“There was an intense flowering of experimental and futuristic architecture in the 1960s and 70s, which the young African countries used to express their national identities,” says [Swiss architect Manuel] Herz, who has curated an exhibition of more than 80 buildings from sub-Saharan Africa, showing at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, until May. “But we simply don’t know about it... we wanted to show this incredible cultural wealth that also exists.” — The Guardian
Usually the projects of African "big man" leaders, the modernist buildings were often constructed for propagandistic purpose and tended to be designed by European architects. Noted architectural photographer Iwan Baan took many of the photographs in Herz's exhibit. View full entry
UK/Dubai-based media company Electric Lime Productions recently released a film for the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi called "The Arcology", defined as "a vision of architectural design principles for very densely populated habitats (hyperstructures)"The short video below is a highlight from a... View full entry
Already a couple years old, but a great piece by Tom Sachs on the beauty and nature of plywood. h/t kottke.org View full entry
Spirit of Space, in collaboration with Trahan Architects, has created a short film featuring the award-winning design of the Louisiana State Sports Hall of Fame and Regional History Museum in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The museum was recently awarded the prestigious 2015 AIA Institute Honor Award... View full entry
Nominated for best animated short at this year's Oscars, the Canadian-Norwegian film tells the story of two modernist architects' three daughters, who long for a bicycle.Director Torill Kove previously won an Oscar in 2007 for "The Danish Poet". View full entry
The architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre’s extravagant urban mansions in El Alto, Bolivia, have been derided as kitschy-looking cohetillos, meaning “spaceships”—giving his work the nickname “spaceship architecture.”
But the admirers of Freddy Mamani, as he is generally known, say his colorful “new Andean” style has also served to reinvent a city once aesthetically monochromatic, and that he has found a way to bring traditional Andean and Tiwanaku cultures into an urban setting.
— qz.com
Previously: 'Neo-Andean' architecture sprouts in Bolivia View full entry
"Citizenfour," in fact, enlarges and underlines ideas about architecture, privacy and culture that run more subtly through a number of Oscar nominees. Several [...] movies exploit the dramatic appeal of the constricted, labyrinthine, tightly packed, claustrophobic or paranoid space: the crowded backstage corridors of "Birdman" by Alejandro G. Iñárritu; the tunnels, hallways and dollhouse-like spaces of Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel"; the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Ava DuVernay's "Selma." — latimes.com
Related: Julia Ingalls' Material Witness series on Archinect 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
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
Russia’s northern cities are a triumph of will; grand settlements in the middle of snow and darkness where people are dwarfed by the outsized factories they’ve built and helpless next to the industrial waste those factories create. Photographer Alexander Gronsky’s images of Norilsk seem both close to reality and something out of a dream. [...] But at the same time it is a place of heart-wrenching almost Arcadian beauty. A place of pale skies and metallic rivers. — calvertjournal.com
Make sure to also check out the other tales in Calvert Journal's excellent mini-series, "Six stories from the Russian North." View full entry
Over 400 pieces that archive the construction and design of the presidential Kennedy family's Wexford House will soon be up for sale at a live auction on February 19 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts that will be hosted by Boston-based auction company RR Auction. Bidding... 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
Egypt is in the throes of a severe housing shortage [...]. But one thing the country has an abundance of is lonesome desert, and developers are turning there to construct immense projects that stick out in the emptiness like skyscrapers on Mars.
London-based photographer Manuel Alvarez Diestro has a yen for the monumental [...] naturally he was interested in the colossal structures rising on the outskirts of Egyptian cities.
— citylab.com
Structures designed by the likes of Peter Zumthor, Zaha Hadid, and Le Corbusier are rendered into atmospheric, sharply detailed black and white compositions through the camera lens of Swiss-French analogue photographer Hélène Binet, who was recently selected as the 2015 recipient of the Julius... View full entry
As a researcher interested in the intersection of urban form and place, Joseph Heathcott set out to explore how one of New York’s borders shapes the lived experience and physical environment of its surroundings. Through historical research, photography, and deep observation, he traces the city’s only major internal land boundary — the Brooklyn-Queens border — and draws out the social and spatial conditions of this largely invisible urban seam. — urbanomnibus.net
