The tenth edition of the Architectural PhotographyAwards has announced its shortlist, selected from entries from 64 different countries. The photographs are divided into six categories: Exterior, Interior, Sense of Place, Buildings in Use, Mobile, with Bridges being this year’s theme, and Portfolio, focusing on the theme of Transport Hubs. The photographs will be displayed at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Lisbon in Portugal from 30th November - 2nd December. The winners, two per category, will be announced by the end of the festival.
Inflatable Architecture has enabled the imaginations of environmental dreamers of all types. From figures like Buckminster Fuller to Ant Farm, inflatables promise to liberate people from the harsh conditions of nature or the tyranny of architecture. Originally developed by the US Military for radar enclosures on the arctic, inflatables were picked up by NASA before their secrets were bestowed upon the public who deployed them to solve all sorts of problems, from enclosing pools to stadiums.
What style is it? This is a common initial question people ask to learn more about a building. For architects, this seems like a poor entry point and the initiating question can seem naive and trivial. This varying degree of attentiveness to a building’s style leads to an impasse between the public—that wants to understand the built environment—and architects eager to share the nuances of their discipline.
Interior Urbanism describes interior spaces so large that they behave like cities. These kinds of constructions can develop either as an adoc growth over time, or as a planned and cohesively designed set of volumes. Each approach has its own opportunities and problems when it comes to efficiency and architectural integrity. This video explores both and uses Chicago’s Pedway and John Portman’s Hyatt Regency near O’Hare airport as examples. Stewart Hicks visits these examples, discusses the implications of bringing our urbanism indoors, and compares and contrasts the spatial qualities of each — the contingent and gritty urbanism of the Pedway, with the pristine perfection of the hotel lobby and conference center.
This video explores the case for understanding buildings as non-human creatures. While this might sound absurd at first, the concept has a long history and potentially very positive tangible outcomes. Buildings need to be cultivated like a garden; they require maintenance and care. If they are alive, the need for this care becomes more obvious and second nature. This conceit also prompts us to empathize with the people that conceived of and built the building, treating the human labor of its construction with admiration and reverie.
Videos
Cedric Price. Potteries Thinkbelt. Cedric Price fonds, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal. Image Courtesy of CCA
All buildings move — of course, some more than others. There are a host of design considerations that architects keep in mind that allow for, or even promote movement in almost every building. But some architects fall back on their training as broad-based thinkers and problem solvers to devise solutions that literally roam the earth. From tiny homes on wheels, to train-based educational institutions, to design programs in a truck, sometimes buildings and architecture need to travel to the people it serves or to other environments. This video features a few examples on this spectrum, beginning with how architects typically deal with movement in structures and foundations, to Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, and finally Chicago Mobile Makers, a traveling maker workshop for children founded by Maya Bird Murphy.
Architecture and fashion seem like unlikely bedfellows. However, in more ways than one, they are cut from the same cloth. Ancient nomadic tribes lived in shelters made of cloth and animal furs, the very same materials used for clothes. So, clothes and buildings were made from the same craftspeople. Over time, as our constructions filled the basic needs for protecting the human body, these pursuits were elevated into distinct artforms. Today, designers like Virgil Abloh, formally trained as an architect, stitch the two pursuits back together with shows that reference designs by Mies van der Rohe, or jackets filled with puffy 3D buildings. Fashion retail environments also bring space and clothes together, often in thoughtful and interesting ways. This video looks at the history of architecture and fashion and visits a fashion retail store in Chicago called Notre, designed by Norman Kelley.
Videos
Catie Newell by Alibi Studio. Image Courtesy of Stewart Hicks
Buildings are like bodies with organs. When this is the case, with a little extra effort, buildings can be dismantled instead of demolishing them. Dismantling involves carefully removing salvageable components, storing them, and finding them new homes. While this solution is not always possible, it can be part of a sustainable effort that — in addition to keeping material out of landfills — preserves the history and memory embedded within unique materials and fragments. It also honors the human labor invested in our environment. This video explores the reuse of building materials and what it means to be surrounded by fragments with history. It also profiles institutions dedicated to the dismantling and dissemination of building materials, as well as artistic practices that reconfigure our existing built environment including Noah Purifoy and Catie Newell of Alibi Studio.
Data shows that many more people are living alone, but the surprising fact is that living alone does not necessarily correspond with an increase in feelings of loneliness. Architecture has been evolving towards increases in privacy and private space for centuries. This video looks at architectural designs that attempt to reverse those trends by designing living scenarios that incorporate more opportunities for public engagement. These include Studio Gang’s City Hyde Park project in Chicago with its angled balconies. But the video goes deeper to look at examples that radically rethink residential architecture, its construction, design, and inclusion of public space.
Adaptive Reuse is an important aspect of managing a sustainable existence. Buildings contain massive amounts of embodied energy and the more we can adapt and repurpose them, the better. Buildings are also repositories of collective memories and histories. As we modify them, these layer in new and interesting ways. This video explores the topic through the case study of ‘The Plant,’ a food incubator in Chicago housed within a former pork processing facility. The building’s location and existing infrastructure made it a perfect candidate for its new purpose. John Edel, the founder of the Plant, has also made every effort to showcase the building’s history and to honor its heritage throughout the process of adaptation.
