Archinect - News

Kate Wagner says McMansions have become a permanent staple of the American scene

2023-05-17T19:50:00-04:00

I started the blog McMansion Hell to document—and deride—the endless cosmetic variations of this uniquely American form of architectural blight. [...] I worry that I’ve actually reinforced the idea that McMansions are a relic of the recent past. In fact, there remains a certain allure to these seemingly soulless suburban developments [...] the McMansion is alive and well. Far from being a boom time fad, it has become a durable emblem of our American way of life.

Wagner says that, without noticing, the media’s focus on gentrification and the affordability of cities has meant that the rise of “modern farmhouses” and other forms of McMansions following the end of the great recession has gone largely unscrutinized. She claims these and other designs occupy a place between high design and vernacular architecture before finally predicting their continued dominance over the residential market owing to our penchant for consumerist displays.

"One day the McMansion, once a token of financial tomfoolery, will instead epitomize our nihilistic, environmental death drive," she writes in The Baffler. "More than half a century of urban planning prioritizing sprawl has gotten us to where we are now: choked by endless freeways, benumbed by carbon-copy strip malls, secluded in catchpenny houses with no sense of human scale."

In praise of mud

2023-02-20T10:31:00-05:00

The material is essentially free, or at least locally available for a fraction of the cost of concrete...Mud construction contributes little to global warming. And concrete tends to be a gateway, once people can afford it, to another fossil-fuel-guzzling invention: air-conditioning.

Peter Schwartzstein explores the work of folks such as Clara Sawadogo, Francis Kéré and Salima Naji who are trying to rekindle an interest in materials and methods that have a long tradition in Africa and the Middle East.

The NYT asks: In a housing crisis, is building ‘bland’ better than the alternative?

2023-01-23T18:34:00-05:00

The new developments look startlingly alike, often in the form of boxy, mid-rise buildings with a ground-floor retail space, sans-serif fonts and vivid slabs of bright paneling. The bulky design is conspicuous, jutting out of downtown streets and overpowering its surroundings. Over time, it attracts a certain ecosystem — the craft breweries, the boutique coffee shops, the out-of-town young professionals. It’s anytown architecture, and it’s hard to know where you are from one city to the next.

The disappearance of America’s vernacular architecture and subsequent rise of what some call developer modernism is the product of necessity, reluctance towards artistry, and the monopolization of residential development across the country, according to the Times’ real estate reporter Anna Kodé.

The question of the kinds of structures (especially outside of large cities) they are replacing, if at all, is a potential counterargument in favor of their ubiquity. The larger question of whether drabness is a permanent condition of contemporary architecture, however, remains unanswered.

In a postscript with the Times’ Insider section, Kodé added: “I think one of the surprising things that came out of this story for me was finding out the number of people who defend these building types. I thought I would have to scrounge for those kinds of people. But a lot of people dee...

On the mystery and magic appeal of LA's iconic visual language

2022-05-19T16:51:00-04:00

The apartment signs of L.A. announce location through flair, decadence, strangeness, absurdity, signification. When you see an otherwise unremarkable name affixed to a building in your neighborhood, you know — probably to the exact number of paces or miles, if you counted — how much further your intended destination is. That’s the thing about L.A. apartment signs — they point you toward where you need to be: home.

The LA Times has a really cool new series I am personally obsessed with wherein the “architecture of everyday life” is explored in and around the city. In this iteration, the Times’ style editor Ian Blair waxed poetic about LA’s midcentury typographical elements, best embodied on the facade of Paul Revere Williams’ iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, that are now synonymous with the visual imagination of Southern California feted by David Hockney and so many others.

Image courtesy Joe Wolf via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Blair spoke to the alien nature of the language contained in apartment typeface, commenting on their need to communicate intimations of luxury and class in a way in which words alone become a most effective means of conveying the interiority of space (no matter how illusory).

“Apartment signs affect us because of the amount of effort put into the premise: Please stop, look, come inside, see if you desire to belong here. There’s innuendo baked into the concept; the main selling poi...

