The Legacy of Christopher Alexander: Form Language, Pattern …
WEBJun 4, 2018 · A Form language consists of a set of definitions and vocabulary of building and design components that can be combined coherently. These comprise specific geometries, shape and size of pieces, particular materials, etc. To most people, this is what characterizes architectural “style.”. Evolved form languages always adapt to locality ...
Sacred Architecture Isn’t Disappearing—It’s Changing
WEBDec 26, 2019 · But it’s a mistake to think this means the end of sacred space. What is actually happening is the emergence of new ways of thinking about how people express faith, and the role architecture plays in it. This is happening on two fronts. The first is how congregations that occupy mainline religious buildings are …
In Praise of 5-Over-1 Buildings - Common Edge
WEBMar 1, 2022 · Although it was originally published in 2019, this essay by Randy Nishimura, lightly updated, serves as a rebuttal of sorts to Duo Dickinson’s recent Common Edge piece,“ The Architectural Pandemic of the ‘Stick Frame Over Podium’ Building.”Dickinson likens the building type to a plague; Nishimura offers a contrarian’s perspective. A recent spate of articles bemoaning the ...
My Favorite Street: Rue Saint-Denis, Paris – Common Edge
WEBJul 24, 2017 · A good street is like a river. Rue Saint-Denis flows through the history of Paris. It’s a segment of an ancient trade road that dates from the Bronze Age—a thoroughfare for merchants and pilgrims working their way up and down the French peninsula between Spain and England. A historic street, it …
The Power of Lo-TEK: A Design Movement to Rebuild …
WEBJun 21, 2019 · A Mythology of Technology: Stemming from the Greek mythos, meaning “story of the people,” mythology has guided mankind for millennia. Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, the mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive.
Laurel Canyon: The Classic California Urban Ecosystem
WEBAug 27, 2020 · The most arresting image, among many, in the documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time, directed by Alison Ellwood, is a black-and-white photograph of Eric Clapton visiting Los Angeles for the first time on tour with Cream. He sits a few feet from Joni Mitche ll, who is playing guitar, with a visibly stoned David Crosby in the background on the backyard lawn of Cass Elliot’s house.
Kate Wagner on McMansion Hell, Criticism, and Her Love of Cycling
WEBMar 8, 2021 · Such is the case for Kate Wagner, who broke the architectural internet in 2016 with the introduction of McMansion Hell, a sharp and hilarious skewering of the bloated American home, in all its garish and desperate striving. A year later, the real estate listing site Zillow served the then-23-year-old Wagner with a cease-and-desist letter ...
How Do You Teach Kids About Urban Planning? Let Them Play.
WEBJan 12, 2021 · Across age levels, the students initially understood urban planning and cities as mainly consisting of static objects once removed from their everyday lives. Yet when we then introduced the exercise of having them build what they loved to do in cities—their favorite activity, their favorite place—the students created cities that were much ...
How the Wood-Frame House Became America’s Most Familiar …
WEBJun 6, 2022 · Four years ago, the Pritzker Prize–winner Tadao Ando spectacularly converted a 1920s apartment building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago into exhibition spaces for a gallery named—in deference to its street address—Wrightwood 659. The gallery is currently staging a resourceful exhibition on wood-frame construction, the method by which more than 90% of U.S. houses are built.
Hidden Figures: The Historic Contributions of Black Architects
WEBOct 5, 2020 · Designer Paul Wellington, based in Milwaukee, is the author of Black Built: History and Architecture in the Black Community, a book that documents more than 40 works of architecture around the country by Black architects that have had a direct impact on communities or color.He’s now working on a new book that will focus on Black women architects in a field dominated by white males.