Archinect - News

Pentagram utilizes architectural forms to create a new visual identity for the Memphis Art Museum

2023-11-02T20:04:00-04:00

Pentagram has released materials showcasing their new visual identity project undertaken for their clients at the Memphis Art Museum (formerly the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art) ahead of the completion of its Herzog & de Meuron-led expansion in 2025.

The lettering and logo included in the kit derive from cross-section drawings of the new 122,000-square-foot building, which will grace the center of downtown at Overton Park. The expanded museum also forms the anchor of a wider riverfront development master plan that will reorient the commercial/cultural district. Costs for the expansion have been reported around $180 million.

“We have worked with the greater Memphis community for years on our vision for a new museum, and as it begins to take shape, we are proud to see that it will be a place for community and connectivity unlike anything in our city’s history,” the museum's board president, Carl Person, told the Memphis Flyer newspaper recently about the institutional pivot. “It is tru...

Harvard GSD details its new visual identity

2023-08-25T13:01:00-04:00

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) this week announced a new visual identity created in order to help galvanize its institutional and pedagogical aims, claiming it needed an "updated language of forms to communicate the school’s mission and values."

The rebranding effort comes in response to Dean Sarah M. Whiting’s previous call for the GSD community to establish a dialogue with the general public in a way that can embody the "critical design thinking" at the core of its educational program.

The new logo offers a further demarcation from the standard university crest-based designs used by Harvard’s other schools and undergraduate residential houses, embracing the 'Flying H' design invented by alum Nigel Smith into the GSD's graphics system to mark the turn of the 21st century.

Image courtesy Harvard GSD

The expressionistic form of John Andrews’ distinct Gund Hall building is a further source of inspiration for the new GSD Gothic typeface, which was the brainchild of the sc...

Step into a translucent replica of artist Do Ho Suh's NYC home at LACMA, starting next month

2019-10-18T15:45:00-04:00

Drawing from his own experiences of migration, esteemed artist Do Ho Suh is known for his monumental fabric installations that recreate his previous residences around the world, as his way of exploring the concept of home, personal identity, memory, and the architecture of domestic space. Recently, LACMA was recently gifted Suh's “348 West 22nd Street, Apartment A, Unit-2, Staircase” (2011-15). The museum will begin exhibiting the installation at the Resnick Pavilion starting November 10.

Do Ho Suh, Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (detail), 2011–2014, Polyester fabric and stainless steel tubes, Courtesy of the Artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Hong Kong and Seoul, and MOCA Cleveland. Installation view, MOCA Cleveland, 2015. Photo: Jerry Birchfield.

Do Ho Suh, Apartment A, Unit 2, Corridor and Staircase, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA (detail), 2011-2014, Polyester fabric and stainless steel tubes, Apartment A, 2...

Mosul residents fear revamping of Tigris riverfront will erase their historical identity

2019-07-20T09:00:00-04:00

"People know Mosul's Old City by its riverfront - it has some of the city's most important historic features," Fethi added, referring to the city's old wall, the citadel, palaces and other heritage sites along the Tigris' west bank. "It [the council] should aim to preserve Mosul's heritage rather than turn [it] into another Dubai ... an absolute anathema to what should be done."

Two years after Iraqi forces regained full control of Mosul from ISIL, local authorities are pushing a proposal to transform historic neighborhoods along the west bank of the Tigris river into a modernized “new city”, with high rises, large supermarkets and restaurant chains. Al Jazeera spoke with Mosul residents, who believe the plan will erase their historical identity. With some 300,000 residents still displaced, the redevelopment plan doesn't include a budget for rebuilding homes or restoring heritage sites.

“While still a vision for now, local authorities have already begun talks with residents to convince them of the proposal, which, they say, is the only way to redevelop Mosul in the face of limited support from the central government in Baghdad,” Al Jazeera reports. The article states that “Locals and experts alleged that the redevelopment plan was also an effort to manipulate communities into leaving their neighbourhoods”.