Rural China rediscovers its vernacular architecture

2021-03-29T16:39:00-04:00

After 20 years of frantic city-building, rustic China is in a death spiral. Now architects are helping to reverse the exodus – with inspirational tofu factories, rice wine distilleries and lotus tea plants

Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian's architecture critic, on the new crop of Chinese architects seeking to create a renewed sense of local pride and cultural identity across the country's vast rural areas.

"After an era of foreign architects using China as their playground," Wainwright quotes design critic Aric Chen, "we’re seeing a new generation of Chinese architects defining their own approach [...]."

The new Mukilteo Multimodal Ferry Terminal in Washington is inspired by the Coast Salish longhouse

2021-01-05T13:08:00-05:00

The LMN Architects-designed Mukilteo Multimodal Ferry Terminal has officially opened in Mukilteo, Washington. The two-story terminal building is inspired by the tribal longhouse built and used by the region's Coast Salish tribes. Designed in partnership with KPFF Consulting Engineers, the new structure replaces the previously existing terminal built in 1957.

"We listened intently and realized our project had to tell a story, one that had been partially hidden from the general public for years and covered under a Cold War fueling tank farm and a pioneer lumbermill before that," said Charlie Torress, Mukilteo Design Project Manager at Washington State Ferries (WSF) in a statement. "The group of designers asked to bring the project together embraced the goal of designing a new ferry terminal that honored and respected the history and values of the Coast Salish people. While only a transportation facility, it owes a debt to the generations of people who occupied this beautiful piece of ...

Yale SoA students complete triple-decker home for formerly homeless families

2019-11-25T15:30:00-05:00

Students at the Yale University School of Architecture have completed construction on the 2019 Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, a student-led design-build exploration that has brought a three-unit "triple-decker"-style home into existence.

View of a upperlevel balcony-porch attached to the residential unit. Image courtesy of Image by Zelig Fok and Iain Gomez.

For the project, the student designers partnered with Columbus House, a New Haven, Connecticut-based homelessness services provider that will manage the property, which will become home to at least one local family currently experiencing homelessness. (Archinect previously explored the design of the house in greater detail here)

Photo showing the home's kitchen and living and dining spaces. Image courtesy of Image by Zelig Fok and Iain Gomez.

A shifting point-access stair provides varied entry conditions for each unit. Image courtesy of Image by Zelig Fok and Iain Gomez.

The project was undertaken with the goal of shifti...

John Margolies elevated roadside attractions to high art with his photography, now digitized through the Library of Congress

2019-05-28T13:47:00-04:00

There are many names associated with the documentation of American fringe culture during the transformative middle of the 20th century, among them Johnny Cash, Hunter S. Thompson and even architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. But one of its principal photographers - whose images may be significantly more well known than the name behind them - is John Margolies, the man behind nearly 11,000 photos of American roadside attractions taken throughout the 1970s, as well as several books on the subject.

Star Lite Outdoor Theater, Route 81-B, Fargo, North Dakota.

Without a touch of irony or derision, Margolies found inspiration in what other critics readily dismissed as "low-brow" and "tasteless." As the New York Times once profiled him, Margolies made a career out of "scouring back roads for those vanishing emblems of midcentury enterprise, which were already imperiled by air travel, interstates and big-box sprawl."

Christie's Restaurant sign, cowboy shrimp, Houston, Texas.

The...

The infinite variations of Mr. Wills’s Cape Codders

2018-11-05T23:50:00-05:00

I repeat: The most influential residential architect of the 20th century — and unless you are a longtime reader of this blog (and why aren’t you, pray tell?) you probably never heard of him...Bottom line: Royal Barry Wills’ ethic dominated the housing landscape then — and I’d say, even now.

Since at least 2008, Pam Kueber (of the The Mid-Century Modest Manifesto) has been singing the praises of American architect Royal Barry Wills.

First-time learning his name, already a fan, what is your take?

Seoul housing development builds traditional hanok designs for a slower lifestyle

2018-09-04T13:36:00-04:00

Eunpyeong Hanok Village was selling locals hanok, the traditional Korean tile-roofed residences that have, after hundreds of years, increasingly been destroyed and replaced by towering steel structures; indeed, not since the 1930s have hanok been constructed in significant numbers. The decline of vernacular architecture in the face of global urbanization is, of course, hardly new, though traditional Korean hanok are a particularly stark contrast to modern city living.

