The 18 members of London-based Assemble were named winners of the 31st Turner prize on Monday night, receiving their £25,000 prize from the Sonic Youth co-founder and artist Kim Gordon at an awards dinner broadcast live on Channel 4 from Tramway, Glasgow.
Assemble are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense of the word, to win the prize. They were nominated for their work tackling urban dereliction in Toxteth, Liverpool...
— The Guardian
Assemble, the architecture-ish collective known for their direct action urban interventions, has just won the prestigious Turner Prize. Working "across the fields of art, architecture and design," they are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense, to win the prize, and the first whose work... View full entry
According to leaked documents France's Ministry of Interior is considering two new proposals: a ban on free and shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency, and measures to block Tor being used inside France.
The documents were seen by the French newspaper Le Monde. According to the paper, new bills could be presented to parliament as soon as January 2016. These proposals are presumably in response to the attacks in Paris last month where 130 people were murdered.
— Ars Technica
According to the report published by Le Monde, the French Ministry of Interior has developed two frightening new security proposals that may be presented to parliament early next years.The first, as reported by Ars Technica, would block free, public WiFi during a state of emergency. On November... View full entry
Architectural photography is supposed to be different from the airbrushed images of nude women that are about to disappear from the centerfold of Playboy magazine. But what if an edited photograph of a building doesn't just crop out visual clutter like street lights but alters the contours of the building itself? What should we think about an architectural award that was bestowed on the basis of such a doctored image? — Blair Kamin | Chicago Tribune
In his column, Kamin scrutinizes the recent awarding of an honor award to El Centro, a building designed by Juan Moreno, by the Chicago branch of the AIA. Apparently, the architects provided the jurors with a photoshopped image of the building, notably erasing the clunky air circulation machines... View full entry
[Elsie Owusu] alleged that the election [for Riba’s vice-president of practice and profession] was rigged in favour of a rival candidate, and in a complaint to Riba’s president, Jane Duncan, she claimed it was “tantamount to institutionalised racism in my view”. [...]
“The banter, discrimination and treating black people worse than other staff goes through architecture like a stick of rock. It’s absolutely disgraceful and it starts at the top with Riba."
— theguardian.com
In response to Owusu's allegation, RIBA has initiated a formal investigation, and states that a report will be filed in time for discussion at the next national council meeting in March of 2016.According to the Guardian, the allegations include not only accusations that the election of the Vice... View full entry
No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. How do designers experience their cities as locals?A tumultuous sequence of political upheaval and renewal just within the last century has transformed Warsaw into a bustling incubator of creativity for... View full entry
Mr. Adjaye’s public architecture often poses questions about the value systems historically associated with building types. [...]
His explorations into African textile patterns, tribal mythologies, the legacy of slavery and postcolonial modernism are far from predictable sources for architecture. [...]
...the collection of images provides a fascinating look at the transmogrification of European ideas into African shapes.
— wsj.com
At least once in their professional life, every architect is likely to ask themselves, "Should I start my own practice?" From there, there are countless aspects to weigh against one another, but it begins as a very personal question – what do I want to create, and where?Longtime Archinector (and... View full entry
Thanks to Big Data, it is now next to impossible to reside anonymously in a modern city.
Why?
Because data anonymization itself is almost impossible without using advanced cryptography. Our every transaction leaves a digital marker that can be mined by anyone with the right tools or enough determination.
— Cities of the Future
“In the last 20 years, maybe 25 years, there’s a huge cultural shift in people that ultimately affects gyms,” said Bryan Dunkelberger, a founding principal of S3 Design, which has worked for clients like Equinox and the Sports Club/ LA. [...]
And the millennials, these are the special children. They expect all the amenities... Privacy, they expect.” [...]
“It’s funny, they’re more socially open with everything — Facebook, social media — yet more private in their personal space”
— nytimes.com
Along with her husband and partner-in-design Robert Venturi, it was announced on Twitter that 84-year-old Denise Scott Brown has been awarded the 2016 AIA Gold Medal. Denise Scott Brown, who spoke to Archinect earlier this year, did not win the Pritzker when it was awarded to Robert Venturi back... View full entry
Joining an eye-popping list of previous entrants and winners, the five finalists for the 2016 PS1/MoMA Young Architects Program (YAP) have been announced, and they are: • Ultramoderne (the Providence, Rhode Island-based firm whose 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial Lakefront Kiosk winning wood... View full entry
Look closely and you might find that the two operations are connected: Bureaucracy turns out the statistical slurry, and architecture reconstitutes it into built form. And since the actual process of making architecture occupies the lower half, as it were, of this digestive cycle, it is generally held to be an ancillary thing, tedious and occult. — Ian Volner | Art Forum
"Given the popularity of this perception, it’s understandable that the field of design is seized by a sneaking inferiority complex—which is why, from time to time, architects must meet up to remind the world, and one another, that what they do is Important Shit."After some linguistic judo... View full entry
The hour-long performance uses Holl and Lang’s year-and-a-half-long joint research project, Explorations In, as a point of departure. Lang’s dancers bend and glide swiftly, under vivid projections of light, around the structures Holl crafted for Tesseracts of Time.
The four sections of the performance—“under,” “in,” “on,” and “over”—evoke the architectural form of the body as the dancers “engage in deep spatial constructions in inspiring ways,” notes Holl
— thecreatorsproject.vice.com
For more thoughts from Holl on Tesseracts of Time (his dance performance collaboration with Jessica Lang Dance for the Chicago Architecture Biennial) and other recent projects, check out our Feature interview with him. View full entry
We live in a time when everything is designed, from our carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes...
Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer.
There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Design has become the world.
— Istanbul Design Biennial
Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, the curators of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, announced the conceptual framework for next year's biennial in a press release held today in a library of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums.Its overlong title, ARE WE HUMAN?: The Design of the Species: 2 seconds... View full entry
Rem Koolhaas/OMA will design The Factory, the proposed £110 million (approx. US$166.3 million) Manchester Arts Centre in England. Koolhaas won the commission ... over fellow starchitects including Zaha Hadid, Mecanoo, Grimshaw Architects, Rafael Viñoly, DS+R, and Haworth Tompkins. [...]
Named after the Manchester-based record label, The Factory is described as a cutting-edge, flexible cultural institution that ... will also be a major component in the cultural redevelopment of the city.
— bustler.net
