"Idea Hunting: Geoff Manaugh Provides his Blog Followers With Generally Overlooked Sources of Inspiration for Architects", Mark, June/July 2012.
"Through the Roof: Jan Knippers, of Engineering Firm Knippers Helbig, Talks About the Importance of Breaking Out of Model Thinking", Mark, April/May 2012
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"Innovation Champions: Gage Clemenceau Architects See Computers as Communication Tools That Break Down Barriers Between Disciplines", Mark, April/May 2012
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"Unleashing New Universes: By Reading Science Fiction, Bjarke Ingles Learned How a Single Idea Can Create A Whole New World" Mark, Feb/March 2012
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Interview with Ball Nogues, Mark, Feb/March 2012
Interview with Oskar Zieta, Mark, December/January 2012
"The Incredible Folding Man - Gregory Epps Designs By Folding, With The help of Six-Axis Industrial Robots", Mark, October/November 2011
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"Nature as Measure: Interview with Biomimicry Expert Janine Benyus" in Experimental Green Strategies: Redefining Ecological Design Research, Architectural Design, November 2011
"Beat Karrer Researches Materials to Solve Design Problems", Mark, February/March 2011
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"Chuck Hoberman Designs Transformations", Mark, December/January 2010
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"EcoLogicStudio" in Territory Beyond Environment, Architectural Design, John Wiley & Sons Ltd Press 2010.
"Marc Fornes Creates Spaces He Has Never Seen Before", Mark, October/November 2010
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"Norwegian Designer Daniel Rybakken Designs Daylight", Mark, August/September 2010
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Interview with interactive designer Ruairi Glynn, Mark, April/May 2010
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Interview with Spanish designer Hector Serrano, Azure, March/April 2010
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Sagrada Familia - Interview with Architect Mark Burry Mark 23, December 2009
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Technology, Sustainability and the Future of Fashion - Exclusive
Interview with Hussein Chalayan, Clear, Fall 2009
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Interview with Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Mark Magazine, October 2009
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'Mechatronics Meets Rock and Roll' Interview with Moritz Waldemeyer, Mark Magazine June/July 2009
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Interview with London's Raw Edges, Azure Magazine May/June 2009
Borrowing fabrication techniques from textiles and ceramics, the duo design their architectural furniture from their Stoke Newington studio....Shay Alkalay: “A few months after we graduated from the rca, we were invited to go to China with a group of designers to do a project with Kobold, which makes accessories, bags and suitcases. By this time, we had been together for about six years and were living together, but we hadn’t really worked in a formal collaboration.
For the first time, we were designing, making, and presenting together. We realized although we have different skills and approaches – Yael likes folded, flat materials that can become 3-D, and I like mobile things and mechanisms – what we both look for is how to reinvent an object: its core, structure, how it works and how it’s used.”
Yael Mer: “We were always talking about the “raw edges” of materials. We started thinking about these words and how they represent our strategy, both with how we make things appear industrial and ragged, and keep our ideas fresh and raw. So we started using this as our name.” Read more in Azure May/June 2009 and online here.
Tokyo-based industrial designer Chris Kirby profiled in Azure Magazine March/April 2009
Canadian designer Chris Kirby explains his innovative Compost Vase: "For my graduation project, I wanted to somehow ritualize composting, to design a better and more dignified way than simply using ice cream buckets or plastic bags … The Compost Vase developed into a flat design language, faceted and functional. I wanted it to act like a catcher’s mitt, with a wide opening for tossing stuff into it, but I also wanted it to lie flat on the counter so it could cozy up to the cutting board. It needed to take up very little space, so it sits upright like a vase. I was taking courses in porcelain at the time, and I liked the idea of tying it into dinnerware. I wanted it to be in its own class of dinnerware object, with its own associated activity, like a creamer, teapot or gravy boat. That was my challenge to myself, to make it something special, to bring composting to the dinner table."... Read more inAzure Magazine March/April 2009. and PDF here.
