Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
Monica Ponce de Leon has been named as the next Dean of Princeton's School of Architecture. Ponce de Leon, who co-founded Office dA in 1991, and then founded her own firm MPdL Studio in 2011, is the current Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She also previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for 12 years, and is a recipient of the National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum.
The AIA has announced four projects as the winners of its inaugural Technology in Architectural Practice (TAP) Innovation Awards, with Morphosis Architects' Emerson College Los Angeles taking away the headline "Stellar Architecture" award. Started in 2005, the TAP Knowledge Community has led efforts to acknowledge and disseminate the best use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies, and the AIA hopes that the new TAP Innovation Award will "enliven the discourse on how these innovations can advance the profession and practice of architecture and further the mission of the Institute."
As part of their series of "Panorama" exhibits being presented this year, Friends Of The High Line have announced that they will host Olafur Eliasson's installation, "The Collectivity Project" from May 29th until September 30th this year on the High Line at West 30th Street. The installation, which has previously traveled to Tirana, Oslo, and Copenhagen, features an interactive imaginary cityscape made of over two tons of white LEGO bricks, with visitors invited to design, build and rebuild new structures as they see fit.
A report released last week aims to highlight the problems involved in high-density housing in London, offering 10 suggestions for how to create future developments that offer density while maintaining the UK capital's distinctive character. Produced as a follow-up to their 2007 report entitled "Superdensity", four UK housing specialists Pollard Thomas Edwards, HTA, Levitt Bernstein and PRP Architects have produced "Superdensity: The Sequel," aiming to address the dramatic changes that have taken place in London development over the intervening 8 years.
Read on for more of the report's aims and its 10 recommendations for future housing in London.
With the opening of their Fondazione Prada building in Milan at the start of this month, OMA got the chance to show off a skill that they don't get the chance to use very often: preservation. In this interview with Kultur Spiegel, Rem Koolhaas talks at length on the topic, explaining that he believes "we have to preserve history," not just architecture, and arguing that the rise in popularity of reusing old buildings comes from a shift toward comfort, security and sustainability over the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. "The dimensions and repertoire of what is worthy of preserving have expanded dramatically," he says, meaning that "we shouldn't tear down buildings that are still usable." Still, he says, that doesn't mean we shouldn't tear down and start again in some cases - an entire Parisian district beyond La Défense, for example. Read the full interview here.
For Maya Lapp and Denis Perera, owners of the company Glass MaDe in the Italian town of Belluno, bubble wrap is just about the most everyday material they know. It is the utilitarian material they use to protect their products from damage - yet despite this, it still holds a certain amount of fascination, resulting in their latest project, "Fragile." This video by Studio Meddle shows the making of the project, as the glassmaking duo create a mold of the bubble wrap, cast the glass and finally drape the resulting product over a wrinkled wire mesh to create an almost eery facsimile of the original, subverting our usual expectations of the familiar bubble pattern. Check out Studio Meddle's Video above (make sure the captions are turned on), and see more images of the completed work after the break.
In contemporary architecture practice, proficiency in an ever-widening array of architecture software is becoming increasingly important. For almost every job in the field, it is no longer enough to bring a skilled mind and a pencil; different jobs may require different levels of expertise and different types of software, but one thing that seems universally accepted is that some level of involvement with software is now a requirement.
While software has opened a huge range of capabilities for architects, it also presents a challenge: universities have taken wildly different approaches to the teaching of software, with some offering classes and access to experts while others prefer to teach design theory and expect students to pick up software skills in their own time. New architecture graduates therefore already face a divide in skills - and that's not to mention the many, many architects who went to school before AutoCAD was even an industry standard, and have spent the past decades keeping up with new tools.
The internet has therefore been a huge democratizing effect in this regard, offering tutorials, often for free, to anyone with a connection - as long as you know where to look. That's why ArchDaily wants your help to create a directory of the internet's best architecture tutorial websites. Find out how to help (and see our own short list to get you started) after the break.
Sefaira, the market-leading daylighting visualization tool, has just announced a new feature for their software plugins for AutodeskRevit and Trimble Sketchup. In addition to the real-time visualizations announced last year, the new update adds customizable, exportable graphics which offer both a point in time analysis or an annual overview, and analysis tools which help designers easily identify overlit and underlit spaces and review heating or cooling requirements.
As part of their #ILookUp campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the architecture profession, the AIA has produced this short documentary about Chris Downey, an architect who lost his sight in 2008 and has gone on to become a pioneer in designing for the blind and visually impaired. Screened for the first time earlier today at the AIA convention in Atlanta, "An Architect's Story" takes a look into the life and work of Downey and one of his students, Sana Jahani, as they explain what architects can offer the world - and what the #ILookUp campaign means for an architect who is "without sight, but not without vision."
