This is part of an ongoing series in which we explore critical issues facing emerging and established architects. Past stories include “Why Architecture Firms Should Use Pinterest” and “15 Tips For Starting A Firm.”

Whether you’re just starting out or have been nurturing your own practice for a few years, you struck out on your own because you wanted to do your own work, not someone else’s. But, if you’ve been following our coverage of Mark Cavagnero’s Growing a Small Firm panel discussions at AIA San Francisco, by now you’ve heard several veteran designers recommend teaming with a larger practice. “Teaming is a good way to expand the breadth of your experience,” says Paulett Taggart, principal of Paulett Taggart Architects, who spoke at the fourth installment of the AIASF series. (In addition to our recaps here, you can find video of past panels at aecKnowledge.)

So how does teaming actually work? And why would a big practice want to take on a young upstart?

When you’re a small firm, the power differential between you and the established players may seem insurmountable. But larger offices can benefit from a collaboration, too. “We’re now seeing a time where a lot of younger firms are teaming with bigger firms,” says Marc L’Italien, design principal at EHDD and another of our panelists. “Sometimes the bigger firms are carrying more of the executive role, and the younger firms are bringing some of the creative energy.” Ahem, that’s you! Read more.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Choice Award in the Architecture + Collaboration category. See the full list of winners here.

Before children from the coastal slum of Seawall, in Tacloban, the Philippines, can go to school, they need a lot of other details to fall into place. Lunch. Uniforms. Books. A break from working for their families’ survival. A place to study and prepare to re-enter the classroom. When three architecture students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology looked at Seawall’s obstacles to education, they saw, yes, an architectural solution—but also a deeper community problem. Behind every absentee student loomed the influence of a parent. How could they change the culture?

Under the auspices of the nonprofit Streetlight, Ivar Tutturen, Trond Hegvold, and Alexander Furunes organized the parents of Seawall into a design committee. Between 2010 and 2012, the student-architects and the families workshopped plans for a new study center and enlisted the community’s help to construct it. The building, which opened last year, serves as a way station between the streets and government schools, offering preparatory study sessions and meals to children of all ages. It’s also the winner of the Popular Choice prize in the Architecture + Collaboration category of the A+ Awards! Read more.

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As many of you know, Chinese artist, dissident, funny guy Ai Weiwei is also a skilled architect. Aside from his famous collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron for the design of the Bird’s Nest at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games (and later, the 2012 Serpentine Pavilion), Ai has worked with Basel-based HHF Architects on a series of projects, including this country home in upstate New York. The Tsai Residence, and presumably its accompanying Y-shaped, corten-clad guesthouse, have been put up on the market. Interested? If you are, you have to be prepared to lay down some serious coinage. Continue.

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Yesterday marked the opening of this year’s Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair, and what better way to kick off the event than with the breathtaking pavilion created by Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh and Dutch illustrator Kustaa Saksi Created out of 1,120 stacks of paper — a total of 11,000 individual sheets connected at 44,000 points — “Hello! Anatomy of Communication” spans an area of 200 square meters. The paper acts as a canvas for the illustrative artist, reflected by the mirrored tabletops that rest below the suspended structure. As if the designers thought there wasn’t enough paper used in the construction, the reflective tabletops are also balanced upon stacks of paper. “Hello! Anatomy of Communication” will be on view during the fair, which runs until February 9 as a part of Stockholm Design Week. Click through to see more of the surreal paper installation!

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The Highline in New York City, Iwan Baan © 2009 via The Highline

Architizer is hosting the world’s definitive architectural awards program, with 50+ categories and 200+ jurors. As part of an ongoing series, we’re spotlighting projects that fit into “Plus” categories, including “Collaboration,” that tap into topical and culturally relevant themes. To see a full list of categories and learn more about the awards, visit architizerawards.com.

It takes a village to create an architectural masterpiece, at least in theory. Just think of all of the programming, concept sketches, model-building, renderings, etc. involved in the building process— and that’s just in the design office. Of course, you also have to include engineers, builders, politicians, clients, and everyone else that all leave their mark on the final product. With so many professionals involved in the making of architecture is it any wonder that firms have begun to place an even greater emphasis on industry collaboration? Because the only thing better than a building designed by a great firm is the building that was designed by two great firms.

Come on, everybody’s doing it! It seems that even the “starchitects” are giving into collaboration (okay, maybe not) but famed teams including SANAA, Herzog & De Meuron, and even BIG have been known to team up with other architects, artists, and engineers. Whether they decide to work together out of necessity (god bless local architects) or mutual admiration, these collaborative efforts allow industry leaders to expand their design sensibilities.

Click through to see the best architecture + collaboration.

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Zaha Hadid isn’t new to celebrity or celebrities. News of her design for Naomi Campbell’s vacation home just outside Moscow quickly went viral only hours after it hit the web. Glamour Magazine came calling in November when the publication named the architect their “Woman of the Year“. And lest we forget, Zaha already reigns queen over architects, for now and, probably, forever. Now, there comes “confirmation” of a collaboration between Zaha and rapper, author, and designer(?) Pharrell Williams. Speaking to Hypebeast in an interview published yesterday, Pharrell, who was last spotted opining on the state of aesthetics at last month’s Design Miami, mentioned that he was in talks with Zaha about a joint project between them. “We’re touring around with the idea of a prefab for a house,” he said, alluding to an idea that was briefly touched upon his book, Pharrell: The Places and Spaces I’ve Been.