Deciding where a building should go is a complex negotiation of visible and invisible, objective and subjective forces. Architects perform site analysis in order to identify and choreograph all these factors, but which factors do they focus on? This video is a survey (pun intended) of what goes into locating where a building should go on the Earth’s surface. From legal requirements like lot lines and setbacks, to infrastructural concerns like service hookup locations and pedestrian ways, to environmental factors like sunlight and topography, the video goes through how architects and contractors position structures. In addition to reviewing general rules of thumb, the video also includes some important architectural examples like the Casa Malaparte and OMA’s Student Center at IIT to inspire unique ways to approach the subject.
Today, worldbuilding is an important part of creative thinking in a wide array of activites. From successful film franchises, to video games, and to comics, worldbuilding is what draws in audiences and allows multi-part productions to cohere around a shared setting. Of course, architecture factors into this too, it is the creative and technical discipline concerned with building the world, after all. This video breaks down how worldbuilding applies to architecture and focuses on comics as a case study to explore the opportunities in its consideration. Lastly, the video includes an interview with the designer of the exhibition ‘Chicago Comics’ currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Thomas Kelley discusses how worldbuilding factored into the relationship between architecture and comics in the design of the show with regards to scale, entry sequences, and color.
Chicago was home to a massive elevated walkway dubbed the “pedestrian highway.” It connected buildings on the East Campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago and created a multilevel network of human activity. It was designed by the architect Walter Netsch, the architect of the Air Force Academy Campus and famous chapel in Colorado Springs. The walkway was gigantic and monumental. It was even featured in the horror film Candyman from the early 1990s. But, over time, the walkway fell into disrepair and the decision was made to demolish this piece of iconic urban infrastructure.
Copying happens all the time in architecture. From students copying the lessons of established examples, repeating model houses, overtly referencing elements from the past, to literally making blueprints, the act of copying is an important tool for architects. Rarely is copying seen as a truly negative or forbidden activity like it might be in other creative disciplines. This video breaks down the how and why architects copy. It covers some postmodern precedents like the Sainsbury Wing, Vanna Venturi House, Villa Dall'Ava by Rem Koolhaas, as well as the more recent examples like the Eyebeam competition and the David Childs lawsuit. All of these examples serve to highlight the wide range of copies in architecture, from the creative and clever to the lazy and malicious.
This video introduces and defines common architecture terms from A to Z. It is no secret that architecture is full of jargon. This can be the subject of jokes and memes but it can also lead to confusion and frustration. The reliance on jargon is somewhat forgivable — the task of translating complex spatial, geometric, and compositional principles into verbal language is difficult. However, it means that one must invest in learning the language to fully grasp written and verbal communication about buildings. This video helps by providing definitions for 26 common architectural terms in alphabetical order. Terms include aesthetic, buttress, circulation, diagrammatic, enfilade, fenestration, geodesic, hierarchy, iconic, jamb, kitsch, legibility, morphology, node, ornament, program, quoin, rustication, stereotomy, tectonics, urbanism, yurt, and zeitgeist. Armed with this fundamental vocabulary, you’ll be able to keep up with any architectural conversation.
As a design feature, cantilevers can exist for any number of reasons, as rational results of form-making, impressive feats of engineering, or just unnecessary spectacles. Either way, they often result in buildings that appear both heavy and light at the same time and they present safely precarious situations for their inhabitants. The video describes what cantilevers are as well as some of the structural principles which govern their design like tension, compression, moment, and shear. It also goes over some great examples by architects like MVRDV, Rem Koolhaas, Ensemble Studio, and Richard Rogers. Finally, it concludes with appreciation for structural engineers and lists a few of the ones responsible for some of the most daring of delicate dangles.
The first house ever built in the United States made entirely out of only concrete and glass is no longer standing. It was demolished in 1999, but that doesn’t mean we can’t visit it virtually to witness what it would have been like to be inside. This video and link below focuses on a single house — the Lincoln House — designed by Mary Otis Stevens to resurrect and explore. It uses the program Enscape to walk through the building and resurrect the experience of what it would have been like to be inside. The video offers a timeline to contextualize the role of the house in the career of the architect and the evolution of Brutalism in Architecture, an analysis of the building, and initial reactions to walking through the building for the first time. What magic and other lessons are lurking in the design, hidden until we could experience it?
Fire is an important consideration in the design of buildings. From material assemblies, to room layouts, to egress, and fire suppression systems, fire is a powerful force shaping the spaces we inhabit. This video talks about some of those factors while the host, Stewart Hicks, builds a campfire at a cabin in Northern Michigan. Over the course of choosing logs, building, lighting, and enjoying the fire, he breaks down how the construction of buildings relates to principles of constructing a good campfire. He covers theories by Gottfried Sempter, the evolution of fire in the home, considerations in wood frame construction, Bernoulli’s Principle, fire suppression systems, and much more. Grab a seat, bring ingredients for making s’mores, and enjoy some fun fire facts.
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