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How are you doing? It's funny how many of us answer that these days. In the context of architectural practice, our response might focus on our work status, or our busyness, or even our un-busyness. But, architects and designers have a lot of other things unfolding in their lives, too. Some are... View full entry
With the COVID-19 quarantine period entering its third month in the United States, Archinect is seeking input from the design community regarding how the crisis has impacted issues of mental health. Archinect has covered mental and workplace health issues extensively in the past and... View full entry
Construction workers across America have suffered staggering job losses in recent weeks as the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted, and in many cases shut down, construction sites around the US. A recent report from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that nearly one million... View full entry
There's no hiding the emotional toll this unprecedented pandemic has had on the entire globe. As a part of our efforts to learn about the impacts of this situation, Archinect reached out to its international community to get a sense of how things have been going. We wanted to hear how our... View full entry
Today, with the developing inconveniences of life, the hardships and frustrations, and the multitude of circumstantial consequences many of us face, it can be tough to know how to navigate the challenges we encounter. How do we trek this rocky path? In his book The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan... View full entry
With the rise in measures due to the impacts of COVID-19, many are battling the subsequent mentality driven pandemics of worry, fear, and anxiety. While we collectively strive to fulfill our work duties, we must couple them with parental, familial, economic, and a slew of other bombardments that... View full entry
In this rapidly evolving socio-professional landscape, remote work is the talk of the town. In an ongoing survey, Archinect has learned that an estimated 78% of architectural professionals are working from home or have been given the option to work from home during the current COVID-19 outbreak... View full entry
Losing sleep can be a drag. Especially, since we know sleep deprivation drastically impacts the cognitive functions so crucial to work in architecture. Things like judgment, critical thinking, problem solving, planning, and organization, are but a few of the influenced aspects of our mental... View full entry
With the back-to-school bustle underway for the fall, many students have hit the ground running. As the work load begins to pile up and studio projects commence, anxiety and stress also sneak their way into the forefront. How can the architecture student tackle this intrusion? Nicole LeBlanc, MA... View full entry
As architects operate in a profession so demanding mentally, the need for peak performance in the workplace can become a relevant and much-needed desire. How does one capitalize on the intellectual challenges faced on a difficult design problem, construction site, or management setback? Author and... View full entry
Productivity is one of those things most of us try to optimize. Especially when it comes to the day to day work we have in architecture. As dynamic and wide-ranging as a day can be, the focus and concentration needed to compose those remaining wall details, check those door schedules, or look over... View full entry
On this episode of Archinect Sessions we're joined by Eva Hagberg, a NY-based writer and architectural consultant. Our conversation covers Eva’s architectural studies at Princeton and Berkeley, and how that transitioned into a successful writing career spanning architecture criticism to... View full entry
Antipathy to the “concrete jungle” is rooted in the assumption that concrete-heavy environments are by nature detrimental to psychological health. One study of more than 4 million Swedes, published in 2004 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, seemed to suggest that moving from a rural to an urban environment had a detrimental effect on individuals’ mental health. — The Guardian
"Has the material been made a bogeyman for the urban environment – assumed to be harsh and unforgiving, rather than liberating and inclusive – when many of the problems it seems to embody are more directly related to how inequality and segregation manifest in cities?," writes Lynsey Hanley for... View full entry
Winston Churchill once observed that we shape the buildings and then the buildings shape us. I have written elsewhere about how architects and planners, albeit unwittingly, are complicit in producing an urban landscape that contributes to an unhealthy mental landscape.
Can we think of different ways to be in the city, of a different architecture that can “cure” loneliness?
— Tanzil Shafique in Fast Company
Tanzil Shafique, a Ph.D. researcher in urban design at the University of Melbourne, conducted a graduate design studio where students came up with potential architectural and urban responses to loneliness. View full entry
The elevator-phobic people of New York City are almost our own subculture [...] I’ve fantasized at times about a kind of utopia: a gleaming glass city free of elevators. But for now I, just like Gabriella and Rachel and Kevin and Nakia, still live in New York, and still constantly have to force myself to enter slim or squat boxes of despair. Why haven’t we left? What strange fate have we dealt ourselves, to live in a place full of hellscapes. — Amos Barshad, Topic
Having a deeply ingrained fear of elevators while living in a vertical landscape like New York City — which has over 60,000 elevators, by the way — isn't easy for some folks, like writer Amos Barshad. He and other fellow New Yorkers he interviews talk about how their phobia began, their search... View full entry