David Adjaye and his take on identity and narrative in architecture

2018-12-06T09:24:00-05:00

At this year's World Architecture Festival, David Adjaye spoke towards the festival's theme:identity. Recognized as a prominent force in the architecture community, Adjaye's own design style and focus has played towards architecture's social responsibility. During the 45-minute lecture in Amsterdam, Adjaye discussed his own design process explaining how a narrative can be derived from form and materials. "I'm always interested in forgotten stories - to lift something between comfortable and uncomfortable." Projects like the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and the National Cathedral of Ghana were brought up as examples.

Smithsonian NMAAHC Image © Adjaye Associates

However, the high point of the talk was when Adjaye provided his views regarding where the industry is headed. Commenting on how costly architecture is becoming, especially in the West, Adjyae pointed out "projects now cost billions and its kind of crazy." Although some ...

The biometric identities of buildings

2018-04-20T13:37:00-04:00

[...] iPhoto confused a human friend of mine – I’ll call him Mike – with a building called the Great Mosque of Cordoba. [...] Rather than viewing this as a failure, I realized I had found a new insight: Just as people’s faces have features that can be recognized by algorithms, so do buildings. That began my effort to perform facial recognition on buildings – or, more formally, “architectural biometrics.” Buildings, like people, may just have biometric identities too.

Peter Christensen, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester, elaborates on his research with 'facial recognition' on buildings to unlock architectural secrets.

Architects want to bring back Venice's eclectic architectural character

2017-12-26T13:00:00-05:00

To many longtime residents, the cookie-cutter constructions stripped Venice of its distinctive architectural character, turning parts of the neighborhood into uniform eyesores. “Over the last year or two specifically, we’re seeing more chances being taken and more unique developments going up,” Lackey said. “This wave of architecture is great for Venice, which has always been a hub of individuality.”

Boring boxy developments have taken over Venice, California in the last 15 years, but in this LA Times piece, some architects think it's time for the coastal town to return to its eclectic architectural roots...currently in the form of multimillion-dollar luxury homes.

Budapest's building boom draws critics of Hungarian leader's "edifice complex"

2016-03-10T13:21:00-05:00

The idea, besides removing as many vestiges of Communist rule as possible, is to create a concrete expression of the nationalism [Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban's] governing party espouses. [...] “These projects, when lumped together, probably constitute the biggest such concentrated architectural project in Budapest in 100 years,” [...] “He is trying to take the existing city and put it back to the shape it had before 1944...The park is a victim of this whole political machinery.”

Learn more about a couple of the controversial projects mentioned:

Toilets for everyone: the politics of inclusive design

2015-11-05T13:31:00-05:00

With the issues of serving openly in the military and same-sex marriage now largely resolved, the fight for all-gender restrooms has emerged as the latest civil rights issue in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (L.G.B.T.) community — particularly the “T” part. Schools and universities (...), museums (...), restaurants (...) and even the White House (...) are recasting the traditional men’s/women’s room, resulting in a dizzying range of (often creative) signage and vocabulary.

Building a collaborative practice: Caroline Bos of UNStudio lectures at LACMA

2015-10-30T16:00:00-04:00

Students and professionals nearly filled up the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Tuesday night to listen to guest lecturer Caroline Bos, co-founder and principal urban planner of UNStudio. Bos spoke about UNStudio’s design process that continues to shift even after her 27 years of practice with co-founder Ben van Berkel and their growing international office. In highlighting a selection of the firm's projects, she outlined their focus on collaborative, research-driven design, with the ultimate goal to consistently create inventive, inclusive and “socially aware” architecture.

↑ Caroline Bos and Ben van Berkel of UNStudio.

To frame the discussion of UNStudio's design methods, Bos began her lecture by quoting from Richard Sennett’s 2008 book, The Craftsman. “Knowledge is gained in the hand through touch and movement," and, "Technical understanding develops through the powers of imagination”. According to Bos, the quotes in an architectural context describe the int...

Seeking identity through city fonts

2015-01-20T13:53:00-05:00

Decimated by manufacturing losses, some smaller cities are turning for help to an unlikely group of people: typeface designers. Can new fonts really breathe life into the postindustrial city? [...] Type has a lot of effect on the atmosphere of a place, he says, calling it “the voice of the city”: “I think cities that don’t have this very dynamic energy, they don’t feel the need to change their identity.”

