10(+) MORE architects i have been thinking about

new Kevin Roche exhibit at Yale, I probably won't make it up to see it but I'd like to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/arts/design/23roche.html

Nice! I am convinced there is a looming, overpowering Postwar Revival ahead. I took a seminar my last year of grad school that took a left turn halfway through when we decided to focus for a few weeks on "Pritzker Winners We've Never Heard Of Before." There was a real enthusiasm in the room for Roche and company (and the rest of the seminar program involved a lot of postwar British stuff of similarly ill repute). I don't know if it's so much the envy for an age of bold gestures and unrepentant Modernism that Ouroussoff suggests... for us at least it was just the excitement of fabulous-looking buildings that had been sort of kept from us in our educations up to that point.

I have also been positing a giant Team X revival for a while (briefly titled Team Twenty-Ten before that started to seem instantly dated) as a succession of graduating students here have done their terminal projects on figures like Aldo Van Eyck and Hertzberger. Mat buildings have been in vogue for a while, I believe. Perhaps the appeal is antidote to the exuberant fussiness of blobulism (the existence of which surely proves that bold gestures aren't exactly a thing of the past) in favor of the Calvinist fussiness of precisely joined concrete and Cor-Ten?

I don't know if it's so much the envy for an age of bold gestures and unrepentant Modernism

It is for me! I think that describes my feelings on Roche et al. to a tee. It may have been the last time that architects believed their work really mattered. The failures of modernism and the rise of post-modernism introduced a general cynicism that still lingers in even the most ambitious planning today.

Early contender for worst project of the decade? Horrible even by abysmally low Karim Rashid standards.

http://www.dezeen.com/2011/04/01/university-of-naples-metro-station-by-karim-rashid/

mindbogglingly awful. i was going to revive the thread a few days ago to post this very thing but i had just revived the designer furniture thread to hate on his contributions to that "objectified" documentary (have you seen it, I DIED?).

I love Helvetica but fell asleep while watching Objectified - it's on Netflix so I guess I should give it another shot if only to be able to commiserate in hate.

eesh, the poor ppl who have to commute through that every day. would be interesting to see, but it'd probably feel like being trapped inside a pinball machine after a few minutes.

http://www.joindes.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Awesome-Fogo-Island-Studios-in-Canada-by-Saunders-Architecture.jpg
http://www.contemporist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/ls_221210_07-940x621.jpg

six artists in residence studios by todd saunders in fogo, a tiny island off the north coast of newfoundland:

http://www.saunders.no/work/item/30-fogo-studios

Some of you guys might be interested in this. I heard the rumors, but here it is. Can't believe AutoDesk is actually going to give this out for free. They're pretty notorious for squeezing out every penny they can get from us:

If you’re a designer, architect, or construction contractor (or know someone who is) then there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of AutoCAD. For those that haven’t – AutoCAD is software made for 2D/3D design and drafting – and now it’s coming to Android. There has been a version available for iOS under the name AutoCAD WS for some time now, and with the increasing number of requests for an Android version, AutoDesk decided that it was time to oblige.

The mobile versions of the AutoCAD software is not meant for exclusive use, though – it’s more of a "lite" version. You will be able to open CAD files, make basic edits, and send the changes back to the original file.

One of the big things that AutoDesk incorporated into the Android version of AutoCAD was tablet support, which wasn’t an easy task according to SVP Amar Hanspal. "We’ve had to test it across something like 15 different devices and tweak it a little to run on then all" he said, noting that they had hoped to get it out the door sooner, but "the complicated part of developing for Android is not developing itself. It’s the testing."

AutoDesk is expected to make the official announcement today and the app should hit the Market (for Android 2.2+ devices only) on April 20th for the low price of free.

I just don't understand why Autodesk, having pretty much committed to Revit as the CAD platform of the future, is porting AutoCAD to Macs and Android instead.

Who the hell knows with them, its pretty much right in line with them usually doing things 5-10 years late. It is super annoying that they are just now bringing AutoCAD to Mac just in time for no one to want to use it anymore.

I worked for a couple of architecture firms that were using autocad on macs years ago, then switched to archicad when autodesk stopped supporting mac, then one of them switched to revit on pc's a couple years before autodesk brought autocad back to macs. Out of all those options, revit's the way to go but you'd think the company that makes it would see that too.

what do people use instead then? i'm still using a 5 y o copy of powercadd, i can't afford anything else!

Yeah, it is, but I've long ago stopped expecting them to do the sensible thing. My firm has jumped to Revit, but 95% of our projects are still done in CAD because we do so many renovations that its way easier when you have existing drawings.

