On December 23, 1972, Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, was struck by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake. In a matter of minutes, its urban core, which for decades had functioned as a compact political and economic center, abruptly collapsed. In the reconstruction process that followed, the authorities sought not simply to rebuild but to reorganize. Their objective was to decentralize the city and prevent future paralysis by dispersing functions across multiple zones. Among the most significant architectural outcomes of this shift was the new Metropolitan Cathedral. Its modernist language symbolized both institutional continuity and urban transformation. In doing so, it embodied Managua's transition from a Spanish-style, centralized urban grid to a contemporary, decentralized metropolis.
Ciudad Cayalá, a privately developed, mixed-use community on the outskirts of Guatemala City, is often described as a "theme park" of white lime-washed walls, red tiles, and cobbled plazas. A closer examination, however, reveals a more complex urban narrative. Its significance, however, lies in its capacity to create a safe and well-managed public space, proposing a modern reinterpretation of historic urban principles that mark the region's architectural and urban heritage. Behind the Antigua-style façades lies an urban experiment: a modern re-engagement with architectural elements like arcades, courtyards, and open plazas, which propose a privately-managed public space as a solution to urban challenges in the region.
Today, the International Day of Education serves as a reminder of the significant impact that architectural design has on learning environments. From flexible classrooms that adapt to diverse teaching methods to outdoor learning areas that integrate natural elements, the architecture of learning spaces embodies the principles of pedagogy, offering opportunities for exploration, collaboration and creativity, all while maintaining a focus on the safety and comfort of all users. This selection of articles explores the potential of design to enhance learning outcomes through spatial exploration, be it inside the classroom, in outdoor spaces or by encouraging larger communities to part-take in the learning process.
Throughout the year, ArchDaily's team of curators works on expanding and populating our project library. Located all around the world, each curator carefully considers the best works emanating from their respective regions in an effort to have a diverse representation of the most inspiring and innovative built works. The team looks to new rising practices, new technologies, and the vernacular revival of traditional construction techniques. Seeking socially driven initiatives, as well as major works by renowned architects, the overall offers a holistic view of the built world today and is relayed through the yearly project review.
Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale University, Gordon Bunshaft, 1963.. Image via Barry Winiker / Getty Images
Some years end up being cultural pivot points. 2021 was one such year, with COVID-19 as the first existential threat to our culture since World War II. Architecture will change as a result, and may evolve in public perception to value motivations as a criteria for understanding it, versus valuing outcomes as the validation of any particular aesthetic.
When the 2008 Great Recession destroyed advertising revenue for all of publishing and limited the cash that architects had for PR and photographers, the established way of promoting architects and architecture was brutally compromised. That same moment saw the instant availability of smartphones, with insanely good cameras, huge memory, and soon 5G transmission. Those technological revolutions turned graphic duffers into artists. Anyone can now photo, video, and narrate any perception anywhere, instantly, free - and share universally. The cliché of saying that the internet “everything changed” is true in how the world sees architecture.
This one-two punch of fiscal devastation and technological revolution has realized a New Practice; the Self-Promoting Architect, independent of the Machine of Defining Cool in architecture.
Throughout his distinguished career, Pritzker award winner Tadao Ando managed to trigger every human’s sensations upon entering his structures. It was never just the buildings’ forms that let the architect earn his status, but the manipulation of light and shadow and the impulsive sensation of sanctity that his buildings impose, are what led him to become one of the world’s most renowned architects.
To showcase Ando’s recent works and to honor their ongoing relationship with the architect, Oris House of Architecture have created a monograph titled Transcending Oppositions, celebrating his buildings and their relationship with the contemporary culture of Japan. Judging this book by its cover, readers will have a clear notion of what to expect, as the monograph reflects Tadao Ando’s architecture on fine print.
Architecture is often intertwined with political context. This deep connection is especially evident in Northern Ireland, a place of infamously complex politics. The state came into existence as a consequence of war in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned into an independent Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) and Northern Ireland, an industrious region still controlled by Britain. Conflict has since ensued in Northern Ireland between a majority pro-British Unionist population, and a minority, though significant, Irish Nationalist community. The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a brutal struggle, with over three thousand people killed, thousands more injured, and harrowing images spread across the world.
