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Tag: how is architectural media complicit?

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Death of an Architect

Death of an Architect
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I’m glad I’m not a journalist expected to, at a moment’s notice, rush out an obituary summarizing and making sense of an architect and his/her career while often simultaneously introducing them to the general public. The architectural historians and bloggers of yesterday weren’t without their biases but the only responsibility of contemporary architectural journalism is […]

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The Function of Architecture

The Function of Architecture
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Shipping containers have a simple structure that encloses space yet is strong enough for fully-loaded ones to be stacked eight to ten high. They have structural redundancy because any one container may have to bear the load of eight to ten others above. They have no aesthetic redundancy. They are not algorithmic, parametric or programmatic. […]

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Parable

Parable
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Rats! I didn’t win or even get an honorable mention in the2020 Architectural Fairy Tales Competition.I know, I know. I knowI shouldn’t have written an architectural parablein which everyone got what they thought they wantedand lived happily for a while. The Red Igloo Once upon a time, all Inuit people made igloos the same way. […]

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Architecture In The Emirates

Architecture In The Emirates
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Architecture In The Emirates is one of those TASCHEN books with words by Philip Jodidio. Published on the 1st of November 2007, it’s an historic document. Given the book’s title, I was surprised to find it included buildings in Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The contents suggest Architecture In The Gulf Countries ought to have […]

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Triennale Hang-over

Triennale Hang-over
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The first difference I noticed in my recent ArchDaily bingewatch [c.f. Misfits’ Trienniale] was how less intrusive text was. It was now optional with a “Read more” link that, to be accurate, should probably more correctly read “Read?” Clicking it loaded the “story” as images interspersed with text mostly describing those images – the captions, basically. […]

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The 1’st Misfits’ Trienalle

The 1’st Misfits’ Trienalle
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Bucharest Architecture Triennale JULY 10th – OCTOBER 2019Seoul Architecture Biennale SEPTEMBER 7th – NOVEMBER 10th 2019Tallinn Architecture Bienalle SEPTEMBER 11th – NOVEMBER 30th 2019Sao Paulo Architecture Biennale AUGUST 15th – SEPTEMBER 20th 2019Chicago Architecture Biennial SEPTEMBER 19th, 2019 – JANUARY 5th 2010Oslo Architecture Triennale SEPTEMBER 26th – NOVEMBER 24th 2019Lisbon Architecture Triennale OCTOBER 3rd – DECEMBER 2nd 2019Buenos Aires Architecture Biennale […]

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The Shape of Green

The Shape of Green
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There’s no lack of ethical or economic arguments for sustainability. Taken in by its promising title, I had high hopes Lance Hosey’s The Shape of Green would finally provide us with an aesthetics of sustainability as part of a larger philosophy of sustainability. Hosey begins promisingly, claiming beauty and sustainability aren’t as incompatible as they’re commonly believed to be but […]

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Misleading Narratives

Misleading Narratives
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Two posts back, in Repeating Crevice, Revisited, I wrote If Shinohara was aware of having designed certain possibilities into [a house he designed], he never let on. Now I think about it, he can’t not have known he was designing that house to offer its occupants various levels of awareness of the movements within. Instead, he chose to present an alternative […]

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The Things Architects Do #9: The Dating Game

The Things Architects Do #9: The Dating Game
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There’s a lot of lonely architects out there, beginning and ending their days alone. Nobody knows they exist. They look at their weekly calendars and see whole elevations of windows for lunches unlunched, meetings unmeetinged. They never set their mobile phones to silent. Many businesses have sprung up to help solve this problem and team up lonely architects with […]

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Good on Paper

Good on Paper
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I’m rediscovering magazines now that magazines are rediscovering architecture. I recently renewed my subscription to The Architectural Review and, in their The Big Rethink series of articles which I’ll have more to say some other time, immediately found what I’d felt a lack of. I’ve dipped into Blueprint once again, less rewardingly, but still better […]

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Silly Season: Serpentines and Ladders

Silly Season: Serpentines and Ladders
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To atone for having totally forgotten Peter Zumthor’s Serpentine Pavilion even existed last summer, I thought I’d stroll into Hyde Park and have a look at Sou Fujimoto’s effort this summer. First of all, this is the Serpentine Gallery. It’s an art gallery. Here’s some art outside it. “Fischli/Weiss’s work is a finely-judged balance of humour […]

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Architecture Myths #7: Purity of Form

Architecture Myths #7: Purity of Form
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1976 was quite a year for houses in Japan. There was Toyo Ito’s White U which we’ve already seen. There was Kazuo Shinohara’s House in Uehara – a steady favourite of mine, for reasons I may one day post. And there was Tadao Ando’s Sumiyoshi House. This next photo was quite popular at the time, although […]

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