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Deep in the remote hills of rural Chile, there lies a brilliantly bizarre settlement with a unique h istory: Ciudad Abierta, or ‘Open City,’ is an ode to experimental design, formed by a group of students and teachers working at the intersection of poetry and architectural exploration. Journalist Vincenzo Latronico recently visited this surreal landscape, and…
Last week, Copenhagen became the most recent city to experience the damaging effects of a wave of an ti-Semitism that has proliferated across Europe starting last month. Two people were killed and five police officers were injured as a result of an attack that left Denmark in complete shock; one of those killed was a Jewish…
Shopping centers have long been a source of conflict and contradiction for architects. Successful ma lls are celebratory cathedrals of consumerism that, for all their vitality, can suck the lifeblood out of the surrounding cityscape and transform high streets into ghost towns. The functional motivation of malls is at once glamorous and gluttonous, often necessitating aesthetics…
The Institute hosts a short survey quizzing architects and designers on the current state of design competitions.
The last freezing phase of the current ice age ended around 10,000 years ago, but the residents of c ertain cities in the northeastern U.S. could be forgiven for thinking it has returned with a vengeance: Boston is in danger of buckling under the weight of 95.7 inches of snow so far this winter, and the…
BIG’s brand of hedonistic sustainability is coming to Calgary, with the firm’s mixed-use skyscraper — the 57-story TELUS Sky Tower — breaking ground in the city’s downtown quarter last week. The project is being realized in collaboration with local practice Dialog, and is slated for completion in the fall of 2017. The high-rise attempts to…
Although humans have long looked to nature for inspiration, the concept of biomimicry has only been around since the middle of the 20th century. Decades before Otto Schmitt coined the term, Rene Binet’s Esquisses Décoratives (1904) predicts speculative designs that prefigure many of the forms we see today. This largely forgotten anthology of illustrations, viewable…
Five years shy of its centennial this year, the Brooklyn Army Terminal spent the first half of its l ife fulfilling its original purpose as a military hub. Sited just opposite the northern tip of Staten Island, the industrial park was the largest concrete building when it was completed in 1919 and subsequently the U.S.’s largest…
The Royal Institute of British Architects has been reinventing itself of late: The esteemed organiza tion has recently announced a newly elected president, a new website, and a new approach to exhibitions as it attempts to modernize and reaffirm its relevance to a fresh generation of millennial architects and students. Some things, though, need only be…