Tips and tricks to help you specify the right building-products and design better buildings.
“It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” While Woody Allen regards mortality with his typically brilliant humor, it is not a subject that everyone can approach with such dry-witted stoicism. They say the only certainty in life is death, and this harsh truth brings with…
Foster + Partners has been awarded the task of designing the main stadium for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The 80,000-seat Lusail Stadium near Doha will house the opening and closing ceremonies for the event, and its forward-thinking design aims to take stadium design to the next level. Instead of creating a free-standing object…
David Chipperfield Architects has been selected to develop a new design for the Southwest Wing for m odern and contemporary art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The renovation and redesign will enhance the connection between the museum with Central Park, and will double the size of the roof garden. Inside, the galleries will be…
If you needed further evidence that the world of architectural design is transforming fast, look no further than Marc Kushner’s new book The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings, released this week in conjunction with the architect’s uplifting TED Talk. When establishing just howfast, though, one particular question that Marc poses stands out amongst the…
This March is turning out to be a splendid month for Thomas Heatherwick Studio. Just a week after th e firm unveiled its ambitious plans for a super-green Googleplex in collaboration with BIG, one of its largest projects to date has now been completed in Singapore: The Learning Hub is a cluster of 12 sculpted towers,…
There is much debate among architects and theorists about what exactly architecture can do as a poli tical mechanism. Can it change the world? Or is it merely a manifestation of larger political, legal, and economic forces, played out in concrete and glass? Most of it is probably falls squarely in the latter category, but Bolivia’s…
McMansion /məkˈmanʃ(ə)n/ noun: a large modern house that is considered ostentatious and lacking in a rchitectural integrity. A single, all-encompassing definition of the word ‘McMansion’ is hard to come by, but there seems to be a broad consensus over its negative connotations: in the early 1980s, American suburbia saw a rise in expansive luxury homes, often…
Why is everyone watching and looking at ruin porn these days? Is it because it is so readily availab le on the internet? Is it because it is free? Or is it because it no longer means a shameful trip to the library or bookstore to seek out magazines and books full of abandoned architectural eye…
As a Johannesburg native, Neill Blomkamp knows the quirks of this complex, multi-layered city better than anyone. Not only was he born and raised in the “city of gold,” he also produced the critically acclaimed sci-fi fable District 9 there in 2009, and his familiarity with the nuances of Johannesburg’s urban fabric came to the…