HdM's Triangle skyscraper continues to divide Paris over its historic identity

2014-12-22T12:54:00-05:00

Alexandre Gady, conservationist, historian of French architecture and professor of modern architecture at the Sorbonne, argues that changing or “renewing” Paris diverts from its real need to look outwards. Paris, he says, is a “finished” city that does not need improving or anything more doing to it. “It’s not that we should be doing this or that – we should not be doing anything in central Paris ... any plan is a diversion from the need of the city to grow outwards,” [...]

Previously: Paris row after HdM's Triangle skyscraper rejected

The Cyprus 2014 Venice Biennale pavilion seeks the island’s identity through architectural allegory

2014-05-28T13:48:00-04:00

Cyprus took an allegorical approach with their 2014 Venice Biennale pavilion, titled the "Anatomy of the Wallpaper". Curated by architects Michael Hadjistyllis and Stefanos Roimpas, the Wallpaper symbolizes the reconstruction of the island's complex national identity that has been affected by outside influences throughout its history. To convey Cyprus' multi-layered history, the pavilion will be covered in the timeless and appropriate medium of collages.

More details about the pavilion on Bustler.

Details into the Korean Peninsula’s “Crow’s Eye View” pavilion for the 2014 Venice Biennale

2014-05-27T20:29:00-04:00

In the Korean Peninsula's response to the 2014 Venice Biennale theme of rediscovering national identity through architecture, the "Crow's Eye View" pavilion explores the divided state of North and South Korea, and extends that discussion to the global state of architecture itself. The multi-themed pavilion uses architecture as a key to discovering new narratives of the peninsula's complex past, present, and future in an architectural and social perspective.

Find details of the pavilion on Bustler.

Related: A rare look at North Korean architecture, brought to you by non-Koreans

Latino Placemaking: How the Civil Rights Movement Reshaped East LA

2014-03-25T15:08:00-04:00

Latino Placemaking goes beyond creating great public spaces. It also includes cultural identity, which is shaped by needs, desires, and imagination. The Latino quest for cultural identity parallels the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which has its genesis in protests – many of which were carried out in public spaces.

London's Current Obsession: Its Own Identity Crisis

2014-03-12T14:54:00-04:00

Is London in danger of losing its soul? The question may sound melodramatic, but this is just what many of the British capital’s commentariat have been discussing over the past few days. [...] Barely a day goes by without a local news story about the phenomenal rise of London property values. In just the past few weeks, we've learned that price levels are "approaching madness." [...] London buyers start to bid consistently 25 percent above the asking price.

LA Mayor talks urbanism and mass transit with architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne

2014-02-14T18:06:00-05:00

Last night on the bucolic hilltop campus of Occidental College, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke with the Los Angeles Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, about the state of L.A. urbanism. This broad topical platform positioned Hawthorne's interview not as a political interrogation, nor as a staged public appearance, but as a relaxed discourse for Garcetti to mention policy while riffing on the kind of place he believes L.A. is becoming. You can review Archinect's live-tweets of the event here.

The discourse of L.A. urbanism is often bogged down by insufficient comparisons and false dichotomies -- sprawl vs. density, cyclists vs. drivers, liberals vs. libertarians, east vs. west, etc. -- that doggedly try to force the region into the conventions of other, completely incomparable cities. Early on, Hawthorne made clear that "Los Angeles" has to be thought of on the "regional scale", and shouldn't copy the developmental models of radically different cities. Garcetti ce...

Calatrava's Transit Hub adds background to NY's new driver’s licenses

2013-03-18T16:00:00-04:00

While the old-school images might seem odd, the new production method and a barrage of features both seen and unseen will make the licenses, officials say, virtually impossible to forge.

New York has unveiled a new design for their driver’s licenses, showcasing Santiago Calatrava's WTC Transit Hub in the background.

Can a Font Help a City Make a Comeback?

2012-03-08T13:26:00-05:00

Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface [...].