Boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and around it.
A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety — a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops — or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones.
— nymag.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Putting entire cities on the psychiatrist's couchGetting Neural: Van Alen hosts "How Does the Brain Respond to the City?"The Quest to Measure the Brain's Response to Urban Design View full entry
”...it might be that loneliness is often due to circumstance.
The thing with cities is we are absolutely surrounded by people...We can see other people living richer, more populated lives than our own. At the same time, we can feel very exposed … there are lots of eyes on everyone. That is why the loneliness of the city has a particularly distinct tang to it.
Loneliness, however, is often like bad weather, “it passes through our lives”.
— The Guardian
More about mental health on Archinect:The Internet and the Future of LonelinessAn environmental psychologist on why boring design is bad for your healthHow urban designers can better address mental health in their work, according to a new think tankStudy Links Walkable Neighborhoods to Prevention... View full entry
He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?” — telegraph.co.uk
Related stories in the Archinect news:Olafur Eliasson to storm VersaillesOlafur Eliasson wins a Crystal Award for "improving the state of the world"Olafur Eliasson opens ship-themed pedestrian bridge in Copenhagenand in a way: Frank Gehry gives the crowd a piece of his mind (and his middle finger) View full entry
Who the fuck cares what Banksy’s real name is. You should care about his art instead, what he’s given you, and stop trying to take more than what’s to be had. Don’t deny yourself great artistic creativity simply to satisfy the curiosity of some blip of an itch that will deny him his anonymity to create. Doing that will make you less than the worst, you wouldn’t even be a super villain scientist, but a spectator searching for a sport to watch that you’re too inept to participate in. — davidchoe.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Banksy about to open "Dismaland" pop-up exhibition in British seaside resortAfter Banksy: the parkour guide to GazaAn interview with man behind the “Stealing Banksy?” auctionBanksy's unpublished NYT op-ed declares new WTC is the biggest eyesore in New York View full entry
the firm founded by Harvard-trained David Mizan Hashim has made a name over three decades as a stalwart of the Malaysian architecture scene [...]
It is now the country’s second-largest architecture firm, with 330 staffers led by 14 architect principals; 5 of them head Veritas offices overseas. [...]
“I purposely don’t want all decisions to come from me,” [Hashim] says ... “My strategy is planned obsolescence.”
— forbes.com
Related on Archinect:Do western architects disrespect eastern architecture?Looking to start your own practice? Keep this in mind...60 Minutes profiles Bjarke Ingels, the "Starchitect""Stepping Out" – the personal preface to starting your own practice, on Archinect Sessions #44 View full entry
The East End of London has been associated with many things: the “cockney” sense of humour; colourful criminals; waves of immigration; and poverty. Not many people associate it with architecture. But it was in Poplar in the south eastern corner of the East End that I chose to do my... View full entry
Amid Cairo's brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent.
But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic "calligraffiti," as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear: "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes."
[...] in total secrecy from the Egyptian government due to the country's strict laws forbidding artistic expression.
— techinsider.io
All images by the artist, eL Seed. For more images click here.More Cairo-related stories in the Archinect news:Does Foster + Partner's Maspero District masterplan neglect the local residents?Egypt's challenges to build its new capital cityEgypt’s street artists now risk even more View full entry
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode...
Reuters reports that a huge recently-completed enclosure called the New Safe Confinement—the world's largest land-based moving structure—will be “pulled slowly over the site later this year to create a steel-clad casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely.”
— The Atlantic
Although it sounds like an early aughts indie band name, the New Safe Confinement structure over Chernobyl's reactor number four is finally complete, constructed at an estimated cost of €1.5 billion. Meanwhile, neighboring city and officially uninhabitable Pripyat has become a hauntingly... View full entry
A group of fourth-year Ball State architecture students are refurbishing a former meth house in the Thomas Park-Avondale neighborhood in Muncie as a studio project.
The studio class is working with ecoREHAB, a local nonprofit that provides sustainable rehabilitation of housing and neighborhoods. “The whole goal is to revitalize the community more so than to earn money,” said Taylor Sheppard, a senior architecture major.
— The Ball State Daily
For more on drugs in architecture:Narquitectura: Inside the Fortified Palaces of Mexico's Drug LordsPowering Mumbai with Magic Mushroomsa new memorial to the victims of [drug war] violence View full entry
After Alejandro Aravena accepted the Pritzker Prize yesterday, his firm Elemental released four open source plans for low income housing that, according to the firm's website, balance the constraints of "low-rise high density, without overcrowding, with possibility of expansion (from social... View full entry
The Information notes that building a city could allow Sidewalk Labs to “rethink government, social policy, and data-driven management.” [CEO Dan] Doctoroff explained that “thinking about a city from the Internet up is really compelling,” while also noting that “cities are hard. You have people with vested interest, politics, physical space…But the technology ultimately cannot be stopped.” — 9 to 5 Google
Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs joins the rarefied stable of companies potentially looking to expand from an initial service (in this case, improved WiFi access and traffic flow in cities) into a fully-fledged social experimentation machine. Will they build 21st century company towns or create a... View full entry
Public tours of a newly-restored Salvation Army shelter in Paris designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret start in April. The tour guides for the 11-storey building, known as the Cité de Refuge, will be the residents of the building themselves who have been trained by the Fondation Le Corbusier.
The Cité de Refuge, which opened in 1933..., is historically significant as Le Corbusier’s first urban housing project and one of only two completed buildings in Paris.
— The Art Newspaper
Does Le Corbusier have you crowing? Check out these related links:Jørn Utzon's final touch to the Sydney Opera House: a Le Corbusier tapestryRenault issues Coupé Corbusier: a concept car to explore "a new way forward", inspired by Le Corbusier“Le Corbusier was a combination of blind and naïve... View full entry
The Palm Springs Art Museum has named Brooke Hodge as their very first Director of Architecture & Design. Hodge comes by way of the Cooper Hewitt in New York, where she served as the Deputy Director since 2014, but is already well-versed in the southern Californian architecture and design... View full entry
"It's a triple whammy," [Hadid] told the BBC Radio 4 in February. "I'm a woman, which is a problem to many people. I'm a foreigner — another problem. And I do work which is not normative, which is not what they expect. Together, it becomes difficult."
Like any high-profile architect, Hadid was expected to produce strong, functional designs. But as a woman, she also faced the added pressure of having her work interpreted as some sort of gender statement.
— Los Angeles Times
More on Archinect:Zaha on Zaha: "I always thought, you know, I should do well because the work is good."“We just loved her”: Frank Gehry remembers Zaha HadidFun game: spot the double-standards in this Zaha-bashing piece!Zaha Hadid: 'Being an Arab and a woman is a double-edged sword' View full entry
"Foreigners consider [Kangbashi] to be abandoned. Chinese consider the city to be still developing," [photographer Raphael Olivier] explains.
"A lot of the early news reports focus on it being a failed, weird place -- but it's also a huge accomplishment and people there are not necessarily unhappy, there is a huge sense of hope. You have to respect that on a certain level."
— CNN
Other angles on the effects of China's massive urbanization:China's Manhattan replica continues to lie abandoned as economy slows'Re-education' campaigns teach China's new ghost city-dwellers how to behaveOrdos in 2014 - "Brave City of The Future"Photos Of A Massive Chinese-Built Ghost Town In... View full entry