A new housing development, Eunpyeong, in northern Seoul is solely dedicated to constructing traditional Korean hanok houses. The design adheres to certain guidelines on proportion and design, with a low center of gravity, a courtyard, and an orientation towards nature.

The hanok's popularity comes from a need to connect to Korean identity and a desire to slow down from a past-paced economy. The minimalist design confronts the occupant with the amount of stuff they own and orients them to reconsider a new, slower way of life.

Marcel Breuer and the Invention of Heavy Lightness

2018-06-12T23:18:00-04:00

How could an architect who had made the pursuit of lightness the essence of his design aspirations become one of the great form-givers of the aesthetics of weightiness?

In this rich examination of the work of Marcel Breuer, Barry Bergdoll explores the marked shifts between his early European and later American work, and finds a constant in the pursuit of lightness. In his efforts to reconcile vernacular traditions with modern expression and the conditions of contemporary life, Bergdoll argues, Breuer created buildings that "held heavy and light in remarkable equipoise."

It has to do with electromagnetic fields and transmissions from the stones of these buildings

2018-03-19T11:12:00-04:00

Each piece of the structure tells that grander story. The poorly constructed stone walls in the original room hint at the area’s isolation and the need to use nearby materials. A sundial over the northern door installed by the fort’s early inhabitants is a celebration of the return of two men who were kidnapped during a Native American raid. In one room, a prayer is inscribed on a ceiling beam.

Serena Solomon traveled to the small town of San Ygnacio, Texas, where the River Pierce Foundation is working to identify, conserve and make known the built vernacular and cultural heritage of the rural village. With a special focus on the early 19th century sandstone complex of the Treviño-Uribe Rancho.

Twelve Tacoma by Aleph-Bau is your typical row house with a secret only seen from above

2017-05-24T15:13:00-04:00

In Toronto's central Summerhill neighborhood sits a steady line-up of typical 19th century workers' row houses. Nestled among them, between the colored brick facades and conventional front porches, is Twelve Tacoma, designed by the Toronto-based Aleph-Bau. Drawing on the surrounding vernacular, the design mimics the ordinary signifiers typical of the neighboring homes but with a contemporary bent, notably in its unusual choice in materials. For example, the awning over the door—standard for this block—is updated with plexiglass. The white paint further distinguishes this home as an elegant and crisp addition to the block.

From above, the home begins to depart much more from its surroundings than one would have assumed from the street. An upper level has been added to the row house, cladded in corrugated aluminum—a material once common to industrial spaces that has gained popularity amongst architects over the years due to its affordability, durability, and availability. The extensio...

Marijuana Real Estate: This isn't just another greenhouse

2017-05-21T23:57:00-04:00

Innovative Industrial Properties, Kalyx and other similar groups are following the same strategy: buy buildings, retrofit them and lease them to commercial or medical marijuana growers. But it can often cost millions to turn a vacant warehouse into a facility suitable for cannabis cultivation.

David Gelles reports that the spread of legalization means the weed business is booming and with it, demand for commercial, industrial space. The latest post-industrial trend in states like California, Colorado, Massachusetts or even New York is a retrofitted industrial-scale "cultivation center."

photo by Ryan Mungia

Related readings include; a 2005 look at how Pot Clinics (were) Grow(ing) Like Weed in SF and last year's photo essay of L.A.'s "Green Mile." Or back in February, the Marketplace Morning Report on how these new REITs could help grow the medical-marijuana business.

photo by Ryan Mungia

Finally, last year over at the Weed thread, gruen noted "Big gold rush here to convert disused industrial facilities to indoor grow in advance of legislation."

A living fossil of life in Shanghai

2017-02-19T21:58:00-05:00

They were basically city blocks that functioned as gated communities, with guards manning the front entrance. The whole essence of old Shanghai was that life was lived horizontally — all the activity happened at street level...Commissioned mostly by Western developers, the first shikumen appeared in the 1870s...local contractors who built them drew upon the interior floor plans of traditional Chinese courtyard homes and local decorative motifs.

Taras Grescoe pens a paean to shikumen, alleyway complexes entered through a stone-framed kumen (gateway), which at one point housed approximately 80 percent of the population of Shanghai. While fewer authentic examples remain, the city has in recent years begun redeveloping, "fake vintage" versions, most famously; the site of clandestine First National Congress of the Communist Party meetings and Xintiandi.

