Matt Shaw
Who are the Architizer A+Awards jurors, you ask? Well, members of the esteemed panel comes from all walks of life, including architects, curators, photographers, developers… and even one LEGO-Certified Professional. That’s right, A+Juror Adam Reed Tucker has the LEGO equivalent of LEED certification, but for building intricate, accurate scale models of iconic architecture out of…
What is the difference between a representational drawing, such as a rendering, and an interpretatio n of a built project by an illustrator? Buildings are drawn for several reasons, but the rendering never seems to capture the serene feeling of an illustration. Perhaps Isozaki’s screenprints did. Why did that trend fade away? Illustrator Thomas Danthony has…
Here in New York City, architecture might as well be sausages. Not in the sense of London’s so -called “Gherkin” or “Cheesgrater,” but in the metaphorical sense that all kinds of building projects are scrapped or altered by the intense sausage-making process that is NYC planning. Stakeholders — from businesses and neighborhood coalitions to politicians and…
Every winter, the small Swedish village of Jukkasjärvi builds an Icehotel. Almost 50,000 people will visit each season, and artists from around the world come to build sculptural, light-based or even typographic installations for themed rooms. This year is the 25th edition of the iconic frozen palace, which uses almost 1,000 tons of frozen water…
Remember that famous Will-Ferrell-as-Harry-Caray line, “We all know that the moon is not made of green cheese. But what it were made of barbecue spare ribs, would you eat it then? I know I would.” In the spirit of that rhetorical quip, what if the White House was made of Jell-O? Would you eat it?…
Installations often walk a fine line between art and architecture, if not simply because of their sc ale. The rooms at MoMA/PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, do an especially good job of facilitating this odd scalar disposition, perhaps because of the building’s own history as a school and then an art gallery. The variety of…
Last month, under Foster + Partners’ tessellated canopy at the National Portrait Gallery in Washingt on, Elizabeth Chu Richter, FAIA, was inaugurated as the 91st President of the AIA. A Chinese-born architect from Corpus Christi, Texas, Chu’s contributions include an award-winning public radio series, “The Shape of Texas,” in addition to her role as CEO of…
Shiro Kuramata made some of the most intriguing Post-modern furniture designs, with a narrative and visual clarity that defines the era even as it transcends the mid-century moment. His work questions the rigidity of Modernism without falling into direct uncontrolled kitsch. A exhibition at Wright Auction House in New York titled Shiro Kuramata and Hiroshi…
Death by building. Some architects might think that is the ideal way to go. Buildings can kill peopl e any number of ways, including collapses, falls from treacherous heights – one can even be eaten alive by a mechanical system. Architecture can also kill you when you are on the street, if its cladding starts to…