Architecture and Design News

By Norman Weinstein
February 2020 12:45 GMT

Francis Kere

image courtesy: https://galeriemagazine.com/francis-kere-pritzker-prize/

Francis Kere has been named the Laureate  of the 2022 Pritzker Prize. He was born in the village of Gando in Burkina Faso, where he received his “first sense of architecture.” His architecture is characterized by a “democratic intention” towards users, or in his own words “everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves comfort.” In this line of thought, it also means that everyone, rich or poor, needs to share the same conditions that command architecture today, such as climate change or scarcity of resources – Galeriemagazine

kecho.Kecho Collective had made to a finalist in Tactical Urbanism Now competition 2021.

ad hoc architecture. The iUrbanism of Los Angeles on Places Journal.

ecology | architecture & environment. Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies by Chris Reed & Nina-Marie Lister on Places Journal.

sustainability. What we don’t see on Places Journal

landscape. From Architecture to Landsacpe by Brian Davis & Thomas Oles on Places Journal.

Courtyard scene illustration

Timeline

Kecho Journal | Archive

Kecho.News

TACTICAL URBANISM COMPETITION

Kecho Collective had made to a finalist in Tactical Urbanism Now competition 2021. In the context of Hanoi, tactical interventions are mostly led by citizens themselves as a response to ineffective top-down planning methodologies. Although effective in short-term, they lack supports from both authority and designers in order to stimulate long-term changes. If spontaneous interventions are synchronized with well-intended Tactical Urbanism projects, then good interventions can be scalable to catalyze long-term improvement of public spaces – Terravivacompetitions

Architect: Francis Kere

Francis Kere has been named the Laureate  of the 2022 Pritzker Prize. He was born in the village of Gando in Burkina Faso, where he received his “first sense of architecture.” His architecture is characterized by a “democratic intention” towards users, or in his own words “everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves comfort.” In this line of thought, it also means that everyone, rich or poor, needs to share the same conditions that command architecture today, such as climate change or scarcity of resources – Galeriemagazine

Typology

The MFAH’s program includes 240,000 sf structure that hosts permanent collection of modern and contemporary art. The building is a synthesis of Holl’s revisited program and the trapezoidal site of the Museum District. Porisity and light continue to be the central theme for Steven Holl in this building, emphasized by the use of translucent glass tubes for cladding. The assembly could reduce cooling requirements by 40 percents, according to Kendall/ Heaton Associates. While the exterior pays tribute to Mies, the interior natural lighting is inspired by Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum, but “more organic, more dynamic – like the clouds.” Architectural Records

City Architecture

HANOI HERITAGE: FRENCH VILLA

The urban landscape of Hanoi has undergone many abrupt changes in its urban environment. Recently, with its administrative expansion, this process of change has been ever more speedy and has brought about discontinity inside-out as well as outside-in. In the city old core, new towers and multiple story buildings are inserted into low-rise buit fabric, including the old French villas, traditional tube houses and spiritual buildings (temples, pagodas etc.). The urban landscape of Hanoi is therefore a “mixture” of old and new buildings, as artifiacts of old and new ideologies and cultural identities. Its appeal is very “ad hoc.” Whether in the KTT or in French villas, we can see this ad hoc architecture character throughout, in the buildings’ facade of course, but also in the way space is divided and occupied by the various users.
How to harmonize between the old and new architecture in our ongoing urban development? This is a difficult question. Heritages are an component of the urban development context and have influences and relations with other urban elements. The city’s buildings and quarters represent the absorption of various cultures and the symbiosis of vietnamese culture and colonized or “imported” ones. Together they create a distinct and particular urban life.
In order to create a harmony between old architecture and new urban development, we need to consider an architectural heritage as part of the urban entity that contains it, which subjects to continuous changes. The conservation strategies, therefore, need to be synthesized from problematization processes and critical analysis of the building artifact, its surrounding and the participation of its stakeholders.
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Cảnh quan đô thị Hà Nội đã trải qua nhiều thay đổi đột ngột về môi trường đô thị. Gần đây, với sự mở rộng địa giới hành chính, quá trình thay đổi này diễn ra nhanh hơn bao giờ hết và dẫn đến sự bất đồng bộ từ bên trong ra bên ngoài cũng như bên ngoài vào bên trong. Trong các khu vực nội đô lịch sử, các tòa cao ốc mới và các công trình kiến trúc nhiều tầng được lồng ghép vào các khu nhà thấp tầng, bao gồm nhiều biệt thự Pháp cổ, nhà ống truyền thống và các công trình tâm linh (đền, chùa, v.v.). Cảnh quan đô thị Hà Nội do đó là sự “pha trộn” giữa các công trình cũ và mới, là những minh chứng vật chất của những hệ tư tưởng và bản sắc văn hóa truyển thống cũng như đương đại. Sự hấp dẫn của nó là rất “đặc biệt.” Dù ở các khu tập thể hay các biệt thự Pháp, chúng ta có thể thấy đặc điểm kiến trúc đặc biệt này xuyên suốt, không chỉ ở mặt tiền của các tòa nhà, mà còn ở cách phân chia và chiếm dụng không gian của những người sử dụng khác nhau.
Làm thế nào để hài hòa giữa kiến trúc cũ và mới trong quá trình phát triển đô thị đang diễn ra của chúng ta? Đây là một câu hỏi khó. Di sản là một thành phần của bối cảnh phát triển đô thị và có ảnh hưởng và các mối liên hệ với các yếu tố khác của đô thị. Các tòa nhà và khu ở của thành phố đại diện cho sự hấp thụ các nền văn hóa khác nhau, hay sự cộng sinh của văn hóa Việt Nam và các nền văn hóa thuộc địa hoặc “nhập khẩu”. Chúng tạo ra một cuộc sống đô thị rất riêng biệt và thú vị.
Để tạo ra sự hài hòa giữa kiến trúc cũ và sự phát triển đô thị mới, chúng ta cần coi di sản kiến trúc là một bộ phận của thực thể đô thị chứa đựng nó, là đối tượng của sự thay đổi liên tục. Do đó, các chiến lược bảo tồn cần được tổng hợp từ các quá trình giải quyết vấn đề và phân tích quan trọng về bản thân tòa nhà, bối cảnh đô thị xung quanh nó và sự tham gia của các bên liên quan.
 

ad hoc architecture.