Interview with Tokyo's Nosigner, Metropolis Magazine March 2009
Nosigner says: "Eggshells can be a very good material. They have a beautiful shape, good structure, and they are biodegradable. They are waste products and you can get them anywhere. Eggshells are fragile, but we can make a stronger structure by using them together in a larger shell form. The form can distribute the weakness of the material. The ‘Open Source’ series is an experimental project I am developing to make products without consumption. I am trying to share with everyone how to make design products with their own hands, without a designer, and without purchasing them—like open source software on Internet. For example, I can share how to make the lighting products made of noodles [Spring Rain light, 2007] or egg shell plant pods [Hatch planter 2008] because their materials are easy to get anywhere in the world." Read more here.
On digital design and the new 'real' - Swiss artist/architect Philipp Schaerer, Mark Magazine
It’s nearly 10am on a sunny April morning at Zurich airport and as I turn the corner past security, I spy Philipp Schaerer waving from the arrivals area. He bounds over grinning and kisses me three times on the cheeks. We decide to head to the airport café before catching the train to his studio. Dressed in layers of matte black, he looks every inch an architect, from the beard to the disheveled black hair to the designer trainers. He confesses he set 3 alarms to be able to come and get me from the airport at such an early hour, (you only have to meet him for a second to see that he’s a night owl) but, he stresses, it was his pleasure to greet me in person, since I had come all this way. We feel like we know each other now, from emailing for a few weeks about his upcoming exhibitions, (I wanted to see the one at Art Basel, but the timing was not to be) and about how to fit this morning into his hectic schedule. The last an only other time I actually met Philipp was at the end of a long night of hopping between various German beer halls after the Smart Geometry conference in Munich in March, where he showed his dramatic and surreal visualizations for Herzog & de Meuron. After the conference I remember we ended up seated next to one another at a long wooden table after closing time, having to shout and gesture to be heard…Read more in Mark Magazine September 2008 and view the PDF here.
London's Plasma Studio, Pol Oxygen Magazine
It’s a non-British office in London with geeky office sports, clients who are monks, and a penchant for scary looking haute couture spaces. Recent projects include a 550sqm house in Italy named after a video game and then there’s that 9 million square meter project they’ve just won in China. Maverick designers Plasma Studio aren’t afraid to be ambitious. Plasma’s warehouse studio in East London certainly doesn’t scream ‘architecture’. Edgy and rough around the edges, it’s more like an artists squat or a location for an urban fashion shoot. Plasma has the end unit on the 5th floor of this tall, 1960’s, former industrial building, near up and coming Broadway Market, overlooking Regent’s Canal. It turns out this creative hive is home to not one, but two, artist run art galleries I’ve never heard of, it has its own design magazine called ‘Garageland’, and it hosts the studios of various designers and sculptors. 37-year old, Venezuelan, Eva Castro and her 38-year-old, German partner Holger Kehne are the architectural equivalent of an up-and-coming Indie band: signed to an independent label (neither have any real work experience apart from Plasma), they pride themselves on their experimental, non-commercial approach and they have a sort of cult hero status amongst (architecture) students. In fact, a quick Youtube search turns up a slide show tribute by a fan who pairs images of their recent work with a techno Madonna remix. Although they are a full decade older than the Arctic Monkeys—for architects, under 40 is very young—they have just won the architectural equivalent of the Brit Awards: the coveted ‘2008 Young Generation Award’ from the Architecture Foundation. Read more in Pol Oxygen Magazine, Summer 2008.
Tokyo's Klein Dytham Architects, Pol Oxygen Magazine
Standing barefoot on the white, tiled floor in the Girls section of Klein Dytham Architecture’s installation At The Bathhouse at London’s Architectural Association, I have the unsettling feeling I have somehow stepped inside a giant iPod. The high-gloss interior is filled with flickering images of architecture, urban life and advertising on large computer screens. It takes a certain amount of commitment to enter the space, as visitors must take off their shoes at the door and entry for men and women is strictly patrolled at the entrance. A sign insists ‘No Mixed Bathing. Strict Separation Enforced’. It’s a metaphor to show our work, explains Astrid Klein. “Its definitely a reinterpretation-we didn’t want to translate a bathhouse directly to this space. It’s updated, more exciting”. The word ‘exciting’ may be a slight understatement, as the wall opposite comes alive with projections of several male models prancing shirtless. A mattress is inset into the floor, and on opening night hundreds of revellers bounced in the seductive space. Amusement, interaction, and pleasure rule in the colourful, consumer-orientated world of Japan-based firm, Klein Dytham Architects…Read more in Pol Oxygen Magazine Issue 15.