The Architectural League of New York has announced the winners of its 2015 Prize for Young Architects + Designers. Launched in 1981 and organized by a committee comprising League Programs Director Anne Rieselbach and a selection of winners from last year, the Architectural League Prize is one of the United States' most prestigious awards for young architects, recognizing provocative work and offering a platform for the winners to disseminate their ideas. This year's theme, "Authenticity," asked designers how technological changes in computation, visualization, material intelligence, and fabrication technologies are altering our perception of design and the role of the architect.
The jury for the prize consisted of Keller Easterling, Sanford Kwinter, Michael Meredith, Lyn Rice, and Billie Tsien, as well as previous winners Carrie Norman, John Rhett Russo, and Jenny Sabin. As part of their prize, in June the six winning practices will present a series of lectures, and their work will be on display in an exhibition during the summer.
Waikiki Business Plaza / MGA Architecture. Image Courtesy of TAKTL
Since the beginning of the Modernist era a century ago, concrete has been appreciated by architects for its strength, versatility and sculptural potential. For many countries, concrete played a key role in their recovery from the Second World War, and in their continued modernization during the second half of the 20th century. But in recent years - while it is still as widely-used as ever - concrete has fallen on something of an image problem, with criticisms of its environmental impact and its aesthetic appearance becoming commonplace.
That hasn't stopped some companies continuing to innovate with concrete. Among these companies is TAKTL, a facade panel designer and manufacturer that works exclusively with Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC). To find out what UHPC can offer to architecture, ArchDaily spoke to TAKTL about the potential of this material, and the future of concrete construction.
With 145 countries participating in the 2015 Expo, alongside input from international organizations, corporate partners and an extensive program organized by the Expo itself, there's a lot going on in Milan right now. So much so, in fact, that it can be a little overwhelming to get a handle on all the sights that are worth your attention.
To help you out, we've put together a guided tour of the key pavilions that are turning heads, including the defining vistas of the expo grounds, the displays that are worth your time and the oddities that might entertain. From the Expo's defining icon, the 30-meter-tall Tree of Life, to the exhibition on architecture's favorite consumable (that's coffee), and all the national pavilions in between, the things you need to see are here. Whether you're planning to visit the Expo and want a quick and dirty way to ensure you've covered the highlights, or whether you're simply hoping to live vicariously through the internet, this tour is for you.
One of the most interesting trends in architectural materials of recent years is the increase in use of weathering steel - more commonly referred to by its trademark name, Cor-Ten. Thought the material has been around for decades, first being used for architectural purposes in the Eero Saarinen-designed John Deere Headquarters in 1964, the material has seen a surge in popularity in the last decade or so, being used in everything from individual houses and tiny kiosks, to SHoP's design for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which used a staggering 12,000 weathering steel panels.
In the architecture world, there are a handful of persistent debates that arise time and time again: the challenges of being a woman in the field of architecture is one of them, for example; the problems of a culture of long hours and hard work is another. But one of the most enduring arguments in architecture - especially in the academic sphere - is the battle between hand drawing and computer aided design. Both schools have their famous proponents: Michael Graves, for example, was known as a huge talent with a pencil and paper, and came to the defense of drawing in articles for the New York Times, among others. Patrik Schumacher, on the other hand, is famous for his commitment to the capabilities of the computer.
To advance this heated conversation, two weeks ago we reached out to our readers to provide their thoughts on this topic in an attempt to get a broad cross-section of opinions from architects from all walks of life. Read some of the best responses after the break.
On display until July 19th, MoMA's exhibition "Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980" is an attempt to bring the architecture of this global region, and this time period, to a greater audience after decades of neglect by the architectural establishment. Curated by Barry Bergdoll, the exhibition effectively follows on from MoMA's last engagement with the topic of Latin American architecture, way back in 1955 with Henry-Russell Hitchcock's exhibition "Latin American Architecture Since 1945." In an intriguing interview, Bergdoll sits down with Metropolis Magazine to talk about why he is revisiting the topic after so many years (or, indeed, why MoMA took so long to do so), and explains his ambitions to elevate the featured works and to frame Latin America itself as "not simply as a place where the pupils of Le Corbusier went to build, but a place of origins of ideas." Read the full interview here.
In response to one of their most frequent user requests, browser-based 3D model platform Sketchfab has now partnered with Hubs, the world's largest 3D printer network, to introduce a 3D print ordering feature that works directly from its viewing window. With a globally-distributed network of 15,000 print hubs in their network (250 of which support full-color printing), Sketchfab CEO Alban Denoyel says that 3D Hubs is the "closest to achieving this vision" of locally-based manufacture that bypasses transport costs - which he believes is "one of the most important promises of 3D printing."