When pressed about the nature of the talks, and if they were any time schedule attached to the project, Pharrell simply answered that “we’re going to see something through.” The architectural collaboration wouldn’t be the first for Pharrell, who has previously worked with Chad Oppenheim on two separate occasions. Nor does his partnership with Hadid come as a surprise, given that the idea was discussed in Places and Spaces I’ve Been. Still, this new interview seems to suggest that the two are in the beginning stages of a collaboration that might, in Pharrell’s words, produce a “really fun” and “next-level” project that “could change the game.”

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It’s been proven that you can make anything out of LEGOs. The building blocks have been used to create everything from stairwells, touch-sensor wheelchairs and even skyscrapers, but it’s a real feat to recreate an entire country using just the famed toy. To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of LEGO’s introduction to Japan, the company sponsored a “building” project to render the island nation in 1.8 million LEGO bricks. The event, entitled “Build Up Japan”, encompassed a cross-country workshop that spanned 6 different regions and picked up over 5,000 collaborators. Individual installments were assembled at each site before travelling to Tokyo where the map was pieced together in its entirety and put on display.

The organizers encouraged the children to not simply recreate Tokyo as it exists, but rather to imagine their own architectural landscapes. The result is an intricate megalopolis that stretches the whole of the country’s geography, the long, narrow island brimming over with sky high structures and kilometer-long bridges. The whole ensemble has a sci-fi feel about them, only without the concomitant dystopian trappings.

Additional photos are available at the ‘Build Up Japan’ facebook page

[via spoon-tamago]

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Frank Gehry has long been at the forefront of technological innovation, helping to equip architecture with the means of re-imagining its horizons. Continuing in this vein is Gehry’s next big venture, which aims to transform the way that designers collaborate through the use of cloud based software. The software, dubbed GTeam, creates an online community to share work in a universal format.

Developed by Gehry Technologies (GT), the research team founded by Gehry Partners in 2002, the software can be accessed anywhere online, allowing for easy side-by-side work among collaborators in a web-based space. With collaboration a popular but sometimes problem-filled process, Gehry Technologies has created a platform that can be adjusted to suit the needs of the project. Andrew Witt, GT-director of research, commented in Cadalyst Magazine, “We were hearing from our customers that collaboration is difficult–it’s hard for people to get data in the same place at the same time.”

GTeam allows designers, engineers and architects to work together on a project in real time, with the program automatically translating files from Revit, Autocad, SketchUp and others. Prior to public release, the software was given a test-drive on several of Gehry’s own projects, while hundreds of other firms booted up the program as well. With additional features including clash detection and Built-in Skype, Gehry has christened the software the “Google Docs for 3D models” and says that he is “proud to have contributed to the creation of technology that will facilitate better communication and collaboration in building.” The GTeam is currently available as a free preview with pricing expected to be released in October.

[via Inhabitat]

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Collaboration is king. This very real (contemporary) praxis is reflected in the design of new “sociable” workplaces (think Google, Facebook, AOL) where, amid ping pong tables, bean bags, in-house coffee bars, turntables, and even a Carsten Höller-slide or two, co-workers mingle, bond, collaborate, and “create”. The stringent parameters of the cubicle office have given way to the flexible and neutral workplace, rendered as literal “Play Time“, primed with all manner of dorm-room tchotchkes and infantilized whimsy to lure and keep the nomadic worker “on-site” as long as possible.

Still, there are companies struggling to keep up or even incapable (fiscally, managerially) of doing so. It’s for these 1.0 workspaces that Arianna De Luca created the new NINO office system, a flexible workstation that distills the infrastructure ostensibly necessary for collaborative work–namely, a vacated, open-floor warehouse with a couple macchiato machines and lounge sofas in tow–down to its essences: adaptibility, mobility, and sociability. The result of two years of research, NINO intends to facilitate and foster new connections between co-workers, who can easily manipulate and reorient the station to meet their immediate needs. A series of satellite objects such as laptop stands, writing boards, and lamps shoot out from a tall, slender pole; each of the orbiting platforms can be raised or lowered to accommodate both the reclining worker and the coffee they’re nursing.

De Luca’s explanation is simple and well thought out, “In depth practice-based research highlighted the need for tools and conditions capable of supporting mobile, flexible and social dynamics within the work environment. Nowadays most workers spend 60% of their working day away from the desk and all the tools we daily use at work (laptops, mobile phone, cloud computing etc) do not require anymore static and fixed positions. But companies still allocate a huge expense to buy and install workstations that are occupied only a few hours per day. NINO office system introduces a new mobile and multifunctional solution which allows companies to provide fewer workstations used as working hubs in a more suitable way for the contemporary worker.”

The NINO flexible office system is currently on exhibit at New Designers 2012 at the Business Design Centre in London.

[via freshome]

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It’s the end of the week and we’ve got the second installment of Architizer’s collaboration with Life + Times, first seen here.

As the weather inches towards summer, we’ve got pools on the brain. Not just any pools, mind you: a far cry from the basic concrete rectangles, rocky swimming holes, or above-ground pools familiar across America, these five swimming pools are part of a larger architectural vision. We’ve picked a handful of international homes (including three in Spain, where architects apparently take their swimming pools seriously) that have meshed fanciful water features into equally incredible living spaces.

Check them out below:

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