Firms and software are so weird. A friend of mine worked for a little two-person firm that did all their work in something called "3D Home Architect," a copy of which I recently saw for sale at Staples on the $5 shelf. Whatever works, I guess...

Stirling Prize shortlist is out.

http://www.architecture.com/Awards/RIBAStirlingPrize/RIBAStirlingPrize2011/RIBAStirlingPrize2011.aspx

I feel bad picking on something so small & pointless, but I guess if you send it to design blogs it's fair game. Worst project/proposal of the year?

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/16418/lava-digital-origami-emergency-shelter.html

Weird, you JUST posted that link but it seems like design boom is down right now.

It wouldn't mind having it at the top of my garden but as an emergency shelter?
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/images/images_2/lauren/origami%20cave/oc01.jpg

‘the project plays with ideas of prefabrication and personalised inhabitation, as well as stacking of multiple units,
while giving an opportunity for individual expression.' - chris bosse, founder and director of LAVA

That's just what you need in an emergency.

the form is fine but i've seen a lot of that. the problem is that as a shelter it doesn't shelter. it's, like, made of holes. you can't lie down in it. you can probably barely sit down in it.

You can express your individuality though, while trying to put it together in a hurricane.

They can do projects like this if they want to of course, but when it's put on public display it gives the whole profession a bad name. I don't understand why people just can't say "we generated this form because we think it looks cool, it doesn't really have a purpose".

Also it's pretty stunning that design blogs post this kind of utter shit without considering it for a second. Gotta find a way to make those 20 posts a day I guess.

Yeah, that last is a real problem - there's a real absence of critical thinking on most design blogs. Not that I want people to be knee-jerk negative, or offer really sophisticated consideration of every project that crosses their desks, but, like, have some sort of opinion beyond 'Looks cool! Pass it on!,' y'know?

This is a good reason why I end up looking at design blogs for a week or two, then give up on them completely. To be fair, I encountered the same type of shit thinking in design school as well. Like, here are some really fantastic programs to work with, that are going to generate some really good looking models and renderings, but not one of them could ever be feasibly built in the real world. It was like my school was afraid of introducing concepts of "budgets", "structural engineering", and "buildability" for fear of stifling creativity. Which, is fine for your first couple of semesters of design, but by senior year you should be learning to work with clients and real-world challenges. Which is why when it came time to choose a focus in grad school, I went with "construction administration" over "design" because I wanted reall, applicable experience and not another two years of designing in a vacuum.

Anyway, I digress. Its a gorgeous object of art, but an utter failure at the function with which the program called for, so in my mind it should be getting lambasted instead of praised.

http://www.dezeen.com/2012/01/27/wood-old-house-by-tadashi-yoshimura-architects/

Oh my god this is a beautiful project. So rare to see such a great richness of texture, space, and lighting all in one place.

http://api.ning.com/files/9oSHtbFPPBubV43B2AZXsD*61Cqikm32bnt486xEPRKxE6Z1GA*RNCmE4iL*CxDobhDMaC*GJAVitas4J6Yd2xniTGS0Imzb/mosesbridge5.jpeg

This bridge is pretty cool.

Not completely the right place, but I wanted to admit that I've been using one of Doctor Casino's flickr albums as the screensaver on my Apple TV for a bit. I hope that's OK and non-creepy, but it's one with a lot of amazing building pictures.

Some day I hope to be able to weigh in on this thread more knowledgably!

Love that bridge project, but could never quite figure out how they manage to regulate the water level. I guess it must be a pond with overflow drains? So ballsy to make it out of wood, too!

mh - Awww, no, that is super flattering! Which album, if I may ask?

I'm currently in the midst of a CHINA BARRAGE, haven't been writing as much since I just want to get out from under the photo backlog. Might post a few choice things to this thread once I get my ideas a little more organized.

Doctor Casino, please publish a monograph titled CHINA BARRAGE: THEY ARE JUST MAKING A SHITLOAD OF BUILDINGS OVER THERE

hahaha yeah pretty much. We're actually kicking around some homebrewed book ideas, depends how much spare time I end up having next quarter. "THIS IS CHINA" is kind of recommending itself, after being used by our good Cantonese buddy in response to any time we got too uppity and demanding of explanations for things. "T. I. C."

I'll have to check which album! I think I just had it set to your photostream for a bit it's obviously all your pictures including personal ones and I felt like a creepy stalker. Think I grabbed some of the "archictecture by architect" ones, naturally

omg Doctor Casino, please get him to start saying "Forget it, Jake. It's China."

mh - Ha, well, I'm flattered in any case!

