Inspiration

Kicking off today, London’s 100% Design promises as always to be a feast for the eyes. If you’re in town for the show, but have a very limited window of time, consider checking these finds — as well as London Design Festival installations — off your list. BUILDING PRODUCTS Alusid ALUSID, Stand EB769100% Design marks…

Blending the influences of Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Meier an d Partners Architects could be considered the ultimate conduit of 20th-century modernism in contemporary practice. The American firm’s distinctive aesthetic is immediately recognizable and stands as a present-day ode to those modern masters in contrast with a plethora of…

Architecture and faith are intimately intertwined. Countless religious structures have been erected the world over, buildings designed to venerate our deepest values and beliefs. Carefully studied by architects and occupied by the masses, these powerful monuments stand as symbols within their communities and surrounding contexts. Ranging from synagogues and mosques to cathedrals and cemeteries, religious…

Winning an international competition is a fantastic achievement for any architect, but it brings no guarantee of a smooth transition from concept to completion. Just ask Zaha Hadid, whose victory in the Tokyo Olympic Stadium competition has only led to trouble for her firm. David Chipperfield Architects has experienced similar travails with its design for…

“Funnily enough, I think Sir John Soane might have liked the Digital Age,” says Robert Stern, Founde r and Senior Partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects, referring to the neoclassicist architect as perhaps the “first modern architect,” one who had both “a firm grasp of history, especially of Classical Rome” and “a sense of his own…

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, modernism in Mexico was robust with experimentation as well as recon ciliation with the country’s traditions and history that were being endangered in the race towards modernization. Prominent Spanish architects in Mexico sought to embrace the movement and characteristics of European architects such as Le Corbusier, while being conscious of the…

Two innovative firms on each coast of the United States have been announced winners of the U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition, marking another step forward in the development of high-rise structures using timber frames. From the Pacific Coast, Framework LLC — led by Oregon-based LEVER Architects and engineered by ARUP — has designed an…

Moshe Safdie is most famous for Habitat 67, the experimental housing complex that still stands as a bold and compelling vision of modular design. From those avant-garde beginnings, Safdie Architects has conceived a vast array of unorthodox forms for multiple typologies across the globe, but never within the architectural melting pot of Manhattan — until…

The 20th century saw the birth of modern architecture, when ornate and robust houses were stripped d own to orthogonal lines and simple volumes. A pioneer of this new language was Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, who leveraged his Five Points of Architecture to create a framework for modernism. One of the most iconic features of the…