Articles by Dima Stouhi

For most recent graduates, it quickly becomes evident that what you learn in architecture school is not necessarily enough to become a confident architect. Some things can’t be taught in classrooms at all; instead, they’re acquired through years of work on site and solving construction problems first-hand. Among the many things you learn on site are the terminologies used by construction workers that can sound like absolute nonsense to architects at first.

Technical skills: check. Visually coherent content: check. Distinctive personal input on both the projects and portfolio design: double check.

Being a 21st-century designer is not always a walk in the park, but it certainly has its perks. Fortunately, innovative product and software designers have created numerous programs that transform our ideas and visions into visual and tangible reality.

Brussels-based architecture firm 51N4E have won first prize for their Skanderbeg Square project in Tirana, Albania. The European Prize for Urban Public Space is a biennale competition that promotes creating, restoring, and improving public spaces within European cities, and have chosen this year’s winners for their impressive transformation of the city’s central square.

It only takes a pen, paper, and an innovative mind to create remarkable structures. Bringing these architectures to life, however, is where challenges arise. While some architects have shown their creativity and ambition by designing and constructing some of the craziest structures the world has ever seen, other architects were only left with an ambitious drawing. Whether due to financial limitations or designs that are way ahead of their time, some projects never saw the light of day.

Lithuanian city Panevezys will have a new cultural hub thanks to the winning design of architecture firm, IMPLMNT. The proposed design of the Stasys Eidrigevicius Arts Centre, which will be built in the northern part of the city center, won the competition due to its function, location, architecture, and the social/economic value it will be adding to the city.

Oslo-based architecture firm Ekberg Lous Arkitekter have begun constructing Norway’s first World Heritage Visitor Center, after having won the open international architectural competition in 2008. Following the competition, the project was halted for seven years due to a lack of funding, but has been given the green light in 2015 with revised plans and a new site. The center, which will be built on the tip of the northern shore of Vega Island, is expected to be a gathering point for both locals and foreigners. It will provide visitors with knowledge about the natural and cultural values of the Vega Archipelago and world heritage sites in general. The center is set to be open in spring 2019.

How do we want to live? Should we lean towards a turbulent metropolitan life with an all-inclusive advantage, or should we favor the composed suburban life with sufficient services? What if architects and urbanists were able to implement some of these all-inclusive services into disregarded areas of the suburbs? In the latest installment of PLANE—SITE’s short video series of the Time-Space-Existence exhibition, Louise Braverman Architect, a New York-based firm, explores the utopic and dynamic vision of the future of suburbs, and how Hyperloop technology could breathe a new life into these often overlooked places.

Constructing places of worship has always been an intricate practice, managing to detach the human, and release the boundary between body, mind, and spirit. Holy presence has been crucial in designing and constructing sacred places, which is why almost all religious building possessed similar characteristics: grandiosity, monolithic material, natural elements, and a plan that compliments an individual’s circulation through the space. Contemporary religious structures, however, found a way to adapt to the evolution of architecture. Unlike the Gothic or Baroque periods, modern-day architecture does not have a dominant identity. It is, in fact, a combination of postmodernism, futurism, minimalism, and everything in between. Architects have found a way to transform these exclusive, religion-devoted places into structures of spirituality, manifestation, and fascination.

Constructing places of worship has always been an intricate practice, managing to detach the human, and release the boundary between body, mind, and spirit. Holy presence has been crucial in designing and constructing sacred places, which is why almost all religious building possessed similar characteristics: grandiosity, monolithic material, natural elements, and a plan that compliments an individual’s circulation through the space. Contemporary religious structures, however, found a way to adapt to the evolution of architecture. Unlike the Gothic or Baroque periods, modern-day architecture does not have a dominant identity. It is, in fact, a combination of postmodernism, futurism, minimalism, and everything in between. Architects have found a way to transform these exclusive, religion-devoted places into structures of spirituality, manifestation, and fascination.