Architectural case studies and material exemplars to spark your creativity and inspire your next project.
Some years ago, the ever-whimsical luminaire designer Ingo Maurer developed a lighting product of a different sort. Instead of a chandelier made to resemble birds in a tree or floating circuit-board strips, the simply named LED Wallpaper was a non-woven covering with integrated LEDs creating a field of isometric shapes. Ingo Maurer Since then, niche…
There has been talk of 3D printing revolutionizing the construction industry for some time, but fant astical visions of outrageously intricate prototypes and robot builders have been tempered by suspicions amongst many that the technology is a novelty, lacking the practicality for use on a mass scale. With this in mind, experimental design firm Branch Technology’s…
Under most circumstances, entire buildings, sections within, and individual rooms are designed speci fically for how they are intended to be used — generally speaking, how it all fits together. More uncommon are spaces with a primary purpose based on experience or observation. That is to say, an architectural construct that is not designed for efficiency…
Please grab a comfortable seat, I’m afraid I have some bad news. 11 of New York’s most cherished arc hitectural landmarks have vanished. The only clues investigators have are a few photos of uncertain origin depicting the buildings in unidentifiable, barren landscapes. It’s never been easier to land a good seat at the Metropolitan Opera ……
With alt-rock pioneers Radioheadin the news, many architecture fans might be daydreaming about what their favorite buildings would look like “in rainbows.” Well, if Frank Gehry’sFondation Louis Vuitton is among your top icons, you’re in luck: conceptual artist Daniel Buren’s newest site-specific installation Observatory of Light paints this modern Parisian landmark in luminous tones, just…
From compact spaces to light and inexpensive materiality to ease of construction and green building practices, these projects redefine the meaning of home.
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) recently unveiled plans for its newest endeavor, a renovation of the are a adjacent to Masaryk Railway Station in Prague, Czech Republic. This major building project will reinvigorate a brownfield urban site that has been derelict for the past several years and will establish a new central business district for the city.…
Long before Americans succumbed to the lure of a low-cost flat-pack furniture brand called IKEA, the y discovered the charms of Scandinavian design through a rather ingenious chair: Made within the constraints of wartime material shortages, the chair utilized cedar scraps and webbing of army-rejected nylon straps from parachute production. This design, created by Jens Risom…
The Woodhull Medical Center (1969–1978) by Kallman & McKinnell — designers of the oft-loathed Bo ston City Hall — and Kenzo Tange’s Yamanashi Broadcasting and Press Center (1961–1966) are two geographically and typologically remote projects, but ones that emerged from the same architectural ethos: an unabashed structural expression of buildings as containers for social activities rather…