The iUrbanism of Los Angeles in an essay by Joe Day on Informal Urbanism and the relevant tendencies among contemporary architects and designers. One of the arguments is that architects should design around users’ life rather than dictating their ideologies. iUrbanism seems to be the logical evolution of “the Everyday” in urbanism practices. Whatever the names, these approaches aim to function at different scales, and “more grounded and street level.” The urban practices can be documented in strategies such as Mimi Zeiger’s “The Interventionist’s Toolkit,” where she explores the tactics of “guerilla urbanism,” often characterized by ubiquitous and opportunistic qualities.   – Places Journal

ecology | architecture & environment.

Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies by Chris Reed & Nina-Marie Lister. The author first aknowledges the contemporary role of ecology in landscape architecture as ” a construct for managing change, and as a model of cultural production or design.”   – Places Journal

sustainability.

What we don’t see. “Thus it’s vitally important that architects, both as responsible citizens and creative professionals, strive to expand the boundaries of pedagogy and practice. Schools of design could enrich their programs by offering courses and sponsoring research in which sustainability is understood to comprise not only constructed sites but also zones of extraction, manufacture, and assembly. Likewise professional architects could exert collective pressure in order to expose wasteful or nefarious environmental practices and labor abuses associated with the building industry, and they could boycott the offenders. But more important than any particular strategy is the recognition that the status quo — as exemplified by the LEED certification system with its manipulatable criteria, or by the proliferation of green design competitions that produce fantastically skillful renderings of projects that will never be built — is not sufficient. Intensifying environmental and political crises demand that we enlarge the frameworks for action and responsibility.”– Places Journal

Landscape.

From Architecture to Landsacpe by Brian Davis & Thomas Oles on Places Journal. This article positions landscape as an inherently multidisciplinary profession, as it mediates the boudaries of different fields. The term ‘Landscape Architecture’ is therefore problematic. The authors trace back the origin of this coinage from the time of John Claudius Loudon (1840) in England to Humphry Repton in the United States, to Andrwew Jackson Downing, whose work (Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening – 1841) synthesizing the philosophies on landscape of these two practitioners. On all account, these practitioners thought of landscape as and “adjacency” of architecture. The famous landscape architect Frederick Law Omlsted himself had another reason to associate the two terms. He thought of an alternative for the service of landscape gardener, whose services held much less valuable than that of the architecture profession, or in his own words: “Like medieval traders setting up camp outside the city wall, landscape architects needed to stake out a space for their craft in the protective shadow of an older, established one.” The authors propose for an “upgrade” of Olmsted terms for Landscape Architecture as “Landscape Science.” The begin with the definition of science by Karl Marx and stress the importance of investigating the difference between “appearance” and “essence” in landscape. Landscape science, they argue, ought to be a normative science, which is considered by Charles Sanders Peirce as a science that “investigates the relations between empirical relation and ends,” and that “distinguishes what ought to be from what ought not to be.” To conclude, the authors emphasize that “the metaphor of landscape-as-architecture is historical, not ontological,” and that it can be remade to meet contemporary demands. A new landscape science would pose significant changes both in education and practice, in which the latter would give space for other “collaborators in the process of making” like users, maintenance workers or even bluebirds. – Places Journal

Design Magazines

AA School 

The AA Archive holds a large collection of recordings of lectures,conferences, symposia and other public programme events presented at the AA. Dating back to 1968, the collection includes titles by leading architects, artists, historians, and theorists of the last 50 years including Cedric Price, Reyner Banham, Kenneth Frampton, Peter Cook, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid.

Arch News Now featuring news from other magazines, including latest debates on the profession, projects and competitions. It also has its own op/ed section.

Architects Journal featuring Building Studies, Specifications,  Practice, Podcasts, Film, Magazines, Library and Events.

Architectural Record features Houses, Building Types, Interviews, Book Reviews and Podcasts.

Art News: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Designboom: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

DETAIL: Topics include Sustainability, Researches on Components & Material, Energy & Resources, as well Structure.

Dezeen: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Divisare: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Domus: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Dwell: Photo section dwells on rooms and components: kitchen, bath, bedroom. living, dining, outdoor, kids, office, exterior, storage, doors, windows, staircase, laundry, hallway, garage, shed & studio. The Home Tours section includes Tiny Home, Prefab and Renovations projects.

FORM: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Frame: focuses on interior design across typologies: Retail, Hospitality, Work, Institutions, Residences and Shows.

Havard Design Magazine: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Inhabitat: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Juxtapoz: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Metropolis: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Places Journal: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Socks

Tạp chí Kiến Trúc: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

The Architects Newspaper: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

The Art Newspaper: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

The Guardian: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Uncube: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Urban Omnibus

Zinio: on architects to “draw the line on designing jails [and such] until America repairs racial injustice,” and “shift their efforts towards ‘supporting the creation of new systems, processes, and typologies'” (it’s not a ban on designing justice facilities).

Appeared in Kecho Journal, 321 March 2020
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