Win “Dingbat 2.0”, a critical study of L.A.'s most ubiquitous vernacular typology

2016-10-24T12:00:00-04:00

Dingbat 2.0: The Iconic Los Angeles Apartment as Projection of a Metropolis is the first full-length critical study of the dingbat apartment, the stucco-clad boxy “building code creature” that is the Southland's most ubiquitous and mundane vernacular typology. Co-edited by Radical Craft founder Joshua Stein and architect and educator Thurman Grant, the book is the latest initiative in the Dingbat 2.0 project, following the LA Forum's 2010 Dingbat 2.0 competition.

The nearly 300-page publication features essays by figures like Barbara Bestor, Aaron Betsky, Dana Cuff, John Kaliski, the editors themselves, and more. It also includes a Dingbat Field Guide, a fun-to-read section of critical responses and comments from both architects and non-architects, and winning entries of the Dingbat 2.0 competition.

Thanks to DoppelHouse Press, Archinect is giving away five copies to our readers!

Joshua Stein and Thurman Grant took a moment with Archinect to share more details about the book. Read on f...

Vernacular architectural photographer John Margolies has died

2016-06-16T13:10:00-04:00

Mr. Margolies, who died on May 26, at 76, was considered the country’s foremost photographer of vernacular architecture — the coffee shops shaped like coffeepots; the gas station shaped like a teapot (the Teapot Dome Service Station in Zillah, Wash.); and the motels shaped like all manner of things, from wigwams to zeppelins to railroad cars — that once stood as proud totems along America’s blue highways.

In memoriam, here are a few of Margolies' idiosyncratic finds, many of which were compiled into the 2010 book "John Margolies: Roadside America":

Other architectural photographers who are still doing their signature thing:

Editor's Picks #442

2016-03-03T13:23:00-05:00

ICYMI Will Galloway penned a reflection on a workshop he instigated at Keio University, with members of Assemble, Paloma Strelitz and James Binning (pre Turner Prize). The studio ended with students building a very rough and very temporary Onsen. The three later discussed, the history of Assemble, architecture’s "long history of collective action" and "amazingly entrepreneurial architectural practices".

Donna Sink loved their take on radicalism "as just being a reasonable way to practice. They believe they're not radical at all. I'm onboard with removing the word ‘non-traditional’ from the descriptor ‘non-traditional practice’ when it comes to architecture of this kind. It's just practice, which is a broad world."

Plus, Amelia Taylor-Hochberg published an interview with Steven Holl and Kevin Lippert (founder of Princeton Architectural Press) about Pamphlet Architecture. rprt frm th heartland praised Pamphlet as "chewy and lovely".

News
Over at Architect Magazine Blaine Brownell, AIA, e...

As LA densifies, its iconic roadside restaurants disappear

2016-01-27T14:18:00-05:00

The hamburger stand is part of southern California’s rich tradition of roadside architecture. These buildings are typically 100 square-foot boxes, with an outdoor window to order and pick up food. Next to the structures are rudimentary dining areas, often consisting of no more than a plastic tarp and a few fold-up chairs and tables [...] The hipsterfication of LA’s hamburger stands may... prove the final chapter in the saga of these half-century-old structures.

Related:

Providing egalitarian habitat for humanity

2015-11-30T05:04:00-05:00

more of them were built in the former Czechoslovakia — in a boom that stretched from 1959 to 1995 — than any place else on what was once Soviet earth. Today, about a third of all Czechs and Slovaks, from all income brackets, still call their panelaks home

Lisa Schwarzbaum traveled to Bratislava to explore its ubiquitous panelaks (aka "panel house"), Soviet era concrete high-rise housing units. The city is also the home of monuments to new capitalism, such as the Aupark shopping center and corporate complexes like Digital Park.

On a related note back in 2014, Hello Czech Republic interviewed architect Michal Kohout regarding possible future(s) for the panelak housing estates.