The turbulence of Northern Ireland’s conflict is played out in the architectural development of Belfast, its capital city. With thirty years of war from the 1960s to 1990s, the architecture of Belfast embodied a city under siege. When the prospect of peace dawned in the 1990s, an architecture of hope, confidence, and defiance emerged. In the present day, with Northern Ireland firmly on a peaceful path, Belfast has played host to a series of bold architectural ideas and landmark public buildings by award-winning architects. With the rich, bitter, emotive history of Northern Ireland viewed through multiple, often conflicting prisms, the architectural development of Belfast offers a tangible narrative of a city which burned, smoldered, and rose from the ashes.
Rio de Janeiro-based writer Robert Landon has shared with us his experience exploring Zaha Hadid’s newly completed Eli and Edythe Broad Museum in Michigan.
As you approach Zaha Hadid’s new Eli and Edythe Broad Museum in East Lansing, Michigan, it is the complex, light-catching carapace that first reels in the eye — a fine shock after the brick, neo-Gothic buildings that define the rest of the Michigan State University campus. Draw closer and its undulating fins, opening and closing in rhythmic asymmetries, begin to seduce the mind. In some places scrunched up into sharp angles and in others allowed to breathe for longer stretches across the low-slung facade, the fins seem to be the expression of some higher, grid-bending equation.
In a half-conscious attempt to solve the math, you begin to circle the building. At certain points, the fins spread wide enough for generous glimpses inside, but as you move keep moving, the inner secrets vanish again behind the metal lattice. In the same way, the relentlessly kinetic carapace tantalizes with, but ultimately eludes, any logical or definitive summing up. What is certain, though, is that, by the time you’ve come full circle, you’ll have grown quite curious to see what is going on inside.
For over a century, the VeniceBiennale (La BiennalediVenezia) has been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. The avant-garde institution has remained at the forefront in the research and promotion of new artistic trends, while leading international events in the field of contemporary arts that are amongst the most important of their kind. Over the past thirty years, the Biennale has given growing importance to the Architecture Exhibition, which is still a young component of the Biennale considering that its first exhibition was held in 1975. Today, the Venice Biennale captures a multitude of interest from around the globe and attracts over 370,000 international visitors.
Before the festivities of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale begin tomorrow, read up on the origin of this highly acclaimed international exhibition.
A timeline history of the Venice Architecture Biennale:
In an article published by The Wall Street Journal called For Creative Cities, the Sky Has Its Limit, Richard Florida discusses the development of urban environments and their relative successes. As human migrations are trending towards big cities, the design and appropriation of space within these cities is increasingly important. Florida cites that trends indicate that by 2050 cities will make up 70% of the global population. With so many people, elevate density within cities will be unavoidable, but what Florida emphasizes is that it isn’t just density that makes a vibrant and thriving city. Citing Shanghai and New York City as examples of dense urban environments, Florida explains the differences in their relative architectural and urban developments and the prosperity that follows. The fundamental difference? The prevalence of mixed-use neighborhoods in New York City that overpower the innovation of strictly financial districts of either New York or Shanghai.
There is no other comic saga more influenced by architecture than Batman. Gotham, and the fictional architects that built the city, have been main characters since the first plots. Writer and architect Jimmy Stamp describes in these essay the fascinating architectural references and metaphors that have filled Batman stories for the last 60 years.
Batman, Gotham City, and an Overzealous Architecture Historian With a Working Knowledge of Explosives
By Jimmy Stamp
New York, Dubai, Tokyo, Moscow, Gotham. Every city in every atlas—real and fictional— has a unique character shaped by history and geography. More than a mere sense of place derived from architecture and planning, cities have a feeling that pervades the consciousness of those who live there until themselves become a a piece of the urban fabric, a fractional embodiment of the city itself. Perhaps more than any other person—real or fictional—Batman is integrally linked to his city, the city he has sworn to protect. In every sense of the word, he is a true avatar of Gotham. And Gotham City itself is an avatar, not only of the dreams of its fictional architects, but of our collective urban paranoia.