I DIED - hahahaha, I need to pitch that. Would also make a good subtitle for the book, eg "THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SUPERCITY: FORGET IT JAKE, IT'S CHINA"

(Although we were kind of thinking along the lines of THIS IS CHINA: ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SUPERCITY...but who knows?)

I would buy that book

doctor casino, your flickr is like a walk down memory lane. salut!

Woohoo, thanks for the support, y'all!

China trip was 16 days and I'm on Day, uh, 3...but the point is, much more coming soon!!

I always thought that the hsbc building was just really ugly. cheers for the write-up! NB: I've never been inside it.

Just wrote a longish blog giving props to URBANUS, definitely one of the 10+ firms I've been thinking about. Here's a Flickr set, and here's some choice imagery:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7145/6769031077_c2c21438fc.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7006/6769075413_b45a253808.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7018/6773897569_823935a947.jpg

how the hell have I not been following your blog?

btw what is your opinion of bjarke ingels & co?

thanks mh!

Ingels... man, I've struggled to come to grips with that guy. It's tempting to see him as a cynical salesperson who masks a lack of critical ambition behind a positive "Yes Is More" attitude - - - in which reading, reading, his tenure at OMA was spent learning form-making and salesmanship tactics rather than absorbing any of the social polemic that (at one time anyway) seemed to be behind the OMA stuff. In other words, they're basically MVRDV, but much more eager to get work.

On the other hand, if you take him at his word that the "yes" thing has to do with inserting the architect into normally non-architectural decision-making, offering out-of-left-field policy solutions, then maybe there actually is more of a social activist component to the work than there is in Koolhaas's at this point. The idea that the architect can actually shape the debate is pretty appealing, and the kinds of things BIG seems to want to create suggest a sort of nonpartisan but forward-looking utopianism. The architect, judging from the renderings, can make people party in the streets and so on. Always happy to see these 60s throwbacks but sometimes they just seem so stock and auto-pilotish.

Taken purely on its own terms, though, I think the form-making and program analysis stuff is totally brilliant. Not sure every apartment in the building would benefit from being a bizarre one-off in response to supposed advantages discovered in the loopholes of zoning and sun angles (etc), but as far as applications of the OMA formula go, I think they have a better knack than most. The buildings are striking and memorable and often in despite of crap budgets and restrictive circumstances. I dunno. I think the material sensibility is kind of ghastly though.

Man, I definitely shouldn't try to write about architecture after a few drinks...

Btw, you might be interested that my friend is a contractor on a Steven Holl project right now and the stuff coming from his office sucks. No follow-through, details or lack thereof probably being fleshed out by cheap apprentices.

Huh, that's interesting! I really did find the Chinese projects to be the best-built "foreign starchitect" things we saw there. But I think a lot of that might actually be down to Li Hu, who was at the time the head of Holl's Beijing office....

To be fair, it seems like it's pretty common on non-flagship projects. Said friend is an architect who is working as the head of the engineering department of a company that does curtain walls for a variety of projects and it seems like he runs into constant headaches due to either poor planning or a lack of actual engineering follow-through on plans.

http://bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/02/12/how-boston-city-hall-was-born/DtfspyXVbKBIKi8iSXHX6J/story.html

^^^ great read.

^ yes loved that article. So many people don't realize that the failures of grand scale brutalism were largely due to the lack of adherence to the initial plans in terms of pedestrian access, ground level retail, etc.

And I agree that there's something good in BIG's work in the utopian suggestion that we're finally moving away from the post-modernism mindset that buildings don't really matter. But at the same time his unique one off responses to sites tend to generate sloped buildings in the same way that Diller Scofidio Renfro's responses to a site tend to generate broad public stair sitting areas and viewing windows.

I certainly don't see him having the vision of even aesthetic range of OMA or H&dM, but maybe BIG's best contribution will be that if they can get a bunch of crazy looking buildings built that still have a programmatic sobriety then it might help break down the public perception of architecture as either flash or substance with little middleground.

Generally agree with the above - although I think DS+R are a pretty darn good firm and have less of a "branded" feel to their work. There are certain devices that recur, yeah, but they do seem to actually care about the specificities of site, or at least of architectural context. Landscape maybe not so much, but they seem to favor urban contexts, at least in the stuff that I've seen.

Absolutely! With DS+R I think it's more a case of "we did this before and it worked really well" rather than a branding element.