Interview with Front Design, Stockholm, Azure Magazine
(KS) We started off when we were still students (at Stockholm's Konstfack University of Arts and Crafts.) At school they taught us a certain way to look at design, but we didn’t like the restrictions. (CvdL) In third year we began collaborating together in the evenings and weekends, about design and process. That’s when we came up with Design By Animals and the Technology project. We showed the projects at ‘Modern Talking’ at Art Stockholm and after the fair we had proposals to take it to Salone Satellite in Milan. We’ve been going since. It was our big break.(AL) A lot of people are fascinated by the way we work—all in a group. But it’s a real collaboration together. We couldn’t have come up with the same ideas if we didn’t work together. (CvdL) We always do all of our products together, they come from our discussions.
(AL) When you can work together, it’s not that hard when it’s hard and you get braver when you are in a team. We get to try so many new things. Read more in Azure Magazine Nov/Dec 2005.
Copenhagen's PLOT Architects, Pol Oxygen Magazine
Visiting the office of Copenhagen's PLOT Architects is like touring an architectural candy shop. It is an idea factory powered by floor after floor of trendy and talented young designers churning out experimental 3D propositions for architecture and urban design. "We have a Darwinistic way of working, only the fittest can survive" De Smedt says of the unbelievable volume of physical models in the office. Some fit in the palm of the hand, others sit on tables pushed together. They are made from everything including blue foam, wood, cardboard, colourful plastic, and they cover every possible surface: shelves on the walls, plinths on the floor, even hanging from the ceiling. Through these formal experiments, they have cultivated an ability to reduce complex ideas to simple, diagrammatic and graphic solutions. Their work reflects the obvious influence of OMA, whose trendsetting and unparalleled graphic style inspired a generation of architects. But while their ways of researching architecture and cities with statistics, maps, and grids of information looks familiar, PLOT reflects the younger generation and a new avant-garde. Not content to merely diagram space and architectural relationships, PLOT pursues more formal explorations of landscape to build new context and meaning in urban space--and best of all, it actually gets built! Read more in Pol Oxygen, Issue 16.
'Table For Two', Interview with Gregory Woods and Caroline Robbie, Architects Journal Magazine
Fresh from their Alsop OCAD ‘flying tabletop’ adventure in Toronto, it would seem the sky’s the limit for Gregory Woods and Caroline Robbie of Robbie, Young and Wright. In its first joint venture with Alsop Architects, Toronto firm Robbie, Young and Wright has contributed a striking new addition to the changing city skyline with its extension and refurbishment to the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD). Gregory Woods is the partner in charge of the project for the firm, and instigated the collaboration of OCAD with Alsop’s London office, which beat out 35 other competition hopefuls to build the new extension. When I meet Woods at a trendy bistro, frequented by architects in Toronto’s West end, he is remarkably relaxed and easygoing, looking younger than his 39 years despite the stress and excitement of having completed what many consider the most important and controversial building in Toronto’s history. Woods is a people person, a natural storyteller, at ease with himself and confident in his abilities. He is also a talented designer, as evident in his quick rise to the top at RYW and probably due in part to the time he spent at art school. He has not taken the standard route in architecture, instead following his own inclinations. When he describes his background, his choices of study and professional projects, it becomes he is passionate about design, and the collaborative nature of this project… Read more in Architects Journal magazine no 25, volume 219, June 2004.