Regarding the remarkable range of prefab, self-built, movable, and vernacular dwellings

2015-11-24T01:59:00-05:00

Prefab housing plays a big role in recreational dwelling, aside from permanent and work-nomadic forms. This is well illustrated by the thriving KOA (Kampgrounds of America) site I pass on the way into town. KOA, founded in 1962, has 500 sites around US — an alternate housing archipelago experienced by millions of vacationing Americans, and the world’s largest private campsite chain.

Tim McCormick (Founder at Houslets a modular, redeployable, user-buildable, live/work-spaces project), takes readers on a prefab housing tour of Willits, CA.

h/t @AlJavieera

Admire the diversity of African vernacular architecture in this growing online database

2015-08-11T12:48:00-04:00

[Jon] Sojkowski worries that these building types, made with materials that are abundant in Africa and sustainable, will soon be lost to history because of a misconception that they are inefficient, outdated and only used by the poor. At one point during his research, he met a man who told him he wanted a Western-style metal roof. 'I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because then I would be somebody,' Sojkowski recalls.

Since architect Jon Sojkowski launched his African vernacular architecture database last year, he has amassed a broad range of photos showcasing the traditional building techniques and materials from 48 countries. Photo submissions are also welcome.

You can also check out video clips from Sojkowski's YouTube channel.

Kengo Kuma: "Architecture can initiate communication among people."

2015-06-04T23:47:00-04:00

Tokyo is known for its mix of modern and traditional architecture, but for long-term residents it is easy to feel like the concrete is winning out. [...] The buildings done by acclaimed Tokyo-based architect Kengo Kuma are different. [...] Kuma’s campaign to bring Japanese-ness back to architecture has had fascinating results.

Editor's Picks #379

2014-08-06T11:44:00-04:00

The latest Show Case: featured a holiday home modeled after the Dutch vernacular ‘schapenboeten’, designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects.

Donna Sink wondered "what makes fishing nets a good cladding material? Isn't the purpose of a net pretty much exactly the opposite of the purpose of a cladding? I want insane rationalism". Non Sequitur added "The colour coding is nice but I was really hoping to see fishing nets used as interior walls".

News
George Lucas announced, an architectural team for his planned museum on Chicago's lakefront. davvid was impressed "Chicago has really made a commitment to creating great new buildings. I recently visited the WNS Boathouse and Nature Boardwalk structure in the Zoo, both by Studio Gang. Its very exciting and I hope it spreads to cities across the US".

NYT’s Roberta Smith reminded readers, of the upcoming opening for Aspen Art Museum’s new Shigeru Ban’s-designed building. boy in a well was excited by the "wood!" and believed that a few winters in Col...

Editor's Picks #308

2013-03-26T16:23:00-04:00

Archinect published work from Beyond Prototype, an advanced digital fabrication seminar developed at Columbia University...Nicholas Cecchi was impressed but also offered some criticism "This is amazing student work...However, I would like architecture schools to stop pushing students to contextualize this kind of research-based exploration. Showing these as enclosures (or the one as a gondola) only undermines the amazing generative capacity of this kind of design"

For the latest edition of the Student Works feature, Archinect published work from Beyond Prototype, an advanced digital fabrication seminar developed at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation by Jason Ivaliotis and Nicholas Kothari. In the course "Students develop parametrically controlled tessellations and transform them into building component systems that can be built using conventional sheet stock materials. These tessellated systems are extracted from the digital realm and built at full scale".

Nicholas Cecchi was impressed but also offered some criticism "This is amazing student work. The craft and quality is great, and the theory behind it is impressive. However, I would like architecture schools to stop pushing students to contextualize this kind of research-based exploration. Showing these as enclosures (or the one as a gondola) only undermines the amazing generative capacity of this kind of design. These should not be taken liter...

Ukraine’s Wooden Churches and Folk architecture(s)

2011-07-17T21:12:41-04:00

The language was impossible to understand, but the building itself communicated in a clear vernacular: thick columns, coarsely hewn and partly painted white, were topped with gold-haloed icons and lovely scarves that must have been embroidered by hand. The ceiling in the back was only an arm’s breadth above my head...

Evan Rail travels to the Carpathian foothills near Zakarpattia, the western region of Ukraine. The vernacular folk architecture includes a number of unusual wooden churches dating from the 15th to 18th centuries. After years of neglect, the buildings are in danger of disappearing and being forgotten.