Archinect - News

Archinect's pick of architecture firms to follow, Instagram edition

2021-04-21T09:06:00-04:00

With social media ruling media consumption, it's easy to get overwhelmed with the various platforms, profiles, and messages being shared. Platforms like Instagram are quick to keep the public informed whether we wanted it or not. However, with the increased abundance of screen time and endless scrolling through images and text, the dreaded content fatigue soon emerged. Social media platforms transformed into blackholes of continuous media overload.

The amount of time spent on these apps has sparked controversy and criticism regarding architecture's relationship to Instagram. However, the platform has also facilitated and expanded the understanding of media discourse revolving around firm work, digital portfolios, PR, and design activism. While architecture "viewership" has changed thanks to digital sharing platforms like Instagram, Archinect reflects on firms that use the platform as a way to communicate visually curated content for more than the infamous "like."

Whether it's photo...

Harvard GSD unveils ultra-efficient HouseZero, designed to produce more energy than it uses

2018-12-04T18:41:00-05:00

The U.S. building stock is responsible for around 40 percent of energy
consumption, with housing nearly a quarter of that use. In 2014, Harvard GSD established the Harvard Center for Green Buildings & Cities to tackle the high energy and environmental costs of the industry. Yesterday, in collaboration with the international firm Snøhetta, the school completed their new headquarters which also doubles as a prototype for ultra-efficiency.

Image: Snøhetta / Plompmozes

Named HouseZero, the facility was built with ambitious performance targets that serve as a model for retrofitting inefficient existing buildings. The result is a transformed pre-1940s building in Cambridge that requires zero energy for heating and cooling, zero electric lighting during the day, operates with 100 percent natural ventilation, and produces zero carbon emissions. Not only that, over its lifetime, the building will actually produce more energy than it uses, even covering the energy costs of its own production.

“...

DeFlatKleiburg wins 2017 Mies van der Rohe Award, MSA/V+ named 2017 Emerging Architect recipient

2017-05-12T14:46:00-04:00

Two housing projects won big today in the 2017 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award competition. Out of five finalists, DeFlatKleiburg in Amsterdam by NL Architects and XVW architectuur won the main Mies van der Rohe Award. The 2017 Emerging Architect prize went to Brussels-based practice MSA/V+ for the NAVEZ social housing project.

DeFlatKleiburg is the first renovation project of an existing building to receive the main prize. The colossal megablock is 11 stories tall and 400 meters long, and comprises 500 customizable apartments. First built in the 1960s as part of city planner Siegfried Nassuth's masterplan, the Kleiburg eventually became dilapidated and was at risk for demolition. Protests in recent years prompted a competition seeking the most economically feasible solution to save the structure.

Photo © Marcel van der Burg.

Dutch firms NL Architects and XVW architectuur won the competition with their proposal to renovate the existing buil...

Studio Ma's "masterful texture" wins AIA Arizona's "Firm of the Year" Award

2017-03-16T13:21:00-04:00

Studio Ma may be small, but their work is mighty, at least according to the Arizona chapter of the AIA. The woman-owned firm, which has completed projects for Princeton University as well as a series of museums, public libraries and mixed-use housing developments, won the AIA's "Firm of the Year" award for the wide variety and complexity of their work, which the institute described as being "both smart and palpable, with a masterful use of texture."

This is yet another in a series of accolades for the firm, including being placed in the "Design Vanguard" by Architectural Record. “In our work, we strive to create building solutions that resonate with the surrounding context both large and small, in harmony with their greater environment,” said owner Christiana Moss. “This is essential to our client promise, to deliver innovative, sustainable and unique designs to forward-thinking institutions and individuals.” Congratulations, all!

Without the projects would we have hip-hop?

2016-08-25T12:44:00-04:00

Mike Ford, a lead architect for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, has studied and written about the relationship between disastrous urban planning/architecture and the rise of hip hop. Essentially, Ford's argument is that the ghettoization of African Americans in the 20th century via ill-conceived public housing projects created the conditions for the musical art form. As an article in VIBE puts it:

Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”, Wutang Clan’s “S.O.S”, and Nas’s “Project Window” demonstrate the importance of understanding the role that these conditions created in influencing hip-hop. “Hip-hop lyrics are [filled] with first-hand accounts of living conditions in the projects,” Ford states. “The hip-hop MC used lyrics to create a dialogue, to give commentary and counterpoints to the modernist vision [that birthed towers like 1520 Sedgwick Ave]. The MCs served as a voice for disenfranchised communities and often un-consulted end users of public housing.”

NYC's public-housing woes

2015-05-19T20:24:00-04:00

Still, when Mayor Bill de Blasio today unveiled his plan for New York’s troubled housing authority, NYCHA, dismantling these aging towers was not a piece of it. The plan calls for charging more for parking, redeploying staff to other agencies to save costs and leasing land within the housing complexes to private developers to save money. [...] So why does New York City still have so many high-rise housing projects?

Is Le Corbusier the real grandfather of hip-hop?

2014-09-17T14:15:00-04:00

"In the late 1920s, Le Corbusier created a plan for Paris," Ford says. "Its most celebrated portion was called 'Towers in the Park.' [...] Think unremarkable, high-rise apartment buildings. Think low-income housing projects. [...] "Many of hip-hop's most prominent artists were born, raised, and perfected their crafts in those very same housing projects. Hip-hop was a result of the economical, political, and sociological deprivations instituted by the housing projects across America."

Infamous Chicago public housing project faces redevelopment

2014-04-07T15:01:00-04:00

Little remains of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, a mid-century public housing complex once home to as many as 15,000 people. The poorly maintained high rises, rife with gang violence, were eventually demolished (the final one came down in 2011). [...] The Chicago Housing Authority hopes to see it all redeveloped soon. [...] CHA says half the new residential units to be market rate, another 30 percent public housing, and the remaining 20 percent affordable housing.