'Fashion's Everlasting Wunderkind' Wolfgang Joop, Clear Magazine
With an unconventional background in acting, illustration, and advertising, German fashion designer Wolfgang Joop has built a veritable creative empire from his modest design studio in his hometown of Potsdam, Germany. Joop’s enormously successful WUNDERKIND Spring Summer 07 has achieved critical acclaim for its playful and quirky silhouettes, with flamboyant lines and luxurious fabrics and detailing. Provocative and ever changing, his use of materials, colours and textures keeps his designs fresh and his compositions theatrical, and unexpected. Treading the fine line between wearable and outrageous, Joop’s signature style is sexy and confident. This season, Joop opts for slouchy, softened, forms and crumpled, folded, fabrics. He mixes cropped, textured, leather jackets with high-waisted trousers, and minimal detailed shirts with floating, breathable skirts. He uses perforated textures, ruffles, lace, and dynamic prints and patterns. The colours are feminine and vibrant, ranging from deep crimson red, brilliant blue, to pale, icy pink, to sun-faded blues and yellows. Whether laced up, wrapped, pinned together or layered, Joop has paid attention to all the details, making the pieces luxurious, yet wearable, objet’s d’art. Joop speaks exclusively to Clear about the development of WUNDERKIND, his favourite place to relax and finding inspiration in the work of iconic 1920’s film director Fritz Lang. Read more in Clear 24.
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'Labour of Love' Architect Katherine Findlay, London, Blueprint Magazine
In June most architects were shocked to read in the trade press that the highly respected and seemingly successful firm Ushida Findlay had gone into voluntary liquidation. Best known for a series of imaginative private houses completed in Japan in the early ‘90’s the practice appeared to be winning work all over the place—notably in the small country of Qatar, where it had several interesting projects underway. But financial issues with one of the projects, the Doha Villa, forced Kathryn Findlay to lay off her 23 staff. It was the vast scale and contractual complexity of the villa that landed her in difficulty, after two years of fantastically labour intensive work during which the office produced 25-30 handmade models of the project. Meanwhile, a 2sqm plaster model of the villa, which looks like it has been carved out of stone like a sensuous Brancusi sculpture, is on show at the Venice Biennale. Ironically, this could be the building that really makes Findlay’s name after a series of false starts. Read more in Blueprint Magazine no.224, October 2004.
'In Between House', London, Interview with Riches, Ullmayer and Garibaldo, Architects Journal Magazine
Annalie Riches, Silvia Ullmayer and Barti Garibaldo come together in ‘In Between’ an ambitious one-off project to build their own homes that reqorks the typical London terraced house. The three met while studying architecture at London Metropolitan University and, after gaining some professional experience, bravely decided to embark on this ambitious project together. ‘People say ‘you’re mad—three architects designing together but without a practice!’ Riches explains as we sit together around the kitchen table at Ullmayer’s house to discuss their current work and future plans over a cup of tea. The project is a one-off, conceived as a unique collaboration before the three continue their own separate careers in architecture… Read more in Architects Journal number 20, volume 220, November 2004.
'Like Father Like Son' Interview with Architect Jan Utzon, Blueprint Magazine
I grew up with my father’s architecture from an early age. He would talk about architecture over dinner: things he’d seen and been inspired by. He took us travelling to Italy, Spain, France, always saying ‘Look at the colonnade, look at this rock formation’. This became a part of my background. I feel very lucky. Both my father and grandfather have opened my eyes to a lot of things.My grandfather was a great naval architect. My brother Kim is also an architect. I don’t work directly with him so much. He tries to make his own profile – he has his own practise separate from Utzon Architects. My sister Lin is an artist. She makes some of the textiles used in my father’s buildings. Her work is architectural and she works also with ceramics, porcelain, and painted decorations. My son Jeppe is an architect and my daughter Kickan is also an architect --and she just married an architect! Sometimes I think where is a doctor or a lawyer in the family when you need one! Read more in Blueprint Magazine June 2004.
Interview with designer George Baldele, London, Azure Magazine
I came up with Fly Candle Fly while I was still a student in Vienna. later my professor Ron Arad introduced me to Ingo Maurer. I had my Fly Candle Fly project with me and he became interested in producing it. Fly Candle Fly is a simple idea but it took three years to perfect and produce the prototype. The flame of a candle is more than 1,000 degrees, so it had to be just right. The first time I presented it was at the Cologne Furniture Fair. It was exhibited inside a long, dark, tunnel inside a bridge that you had to cross to get into the fair. You could hear the sounds of the cars above and the boats below. it was a magical space, and it looked like 500 candles were floating inside. It was an exciting moment. Read more in Azure Magazine May/June 2004.
