Extreme natural events are becoming increasingly frequent all over the world. Numerous studies indicate that floods, storms, and sea-level rise could affect more than 800 million people worldwide, ultimately costing cities $1 trillion per year by the middle of the century. This suggests that urban survival depends on addressing urban vulnerability as a matter of urgency to protect the city and the population.
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina are joined by Jonathan Feldman, Architect, and Founding Partner and CEO of Feldman Architecture to discuss studying astronomy and English prior to architecture; taking on new clients; his office’s beginnings and evolution; key ideas for implementing sustainable design; and more.
Although the design and layout of bathrooms we use nowadays date back millennia, they are still considered as one of the most difficult to design and renovate. During the earliest stages of planning a bathroom, there are plenty of rules of thumb to follow, especially since it involves a lot of association and “pre-planning” with plumbing, electrical circuits, angular or uniquely-shaped fittings, and small floor areas. We will explore the basics of bathroom plumbing and where to allocate each fixture to optimize the bathroom's layout, facilitating your DIY remodel project or creating the space from scratch.
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain
The late Anthony Bourdain’s quote can easily apply to working on an overseas architectural project. There is a steep learning curve. Risks and rewards. How do you educate yourself? A great resource can be found in AIA Contract Documents’ recently updated B161 - Agreement Between Client and Consultant for design consulting services where the Project is located outside the United States, which was first published in 2002. Provided below is a brief introduction to the newly revised document available at aiacontracts.org.
One of the most representative non-fixed elements of the tropical zones of Mexico are the hammocks, as they are part of the history and daily life, representing an important piece of furniture in the houses. Although it is true that the hammock is not originally from Mexico, it is thought that it may have arrived in the Yucatan Peninsula and was adopted throughout the southeast of the country in areas whose temperature and humidity require a kind of floating bed. In the case of the Mayan region, hammocks were initially made of Hamack tree bark. Later, both in the Mexican region and in the rest of Central America, the sisal plant, with softer and more elastic fibres, began to be used.
Humane cities center around the relationships between people and places. Communities thrive on shared resources, public spaces, and a collective vision for their locality. To nurture happy and healthy cities, designers and the public apply methods of placemaking to the urban setting. Placemaking—the creation of meaningful places—strongly relies on community-based participation to effectively produce magnetic public spaces.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
The urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has never been greater, and getting there is going to require bold steps for buildings, infrastructure, and communities. Incremental reductions are not enough; we need to focus on full decarbonization, which means removing carbon emissions caused by our built environment.
These big changes in the way energy is generated and used will raise important questions about who benefits and who pays. Technology-focused incentive programs can wind up leaving our most vulnerable communities behind, exacerbating a legacy of underinvestment and health disparities, while also failing to reach the essential goals of a complete energy transition. Instead, we need holistic solutions that put disadvantaged communities first and transition buildings that would otherwise be left out, leading to bottom-up market transformation that benefits everyone.
Architecture is created for people, but how do we design beyond the human scale? With a renewed interest in biodiversity and animal habitats accelerated by the climate crisis, there is also the question of shelter and what it means to design spaces for interaction and rehabilitation. As architects look beyond structures for people, they are turning their attention to different kinds of enclosures and open spaces that rethink engagement with animals and their wellbeing.
Access to adequate housing is a human right. But with prices rising dramatically, incomes not growing proportionally and ineffective public policies, the lack of secure, affordable homes is fueling an ongoing global housing crisis. In fact, 90% of 200 polled cities were found to be unaffordable to live in, with the impact of COVID-19 only worsening the situation and forcing much of the world’s population to settle for precarious living conditions. This is only expected to aggravate in the not-too-distant future; by 2025, the World Bank estimates that 1.6 billion people will be affected by the housing shortage.
Geometric shapes, exposed reinforced concrete walls, visible electrical installations, large windows that prioritize natural light and ventilation, gardens that value native plants. The first works by the Mexican architect Juan O’Gorman, built between 1929 and 1932, bring an aesthetic that can be seen today, but in reality they are the pure expression of one of the currents of the 20th century modernist movement, functionalism.
Over the past 60 years, architects and engineers have surrendered to industrial construction solutions, with buildings designed to be built faster and faster and at very low cost.
Over the past 60 years, architects and engineers have surrendered to industrial construction solutions, with buildings designed to be built faster and faster and at very low cost. As a more standardized and cheaper international approach to building emerged throughout the 20th century, many professionals abandoned the vernacular traditions of their ancestral cultures, which were developed over thousands of years, to fight the climatic extremes of different regions.
Since the 1980’s, 3D-printing has offered new ways of developing architecture, engineering, and objects of daily use. When it comes to digitizing analogue processes, it is vital for users to become familiar with current tech innovations and their benefits. HIVE Project reshapes the art and craft of building in clay by combining traditional ceramics, smart geometry, and robotic precision to construct a masonry wall composed of one hundred seventy-five unique 3D-printed clay bricks.
