March 1, 2012
In case you haven’t heard, Architizer has joined the social media migration and made its way onto Pinterest! We’ve filled our boards with everything from our favorite buildings to our favorite burgers. For those of you unfamiliar with our budding Pinterest presence, here’s a taste of what we have to offer: a round-up of our top 5 ‘pet architecture’ pins for your modern dog, cat or bird. Click through to take a look.
February 14, 2012
Few things can get our pheromones going like a prefab escape. Just imagine: you and your loved one, basking in the privacy of an exquisitely designed love shack. Sounds like good times to me. So if you’re reading this, you may not be the sentimental type to take this Hallmark holiday off from work, but even those of us who couldn’t sit through The Notebook can daydream about these getaways built for two. Click through for more.
February 10, 2012
Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (#2 on our list) is currently being adapted into a film.
Quick! What was the last book you read? No, Graphic Standards doesn’t count.
Below are ten pieces of fiction (and non-fiction) and ten architects who feature as lead characters. You’ll find architect as hero, villain, womanizer, time traveler, and leper-caregiver. This list isn’t exhaustive, so comment with your own favorites and we’ll add them in. On to the list!
December 28, 2011
Zaha Hadid at the opening of the Sterling Prize-Winning Maxxi in Rome, last year
Simply put, it was very much Zaha Hadid’s year, one which saw the realization of some of her most important projects. It also proved vindicating, with the completion and opening of the Guangzhou Opera House after the architect’s much publicized canceled-Cardiff Bay Opera House from 1995 and the long overdue recognition from her adopted homeland, with the openings of much hailed works such as the Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton, the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, and the Olympic Aquatics Center in London. The year was also a turning point for Hadid’s work and firm, when the last of Zaha’s pre-digital projects, like last year’s MAXXI in Rome and the Evelyn Grace Academy, fully gave way to all-digital projects, such as the Aquatics Center, Guangzhou, and Riverside.
Emerging from a formalist generation weighed down by murky theory bastardized from Continental philosophy and coming of age in another under the influence of a resurgent Gauloises-smoking brand of nihilism, Zaha now commands a cultural influence, both populist in reach and aspirational in message, and an overwhelmingly large practice (with some 300 staff members from 55 countries) that are the envy of all ego-damaged architects. Nevermind that the buildings are exorbitantly expensive to build (poorly built, at that) and that all those sweeping, meaningless forms were ostensibly designed for the inevitable coffee table monograph rather than for real space. It’s Zaha’s world, and we’re just living in it. Here are the top ten Zaha posts of the year, plus a recent interview below.
December 26, 2011
Tree bridges! Star Wars! Medical Marijuana! Detroit! Steve Jobs! And of course, Zaha, Zaha Zaha! With nary a week left in 2011, we dug into our archives to find out which posts you all liked best. Architizer’s writers posted over a thousand times this year. The absolute most popular post of 2011, which you’ll see below,
We all have our theories about why the following ten posts were 2011′s most trafficked. Is it simply impossible not to click on a post with Marijuana in the title (#5)? Do our readers have an unexpected soft spot for Hermit Crabs (see #4)? Reminisce with us, after the jump.
November 2, 2011
Exactly two years ago today, Architizer launched at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Were you there? It was kind of amazing. At the time, we had about 100 projects preloaded into the system and 40 or so architectural firms. OH HOW THE TIMES CHANGE! We are now proud to be a database of almost 31,000 projects designed by 8,400 firms. The best thing is that we owe it all to you — the designers and the readers — for creating this rich community dialogue on great contemporary architecture and design.
We thought it might be fun to countdown the architectural projects that have been viewed the most on our site. What we found is heartening: projects that are adaptive, smart, and small do just as well as projects that are bombastic, cantilevered, and luxurious. The projects also span across the globe — from China to Greece, New York to Buenos Aires — which is indicative of our international audience. These homecoming queens and kings of the architecture world might provide a little insight into what peaks the Internet’s interest when it comes to design.
#10 – Private Residence, Aigina Island, Greece – Designed by Helen Sfakianaki, photographed by Konstantinos Kontos
Hilltop location / swanky interiors / THAT POOL
October 26, 2011
How many pop history books exist that identify a single intimate object as the thing that “birthed” civilization? Guns. Germs. Steel. If we had a book deal, we’d propose yet another: the humble brick. Bricks were the building material of the first permanent structures, almost eight thousand years before the birth of Christ. They were invented independently by nearly every large civilization in the pre-Modern world. Because of the brick, cities could rise above flooding, and because of the brick, homes were cleaner, safer, and stronger. Perhaps most importantly, brick is relatively inexpensive to produce, and are incredibly environmentally efficient.
Amazingly, bricks are still being reinvented and improved, even today: architects are programming robots to lay complicated patterns, while others are experimenting with size and joinery, while still more designers are experimenting with the ingredient ratios, transforming the very manufacturing process. We’ve aggregated a typological series of projects from the last few years that use brick in new, interesting ways.
After all, what do we know that the Mesopotamians didn’t know? Read on.
October 4, 2011
Casa Pezo Von Ellrichshausen in Cretas, Spain.
Winter is coming! October is nary four days in, and it’s already coat weather. Bummer, right?
Yes and no. Cold weather heralds the arrival of holiday shopping season – our favorite excuse to spend (way too much) money on good design. What’s more, we’re looking forward to outfitting our own spaces for maximum hygge effect. Scandinavians tend to get all the credit for producing cozy design (plus, the phrase hygge), but after taking a gander at the encyclopedic design website Interiors from Spain, we’d argue that the Spanish are gaining on them. We’ve picked out six objects of Spanish provenance for giving — or for keeping — this season. Read on.
September 7, 2011
It’s that time of year again! We’re kicking off Back-to-School week chronicling the upward swing in innovative, if potentially flashy, school designs, a trend most probably visible in Coop Himmelb(l)au‘s Central Los Angeles Public High School for the Visual and Performing Arts (High School #9). Through complex and subtle form-making, these schools make the case that we are entering an age of exuberant school design, where the school building is designed to embody the ethos instilled within. Click through for the schools!
September 6, 2011
GM’s car of the future, Expo 64.
Like the Olympics, trade shows are essential economic activators for cities, promising millions in revenue. Similarly so for architects. Just as graphic designers dream of designing the pictograms representing each sport at the Olympic Games, architects jump at the chance to design convention centers and trade show grounds. Little wonder: these structures often become essential symbols in the iconography of a city (not to mention the iconography of Modernism itself).
But have you ever been to a trade show? Odds are, your answer is no: trade shows are a bit like secret cities, populated only by a different group of invited professionals every week. Architizer is currently preparing to attend our first, IIDEX/NeoCon Canada, later this month in Toronto (psst: we’re also holding a party to celebrate). Since we’ve got trade shows on the brain, here are a few of our favorite trade fair grounds that have entered the annals of post-War modernism (we’re leaving CIAM out of this round-up).
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