'Borda Crossings', Photographer Sylvia Grace Borda, Canadian Architect Magazine
Vancouver artist Sylvia Grace Borda's photographic studies of Modernist schools in East Kilbride, Scotland, document striking, multi-level concrete institutions resembling leafy university campuses more than unwanted primary and secondary schools slated for demolition and redevelopment. Sited on spacious vistas around the city and characterized by pure, geometric concrete forms, ribbon windows, roof lights, and large playing fields, these schools would seem to be aging rather well. Moreover, they allow children to walk to neighborhood schools rather than being bussed to larger institutions. This was one of the founding principles of the utopic, postwar "new town"--a walkable yet car-friendly planned urban centre with plentiful housing, schools and gardens. Incredibly, it has been decided that in the New Town of East Kilbride, now the sixth-largest city in Scotland, every one of the city's 17 schools will be demolished or refurbished in the next two years. Even Duncanrig Secondary School, designed by renowned Scottish modernist Sir Basil Spence will soon be gone. Hunter Secondary School, built in the early 1960s, cost well over £500,000 when it was built--a fortune in today's economy--but it will also go. A great many secondary schools in the city are being knocked down and students will be bussed to new "super schools." Sadly, this extreme program of "modernization" is not limited to East Kilbride. Nearly every Modernist school in Scotland is being replaced as part of a public-private initiative that will lead to the complete erasure of this country's Modern heritage. "People like the idea of new schools and they see Modernism as a failure," Borda laments, "But I don't think they realize how much this will change the way the city functions."…Read more here.
Mark Goulthorpe, NYArts Magazine
...The work of dECOi was featured in this year’s architecture exhibition at the Venice Biennale titled ‘Metamorph’. Goulthorpe’s work is concerned with the idea of ‘paramorph’, which he defines as ‘the changing of a form while maintaining the form’s properties’. In a way he designs a set of rules, not a building. Branko Kolarevic, author of Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacutre, explains ‘in parametric design, it is the parameters of a particular design that are declared, not its shape. By assigning different values to the parameters, different objects or configurations can be created’. What is so exciting about this digital design approach is the architect can program in a set of rules, identify the constraints and then let the program generate the form without an exact knowledge of the result. This creates new and unexpected architectural forms that are valid within the designer’s set of rules. He says this parametric and paramorphic approach represents a revolution in architectural design and representation. Despite the seeming objectivity of this approach, most architects do not choose scientific and engineering principles as the basis for choosing the variables, preferring arbitrary forms, parameters and constraints for the generation of their architecture. Goulthorpe says his approach is informed by nature, choreography and musical composition. There is room in the field of computer-aided design for more of this subjective, as opposed to the more traditional approach to programming. In the establishment of his rules, he doesn’t seem to be using variables necessarily relating to structure, environment, site, or program, but far from invalidating his approach, it makes his work exciting and experimental. People have been programming variables relating to environmental and structural concerns for years, but not with a design oriented, artistic eye... Read more in NYArts Magazine issue January 2005.
Giles Saucier, New York Arts Magazine
Architect Giles Saucier is a principal of the Canadian firm Saucier+Perrotte Architects. Saucier travelled to Venice in the autumn where he installed the “Objets Trouves” exhibition in the Canadian pavilion. His office’s scheme was chosen as the sole representative of emerging Canadian architecture for this year’s Biennale. Giles Saucier’s photographic work features heavily in ‘Objets Trouves’. Entering the exhibition, the first image is a photograph he took of an enigmatic found object: a cantilevering concrete staircase, isolated and abandoned, beckoning to an inhospitable Icelandic landscape. The photograph evokes ideas of entropy, awareness of the passage of time, memory and abandonment. Saucier is fascinated by photography and the possibilities it offers architecture. Guided by a theoretical and philosophical approach, he explains that in his photography he wants to explore “the idea of a place,” not simply representing a building or location in ‘a beauty shot’. For it’s not about beauty, a professional technician can take those types of images. Saucier aspires to communicate the more sophisticated, subtle, ephemeral qualities of landscape, built form, and human interaction, that are a necessary and important part of the architectural design process. Read more in NYArts Magazine issue Feb 2005.