Welcome back and congratulations for having made it to the final installation of the Olympic City Guide.
So far, in parts I and II, we’ve learned how to design for your post-Games legacy (No White Elephants please) and to revitalize -not demolish- your city’s most deprived “eye-sores” (Don’t Hate, Rejuvenate).
So what’s left? Well, in this post-Recession era of austerity, a huge part of your Olympic Strategy will be justifying the spending – the colossal spending – to your more than skeptical constituents. As I said in the last post, a good starting point is targeting urban renewal and being as transparent as possible, but another big element is how you market the Games – not just to the International Olympics Committee (IOC), but to your own city-dwellers.
So how can you get them both on your side? Simple - Go Green.
Today, 3D Printing technology lives in the realm of small plastic tchotchkes. But economists, theorists, and consumers alike predict that 3D printers will democratize the act of creation and, in so doing, revolutionize our world. Which poses an interesting quandary: what will happen when we can print houses?
Last week, I discussed the incredible capabilities of 3D Printing in the not-so distant future: to quickly create homes for victims of disaster/poverty; to allow the architect the freedom to create curvy, organic structures once only dreamed of. But, if we look a little further afield, the possibilities are even more staggering.
In the next few paragraphs, I’ll introduce you to Neri Oxman, an architect and MIT professor using 3D Printing technology to create almost-living structures that may just be the future of sustainable design. Oxman’s work shows how 3D Printing will turn our concept of what architecture – and the architect – is, completely on its head.
Through research, discussions and essays from a variety of resources, Parlour: Women, Equity, Architecture is a platform, a coach, and an inspiration that is available to women worldwide in an effort to bridge the gender gap that exist in the historically male dominant profession of architecture. Launched by a team of scholars led by Dr. Naomi Stead from The University of Queensland and developed and edited by Justine Clark from The University of Melbourne, this website is relevant to all members of the profession, women and men, in all parts of the world. It highlights the reasons why gender gaps are felt as in “implicit bias” whether in pay scale or upward mobility, even though discrimination and prejudices may not be explicit. In this regard, the website and its collection of resources, aims to create a forum for a dialogue about the actual and perceived barriers that empowers women to challenge the social structure that fosters this proven under-representation, whether it is due to professional practices and “gendered behavioral practices” or pressures that women feel to leave the profession at a much higher rate than men.
The bank architect’s goal is to create a secure edifice. The bank robber’s? To subvert the edifice. And yet consider their commonality: their interaction with space. Both analyze plans and consider inefficiencies, both inhabit the space much differently than your average spectator. In fact, the Robber’s relationship with space is far more physical, urgent…nuanced. As Mehruss Ahi, a recent graduate from Woodbury University, puts it in his senior thesis: “The Architect is the Bank Robber…and the Bank Robber is the Architect.”
Ahi suggests a Robber-like “spatial hack” of the bank: an identification of its inefficiencies/vulnerabilities/paths of circulation. He also notes the necessity of giving priority to large storage space for goods rather than money (due to “the migration of banking services to the Web”). This new perspective, Ahi argues, will allow architects to design a smarter, more secure bank. The bank of the future.
Ahi’s assertion about the need for physical storage space (as banks turn to the Web), got me thinking. Our world depends less and less on physical storage, and more and more on the bits of information flying through the wires and cables of the internet. Ahi’s theory, while an interesting insight into bank design, is even more powerful when applied to the bank’s modern day equivalent: the Data Center.
Seeing as it’s the 4th of July, we thought we would take a moment to reflect on the state of Architecture in our country today. Where are we? What’s important to us now, July 4th, 2012? And what does the future look like?
‘What is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend.”
It’s easy to see why British Architects get their hackles raised when it comes to Prince Charles. The oft-quoted gem above, said in reference to a proposed extension to the National Gallery in 1984, is one of hundreds of such Architectural criticisms Prince Charles has made over the years. Which wouldn’t matter of course, if, like any average Architectural layman’s opinions, his words didn’t have much weight.
His do. They’ve resulted in the intervention, squelching, and/or redesign of at least 5 major plans over the last twenty years. But let’s not write off Charles just yet.
