Architecture school. You’ve heard the myths - the legends of all-nighters and innovation, of unmatched workaholism and love for the profession. Perhaps you know what you want – to solve the great urbanization problem, to create the next sustainable wonder-gadget, or maybe just to start your own firm and show the architectural world how it’s done. Maybe you have no idea what you want to do, drawn to architecture by the romance, the larger-than-life scale. Maybe you’re an artist who wants a job when they graduate. A hometown hero, you’re about to be thrown into a classroom of the best, possibly for the first time in your life. You’ll be surrounded by the brightest in engineering, problem solving, writing, drawing and a host of other skills. Anxious and excited, you stand ready at the doors of architectural education, hungry for innovation and ready to share and learn from others. Stepping inside that first day, you prepare yourself for the best - and most difficult times of your life so far.
To prepare you for the strange beast that is architecture school, shed light on what is fact and fiction, and give you some peace of mind, we at ArchDaily have prepared a list of advice for all incoming architecture students. There is no other education in the world quite like an architectural one, and we hope that this list can help prepare you for its unique wonders and challenges. The advice below is meant to ease the transition into school as much as possible – but be warned, nothing can compare to experiencing the real deal. Read them all after the break.
Known for his daring neo-futurist sculptural buildings and over 50 bridges worldwide, Santiago Calatrava (born July 28, 1951) is one of the most celebrated and controversial architects working today. Trained as both an architect and structural engineer, Calatrava has been lauded throughout his career for his work that seems to defy physical laws and imbues a sense of motion into still objects.
The Metropolitan Museum released a 360º video of their iconic Great Hall on their Facebook page, allowing user to immerse themselves in the building. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt in 1902, the Met’s Great Hall greets over 6 million visitors to the museum each year with its neo-classical design.
The video was shot with the use of two camera tracks: one from the main entrance to the balustrade above the staircase, and another set at 90º that follows the public up the stairs before lifting to an overhead view.
Cat owners can now offer their cats a range of architectural landmarks to inhabit. The design studio, “Poopycat” has released a series of cardboard cat homes, modeled after iconic architectural landmarks. The series includes the Taj Mahal, the White House, the Eiffel Tower, as well as more monumental works like the Sphinx and a Mayan pyramid.
House+Home, March 1971 Page 53. Image via Colossus
North Carolina Modernist Homes (NCMH) and Hanley Wood (parent company of ARCHITECT) have partnered to create Colossus: a new digital archive of 20th century architectural publications, reports Architect Magazine. When complete, it will be the largest digital archive of modern architecture magazines, with over 1.3 million pages.
The Bavinger House is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of Bruce Goff, an esteemed architect who was once referred to by his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright as one of the few creative American architects. Its spiraling form and integration with the landscape was one of the first instances of modernist bio-mimicry.
Although the year began with a decline, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) has shown three consecutive months of increasing demand for design activity at architecture firms. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the April ABI score was 50.6. Although down from March's score of 51.9, this score still reflects an increase in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 56.9, down from 58.1 in the previous month.
After a three-day event attracting over 1,000 visitors, the 2016 ARCHMARATHON came to a close, with the presentation of its annual awards. Now in its 3rd year, the Milan-based exchange awarded projects in ten different categories, as well as an overall winner, and a “crowd award” based on voting on the event’s website. The 42 presented projects were judged by the international jury, chaired by Luca Molinari and composed of internationally famous architects and critics such as Lucy Bullivant, William Menking, Wassim Naghi, Li Brian Zhang and Elie Haddad. See all 12 awarded projects after the break.
Rogers Partners'Elmer A. Henderson: A John Hopkins Partnership School (Henderson-Hopkins) has received the 2016 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Institute Honour Award for Architecture, as well as the 2016 American Institute of Architects Committee on Architecture for Education (AIA-CAE) Educational Facility Design Award of Excellence.
Exterior Perspective Views. Image Courtesy of Konishi Gaffney Architects
Edinburgh-based studio, Konishi Gaffney Architects, has won the competition to design a temporary pavilion for the Pop-Up Cities Expo. The Pop-Up Cities Expo is a headline event at Scotland’s Festival of Architecture, featuring pop-up pavilions at Mound Square from cities around Europe. Konishi Gaffney will be representing Edinburgh – the host of the expo - with their winning pavilion design.
One of the most significant buildings of the late modernist style, Le Corbusier’s Convent de la Tourette exemplifies the architect’s style and sensibilities in the latter end of his career. Built between 1956 and 1960 on a hillside near Lyon, France, the priory dominates the landscape, with its strict, geometric form.
Israel has unveiled its theme for the 2016 Venice Biennale: “LifeObject: Merging Architecture and Biology”. Their pavilion will be comprised of a large-scale sculptural installation and seven speculative architectural scenarios relating to Israel. The exhibition will focus on the relationship between biology and architecture, acting as a “research oriented platform.”
Kjellander + Sjöberg. Image Courtesy of Kjellander + Sjöberg
The Swedish exhibition, “The Forests of Venice,” has been selected as a Collateral Event for the 2016 Venice Biennale. Initiated by Kjellander + Sjöberg and Folkhem; and curated by Jan Åman, the exhibit highlights wood as a sustainable material, while looking at "the interaction between nature and the man-made human habitat in order to respond to climate change and limited resources."
SCI-Arc’s “Close-up” exhibition is currently on display at the SCI-Arc gallery, featuring architectural details designed with the use of digital technology by top architects in the field. The exhibit, curated by Hernan Diaz Alonso and David Ruy, seeks to explore the impact of new computational tools not only on large-scale building analysis, but also on the “traditions of tectonic expression” associated with architectural detail.
“Out of the many critical shifts that the discipline has gone through in the last 25 years with the explosion of new technologies and digital means of production, the notion of the construction detail has been largely overlooked,” Diaz Alonso said. “This show attempts to shed light on the subject of tectonic details by employing a fluid and dynamic movement of zooming in and zooming out in the totality of the design.”
The 16 exhibitors include architecture firms like Morphosis, Gehry Partners and UN Studio – see preview images of them all after the break.
Located in the arid desert of the San Rafael Valley, Arizona, Casa Caldera by DUST is a unique object in the vast landscape. In this video, architects Jesus Robles and Cade Hayes explain their project as viewers are taken on a vivid tour of the building and site. The camera moves through the desert, unveiling the house gradually, as one would truly experience it.
“One of the unique things about Casa Caldera is the experience of the approach,” Hayes says. “Two hours of travel are actually part of the experience of arriving. It isn’t until you are 20, 30 feet from the house that you get a good look.”
A material produced by Harvard researchers changes size, volume and shape all by itself, reports The Harvard Gazette. The new material, inspired by the “snapology” technique from origami is composed of extruded cubes that have 24 faces and 36 edges.
PARKROYAL on Pickering. Image Courtesy of WOHA Architects
Singapore-based WOHA’s “Fragments of an Urban Future” will be on display at the 2016 Venice Biennale, addressing some of the critical issues that megacities face today -- “unprecedented urbanization, accelerating climate change and the need for preservation of tropical biodiversity.” Part of the Global Art Affairs Foundation’s collateral exhibition, “TIME SPACE EXISTENCE,” WOHA’s contribution will be housed in the Palazzo Bembo.
"Through China with a Camera ... With ... illustrations". Image Courtesy of The British Library
The BritishLibrary has continued to release images from its digitized collection, now bordering over one million images on public image-sharing platform Flickr, reports Quartz. Since 2013, the institution’s “Mechanical Curator” has been randomly selecting images or other pages from over 65,000 public-domain books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.