In Praise of 5-Over-1 Buildings - Common Edge
WEBMar 1, 2022 · Although it was originally published in 2019, this essay by Randy Nishimura, lightly updated, serves as a rebuttal of sorts to Duo Dickinson’s recent Common Edge piece,“ The Architectural Pandemic of the ‘Stick Frame Over Podium’ Building.”Dickinson likens the building type to a plague; Nishimura offers a contrarian’s perspective. A recent spate of articles bemoaning the ...
The Art of Architectural Storytelling, or How to Present a Building ...
WEBSep 5, 2017 · From day one in school, architect students are immersed in a patois of the Queen’s English, Latin tidbits, and made-up terms like “cinegrammatic,” “unsolid,” and “neo-ness.”. They learn to speak and write through osmosis. First-years emulate upperclassmen, who mimic faculty and invited speakers, who lecture, debate, and publish in ...
Maquettes in Architecture: The Forgotten Joys of Model-Making
WEBDec 22, 2020 · The instant physical exploration of ideas—with quick cutting and gluing of cardboard, paper, foamcore, and wood, spiced with plasticine clay, paint, or bits of clear plastic and metal—provided a primal joy that no screen can ever capture. Like a sculptor’s maquette, an architect’s model is simultaneously a search for and a test of ideas.
Laurel Canyon: The Classic California Urban Ecosystem
WEBAug 27, 2020 · The most arresting image, among many, in the documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time, directed by Alison Ellwood, is a black-and-white photograph of Eric Clapton visiting Los Angeles for the first time on tour with Cream. He sits a few feet from Joni Mitche ll, who is playing guitar, with a visibly stoned David Crosby in the background on the backyard lawn of Cass Elliot’s house.
How Christopher Alexander Changed Architecture—and Much More
WEB03.22.2022. By Duo Dickinson. Christopher Alexander, perhaps the single most effective polymath architect of his generation, has died at the age of 85. Through teaching, writing, building, inspiring technology, planning, and even delving into theology as well as pedagogy and aesthetic theory, Alexander created, over six decades of relentless ...
Hidden Figures: The Historic Contributions of Black Architects
WEBOct 5, 2020 · Designer Paul Wellington, based in Milwaukee, is the author of Black Built: History and Architecture in the Black Community, a book that documents more than 40 works of architecture around the country by Black architects that have had a direct impact on communities or color.He’s now working on a new book that will focus on Black women architects in a field dominated by white males.
How the Wood-Frame House Became America’s Most Familiar …
WEBJun 6, 2022 · Four years ago, the Pritzker Prize–winner Tadao Ando spectacularly converted a 1920s apartment building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago into exhibition spaces for a gallery named—in deference to its street address—Wrightwood 659. The gallery is currently staging a resourceful exhibition on wood-frame construction, the method by which more than 90% of U.S. houses are built.
Michael Murphy on the Architecture of Health – Common Edge
WEBDec 14, 2021 · It has been a surprisingly rapid ascent for MASS Design Group. Famously founded in 2008 by Michael Murphy and Alan Ricks, a pair of Harvard Graduate School of Design students, the firm made an immediate name for itself with its first project, the Butaro District Hospital in Rwanda.Built on a low budget and with local workers, the naturally ventilated clinic created both a new healthcare ...
Kate Wagner on McMansion Hell, Criticism, and Her Love of Cycling
WEBMar 8, 2021 · Such is the case for Kate Wagner, who broke the architectural internet in 2016 with the introduction of McMansion Hell, a sharp and hilarious skewering of the bloated American home, in all its garish and desperate striving. A year later, the real estate listing site Zillow served the then-23-year-old Wagner with a cease-and-desist letter ...
The Legacy of Christopher Alexander: Form Language, Pattern …
WEBJun 4, 2018 · A Form language consists of a set of definitions and vocabulary of building and design components that can be combined coherently. These comprise specific geometries, shape and size of pieces, particular materials, etc. To most people, this is what characterizes architectural “style.”. Evolved form languages always adapt to locality ...