Articles by Ella Thorns

From the moment we attend our very first lecture to the peak of our careers, architects are plagued with stressful events that are unlike any other profession. Meeting deadlines, dealing with planning and fabricating the dreams of our clients, our job can be intense and extremely demanding.

One year on from the Chicago Riverwalk’s completion, lead designers Sasaki Associates have released mesmerizing footage of the Riverwalk from a new perspective. Using a drone to give an overview of the project, the video captures the successful integration of the Riverwalk into the urban landscape as it changes shape and form, defining a unique experience for the public.

In the second film from this year’s series of PLANE—SITE‘s Time-Space-Existence videos, Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao shares her philosophy of how architecture should be designed with the user’s experience in mind, rather than for standalone aesthetic qualities. In the video she discusses how architects should to some extent let go of their artistic intentions for a more practical approach to serve the needs of people, discussing how architecture has become detached from its key purpose over the last fifty years due to the influence of capitalism.

In this extended interview from the Louisiana Channel, Japanese architect and experimentalist in sustainable architecture Hiroshi Sambuichi explains how he integrates natural moving materials—sun, water and air—into his architecture. A rare symbiosis of science and nature, each of his buildings are specific to the site and focus on the best orientation and form to harness the power of Earth’s energy, particularly wind. Two of his projects displayed in the video, the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum and the Orizuru Tower, force a contraction of air to make it flow faster and circulate with you through the building, while the Naoshima Hall takes a more sensitive approach due to the nature of the building, reducing the wind’s velocity as it passes.

This silent film, ‘The Skyscrapers of New York’ bears rare footage of the construction of a skyscraper from over one hundred years ago, shared by the Library of Congress as part of their ‘Early Films of New York’ collection. The first scenes include real work crews and the early construction methods that made the first skyscrapers possible; the steel framework the men can be seen clinging onto was a technical innovation that provided the strength and stability for buildings to be built over twenty floors high. It is startling to imagine their lack of concern for health and safety as the men are pictured dangling off a crane line in the sky. 

The complications of war and violence demanded a bold piece of architecture to provoke the public’s understanding of the impact it had on Germany. Daniel Libeskind chooses to engage with such events in his extension to Dresden‘s Military History Museum, by crashing a huge steel and concrete structure through the neoclassical facade, tearing apart the symmetry of the original building. Photographer Alexandra Timpau has captured the sharp edges and harsh angles of the museum’s extension that convey the pain and the stark reality of war Libeskind and the museum refer to.

The Minnesota Experimental City (MXC)—a utopian plan for the city of the future that was decades ahead of its time, and yet is surprisingly little-known—was the brainchild of the urban planner and technocrat Athelstan Spilhaus. Spilhaus was a man who saw science as the solution to the problems of the world, and became a public figure presenting his ideas of utopia in everyday life through his comic strip “Our New Age.” During the mid-1960s, he conceived an ambitious plan to condense his ideas into a prototype for future cities that would be both noiseless and fumeless, accommodating America’s growing population and their by-products.

As most architecture students and practicing architects find out, all-nighters are (ironically) the stuff of nightmares. They’re a last resort when the project is due and you have run out times you can say “I’ll do that tomorrow.” All-nighters should be avoided at all costs as they can have many negative effects on your mind such as decreased concentration and reduced long-term memory. Even your body can suffer too; pushing yourself to the limit as you fight tiredness and work as much as physically possible will weaken your immune system and can cause circulatory problems from sitting down for 20 or so hours straight.

Increasingly close collaboration between architects and engineers has caused an explosion in bridge design over the last few decades, resulting in structures that are both bold yet rational. As a result, cities have exploited bridges as great monuments of design, to foster pride in the residents and promote themselves as a destination for tourists. These ideas have inspired photographer Greig Cranna as he travels the world, capturing the elegance of today’s bridge infrastructure.

All-nighters: the bane of all architecture students. The new academic year brings in an influx of fresh, enthusiastic architecture students alongside slightly more hardened veterans of the degree, and students of all experience levels are reminded of the unfortunate tendency for work to stretch through the night. It’s an easy habit to slip into for both students and even those working in practice; however many times we may tell ourselves at the end of a project that we will be more organized next time, the work always piles up and it seems like the only option – but it’s not!