As one of the first steps in the elaboration of an architectural project, the study of the current legislation on the ground is of paramount importance for the success of the proposal. Through calculations and restrictions, zoning laws present limits to be considered in projects that, consequently, instigate architects to think of intelligent solutions, dealing with such limitations in a practical and creative way.
These parameters are dictated by the government and aim to stop, maintain or accelerate urban growth in certain portions of cities. These are norms that establish guidelines for land occupation, delimiting the percentage of built-up area, setbacks, distances, permeability, among others.
The luxury hotel, as an architectural typology, is distinctive. In effect, it’s a self-contained community, a building that immerses the well-off visitor into their local context. Self-contained communities they might be, but these hotels are also vessels of the wider socioeconomic character of a place, where luxury living is often next door to informal settlements in the most extreme examples of social inequality.
Fungi are almost everywhere - in the air you breathe, the soil you walk on, we eat them and yes, they do also live inside of us.
Wallpapers can be quite controversial. They can be typical of old-fashioned and antiquated homes, but at the same time, they can also add personality to otherwise dull spaces. One of the best parts of using these elements is that they can be quickly installed, and with relatively low costs. This also means that they aren't very long-lasting, and can therefore be quickly discarded and replaced, making them transient decoration items. As Joanna Banham—a researcher on wallpapers—states, “Wallpaper is often regarded as the Cinderella of the Decorative Arts – the most ephemeral and least precious of the decorations produced for the home. Yet, the history of wallpaper is a long and fascinating subject that dates back to the 16th century and encompasses a huge range of beautiful patterns created both by anonymous hands and by some of the best-known designers of the 19th and 20th centuries.” Today we are seeing another wallpaper resurgence, with numerous options of materials, patterns, and colors, and several examples of architects who have used them creatively in their projects. In this article, we go through the history of wallpapers and some of the current alternatives on the market, by diving into the Architonic catalog.
Earlier this year, I witnessed an intriguing situation. I followed, via an architect friend, the negotiation for the contracting of an architectural project for a single family home. The land owner, a public school teacher, sought professional help to build her dream home, estimated at about 60 square meters. It was a challenging terrain, with specific cutouts and a very steep topography that was compensated by the view of the city. The limited budget and the owner's history indicated that this would be the seaside version of the famous Vila Matilde House by Terra e Tuma.
With all of the strange residential interior design trends that are making a comeback, conversation pits are probably one that you wouldn’t expect. This well-known 1970s design feature feels both very retro and modern, providing a comfortable place to lounge and a complete escape from the distractions of television and cinema. Instead of a design that supports and enhances a digital connection, having a large area to sit, and quite literally conversate, might be the space that we all need.
Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa once said that "architecture is essentially an extension of nature into the man-made realm, providing the ground for perception and the horizon of experiencing and understanding the world."
In the constant hustle and bustle of the modern surroundings, it is more than needed to take a step back and listen to the sounds of something as calmly powerful as nature. Moreover, listening to the beautiful harmonies created by birds chirping and sound waves can make our inner voice louder as well.
The threshold is a constructive element of the floor that serves to finish when there is a notable change in material or level. Much more prominent in the past, the piece today has a more discreet presence in architecture.
The thresholds and transition strips are applied directly to the floor and are responsible for making the transition when there is any change in the built space, whether it is in level, in the type of floor, or even when there is a door or passage.
One of the central responsibilities of urban planners and designers is to create places within the city for gatherings, demonstrations, leisure, and relaxation. The following list of unbuilt public spaces presents projects that expand these spaces beyond the shores or riverfronts, return misused spaces back to the local communities and seek to optimize otherwise overlooked areas. These types of interventions are essential in improving the quality of life of the citizens and in making cities more enjoyable to live in.
This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights projects submitted by the ArchDaily community. Located near a UNESCO heritage site in Italy, on top of an illegal dumping site in Dallas, Texas, or in a medieval city in northern Spain, this round-up of unbuilt projects showcases how architects and urban planners recognize the potential of urban places.
The use of earth-based materials appears in two practices throughout history: in the construction of buildings and – far less commonly known or conclusively understood – in certain dietary consumption patterns. To put it simply – soil, the most important nutrient collector on earth, can be used for both building and for eating.
Liam Young is a speculative architect, product designer, and director who operates in the spaces between design, fiction, and futures. Young specializes in designing environments for the film and television industry, harboring the belief that creating imaginary worlds grants us the ability to connect emotionally to the ideas and challenges of our future.
Following the centuries of colonization, globalization, and never-ending economic extraction and expansionism, humans have remade the world from the scale of the cell to the tectonic plate. Young suggests in a TED Talk, “What if we radically reversed this planetary sprawl? What if we, as humans, reached a global consensus to retreat from our vast network of cities and entangled supply chains into one hyper-dense metropolis housing the entirety of the earth’s population?"
Few architectural typologies have the power to invoke a sense of being dual-natured quite as the modernist swimming pool can. The design of pools themselves implies that there are moments of activity both above and below the water. Above, and in the more obvious and visible sense, pools act as a space for leisure and athletic training. But underneath the surface, swimming pools have a long-standing history of acting as symbols of surveillance, death, and social conditions associated with an economic class.
