was adapted and modified by Frank Gehry for what became 2011's 8 Spruce Street in Manhattan. Now the twisted apartment building seems to have become its own typology, to judge by recent proposed works by... View full entry
