Articles by AD Editorial Team

Former architect Yannick Martin, who has previously confined architecture’s most famous houses to a cube, is a graphic designer who explores line and geometric shapes to examine the language of the diagram. By fragmenting simple shapes, Martin seeks to offer new ways of looking at an icon so commonplace and ubiquitously used that, for most, the sheer potential and variety of its application can be overlooked.

Warren and Mahoney Architects‘ design for the extension of Wellington Airport in Australia highlights the potential of using laminated wood in large-scale architectural projects.

The Observatory of the 11th São Paulo Architecture Biennial aims to map, articulate and democratize instruments that provoke discussions, propose the editing and transformation of the city. It acknowledges punctual actions that, while placed in different circumstances, point out strategic matters to rethink the contemporary metropolis. The selected works are organized as individual files and include formats such as photo essays, guides of use and exploration of the city, manuals for the transformation and local action, investigation work, among many other formats. Besides the research carried out at the Studio of the Biennial (currently counting with more than 500 initiatives compiled), other references will be added up based on the work received in the Open Calls. Through this initiative, the Biennial will leave a legacy to the city, collectivizing the access and opening the debate about an array of initiatives that target the urban transformation. Participate on this large, global archive and send your project or initiative in our Open Calls. 

Norman Foster only began to casually upload photos to Instagram earlier this year. But don’t be fooled by his short tenure on the seven-year-old social media platform. At the ripe old age of 82, the British architect has demonstrated that his talents go far beyond designing buildings.

Photographer Marc Goodwin—perhaps best known to our readers for his series shooting architectural offices in London, Seoul, Beijing, Paris, and the Nordic countries—recently travelled to Ningbo, China, on behalf of RSH+P (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners) and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects (SHL).

As urban environments become denser, more expensive and, on occasion, less desirable, creative minds are creating novel ways to escape the hustle, bustle, and tumult of the city. Fernando Abellanas, a designer based in Valencia, has gone to new extremes in his search for solitude. Positioned beneath a traffic bridge somewhere in the Spanish city, a hidden studio comprises a shelf, a chair, and a small desk – all anchored to the concrete undercarriage of the bridge by means of rails and rollers. Movable, the “room” becomes both impenetrable and isolated by the turn of a hand crank.

For Hamburg-based photographer Sebastian Weiss, buildings are dramatis personae, or “characters”. Inspired by Ash Amin and Stephen Graham’s 1997 book The Ordinary City, in which the authors described the city as the “theater of life”, this photo-essay of architectural landmarks in the French cities of Arcueil, Nanterre, and Paris examines the personalities of public buildings.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Hull UK City of Culture 2017 have jointly commissioned Chile-based architects Pezo von Ellrichshausen and Swiss artist Felice Varini to design an ambitious temporary outdoor structure in the historic heart of Hull, a port city on the country’s east coast. The project, which is part of the Hull 2017 “Look Up” programme of public art installations, will “transform Trinity Square with sixteen galvanized steel columns arranged in a grid formation in front of Hull Minister to highlight the symmetry of its façade.”

Home to Frank Lloyd Wright for many years, Oak Park, Illinois is also the site of the greatest concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes and buildings than anywhere else in the world. Having designed structures for the neighborhood for nearly four decades, Wright used Oak Park as a place to try out new techniques and evolve his personal style.