Articles by Diego Hernández

The awards entry deadline is next Friday, May 7th, 2021, allowing all completed and future projects up until this date to have the chance to compete in the awards program.

As part of its first Virtual World Tour, Architects, not Architecture visited New York to meet Steven Holl.

There is a saying that ‘all good architecture leaks’. While likely not intended as an endorsement for water damage, this video takes the phrase seriously by playfully sorting through some of architecture’s greatest leaks. Frank Lloyd Wright was famously dismissive of the many unintentional leaks in his buildings, once telling Mr. Johnson to move his table if he didn’t like it getting rained on. However, there are a number of great intentional leaks throughout architecture as well, such as the entry hall of Peter Zumthor’s Therme Baths in Vals. The walls allow groundwater to seep in from the surrounding mountain while forming beautiful murals out of mineral deposits the water picked up while on its journey through the earth. Whether leaks are intentional or unintentional, they are an inevitable and important reality for architects. There should always be plans for the water that will get into our buildings and this video offers five humorous strategies for making those plans.

In a time when the world is facing major social and environmental challenges, Oslo Architecture Triennale 2022 spotlights the neighborhood as a place and horizon for rethinking our cities. With the working title Mission Neighborhood – (Re)forming communities, the Triennale will explore how we form the places we share.

This episode of Architecture w/ Stewart explores the only five ways of organizing the plan of a building, at least they are the only ones according to Francis Ching as listed in the canonical text Form, Space, and Order. Each of the five: central, linear, radial, clustered, and grid, offer unique benefits and opportunities to architects, clients, or visitors. Some of the strategies are reserved for formal ceremonial buildings, while others are better for providing less rigid and more organic exploration by occupants. Some yield complete and autonomous forms while others can shrink or grow at ease. However, every single building is, in some way, a combination of these five basic strategies. Using paper cutout shapes, plastic human figures, and representative examples from history and recent constructions, Stewart demonstrates the value and possibilities of each organizational strategy.

Graphic novels fold drawings of people, space, and time into their narrative structure to produce powerful visual stories. Graphic novels and architecture also share a set of common tools that are central to their depiction — drawing, sequencing, text, action, character, etc. This makes for a natural allegiance between graphic novels, architecture, and the city. In this episode, Stewart pulls the graphic novels off his bookshelf to show how and why they influenced his approach to architectural design and led to the creation of award-winning competition entries. In particular, David Mazzuchelli’s City of Glass and Asterios Polyp, and Chris Ware’s Building Stories offer lessons for developing a holistic approach to architecture that involves multiple points of view, politics, fiction, and visionary design.

Perhaps no modern character from TV or film is more enthralled with architects than George Costanza from Seinfeld. And, let’s be honest here, how many architects chose the profession in order to say those words, “I am an Architect?” Well, what if George was an architect? What kind of architect would he be? In this episode, Stewart breaks down scenes from Seinfeld in order to piece together the kind of architect he really wants to be. Using seven exhibits and a lawyerly argument, he builds his case around this most pressing ‘what if’ scenario. Exhibits range from George’s overt references, like his claim to have designed the addition to the Guggenheim, to a more psychological assessment of his proclivities for cozy, velvet-lined spaces and concluding with his fascination for pretending in the first place.  

During this month we will discuss from a critical perspective the meaning of rendering for architecture. What are the models and what are the limits of rendering in the design process of a building?. And from this perspective ask ourselves what is a rendering? It is just an image to win competitions and prospects clients. Or is it an effective tool for the construction process?

LEGOs are universal world-building units and a popular gateway into architecture. Of course, you can build almost anything with them, cars, spaceships, you name it, but buildings of all kinds — from police-stations to castles — are some of the most popular subjects. What makes LEGOs so appealing to young, and not-so-young architects? What, specifically, makes them a good analogy for the design of buildings? In this episode, Stewart purchases a box of LEGOs and uses it as a springboard to talk about what he’s learned from the toy block system. From lessons on modularity and proportion, to grammar and resolution, to compositional categories of additive and subtractive, the video breaks down how these fundamental concepts apply to both LEGOs and to the history and design of architecture.  

This video explores how the settings and spaces in the first season of HBO’s Westworld contribute to the overall interpretation of the show. From the lawless town of Sweetwater, to the tightly controlled offices of Delos, Westworld uses architecture precisely to establish its intricate worlds. While the show is set within a theme park of the near future, books like Michael Sorkin’s Variation on a Theme Park argue that we are already treating the cities we live in — in real life — as theme parks. So, while Westworld shares a number of architectural strategies with places like Disneyland, it is also not too far away from places like Chicago, New York, or London. After all, it was the architect Charles Moore that declared Disneyland the most influential urban environment built after World War 2. Getting to the bottom of this rabbit hole includes lots of train rides and an introduction to Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, which helps explain what happens when worlds collide.