Category: Articles

OZY Ι June 13, 2016 Last fall at an exhibition in Chicago, something was pumping and hissing. Twenty-two tanks, all in a stack, filled with water and framed in wood. Weird art? But clearly it was some kind of wall system. So … weird architecture? And getting closer doesn’t clarify matters. The name of this oddity:… Continue reading Buildings that Grow, Breathe, and Burn Calories

Architectural Record Ι May 25, 2016 For some, architecture has a unique ability to transpose fantasies into reality. And if you were an urbane heterosexual male in the last half of the 20th century, there weren’t many better fantasy generators than Playboy. In its pages, this debonair lifestyle was told and sold through Modern architecture and design:… Continue reading Review of Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979

Metropolis Magazine Ι May 24, 2016   In Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, the first film adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel, you get the entire litany of architecture-run-amok as it appears in virtually any cultural product. There’s the architect as mad visionary, capable of bringing astounding visions of the future into the present but unable to dictate their evolution… Continue reading Architecture Isn’t the Villain of “High-Rise”—We Are

Line Shape Space Ι April 25, 2016 The oldest multistory wood-structure building in the world is almost 1,000 years old, surviving dynasties, weather, and even earthquakes. The Wooden Pagoda of Yingxian in China is nine stories and 220 feet tall. Its rustic, octagonal mass is made from 54 different types of wood joints and not a single nail. Given… Continue reading The Experimental Tall Wood Buildings Material Everyone’s Raving About: Mass Timber

April 2016 Ι Architect Magazine  Architecture “is supposed to be bold and it’s supposed to be large,” says Aaron Forrest, AIA, one-half of the Providence, R.I., duo Ultramoderne. “It’s meant to be a statement of some kind.” This perspective, from architecture’s vanguard in the post-recessionary year of 2016, may be controversial at a time when many… Continue reading Next Progressives: Ultramoderne

April 4, 2016 Ι Doggerel  Between 1957 and 1966, almost two-thirds of all African nations declared independence from their colonial rulers, ready to cast off nearly a century of imperial hierarchy by forging new social structures and self-determined economies. And they did so with modern architecture. Modern design for a modern continent For postcolonial African leaders,… Continue reading The hidden history of African modernism

Line/Shape/Space Ι March 28, 2016  It’s not hard to translate a brick-and-mortar building into pure data. Today’s monitoring and software tools can measure energy usage and efficiency electron-by-electron, track circulation patterns, and anticipate how weather changes will affect indoor climate. It’s a software revolution that’s led to a hardware revolution: dynamic building systems that can react… Continue reading Skylar Tibbits’ MIT Self-Assembly Lab Programs Architectural Materials to Come Alive

Metropolis Magazine Ι March 14, 2016  In China, when it’s time to build a new city—and it’s always time to build a new city in China—there’s usually a clear loser to be pitied: the landscape that gets leveled and paved over. At the moment, the Chinese government is trying to direct the greatest urban migration in… Continue reading Wetland Restoration: A New Driver for Development in China?

Architect Magazine Ι March 11, 2016 What, exactly, does architecture have to say about this wild and surreal election season? The default answer for just about any year is usually: Not much. And that’s a problem Julia van den Hout and her fellow curators at Original Copy aimed to fix with 5×5. The exhibit invited 25 young design firms to… Continue reading 5×5 Exhibit: Participatory Provocations

Chicago Architect Ι March-April 2016  Just two years after Bertrand Goldberg’s 1975 Prentice Women’s Hospital completed its dance with a wrecking ball, his Marina City Towers are cruising towards landmark status. Preservation cries have arisen around Edo Belli’s 1975 expansion to Cueno Hospital. Meanwhile, Stanley Tigerman’s, FAIA, Pensacola Place is getting a crisp renovation from Brininstool… Continue reading Preserve that Hashtag: Media and the Preservation of Postmodern Architecture