Articles by Kaley Overstreet

It has been just over a week since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed 50,000 homes in North Lombok, a city just east of the island of Bali, Indonesia. Although much of the town is gone, the community has already rallied together to begin the long and arduous rebuilding process. With the rainy season approaching in less than two months, DOME Lombok is working to begin building earthbag domes and teaching their construction techniques to help the area rebuild.

The island nation of Taiwan is a country that boasts both a high population density and a wide range of ecosystems. However, a large issue that the country is currently facing involves the energy production and consumption, and the negative impact it has on the environment. With the largest power plant slated to be shut down by 2023, a team from Taiwan has devised an architectural proposal for how to construct a plant that both generates enough electricity to serve the metropolitan area and reduce its negative impact on the air quality and surrounding wetlands.

KILD has been announced as the first place winner for a design competition in Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city. The competition sought for innovative and eco-friendly proposals for a pedestrian and cycle bridge that would connect the downtown area to Science Island.

World Architecture Festival has announced the winner of its inaugural Water Research Prize. First place was awarded to a team of students from Pontificia Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) who designed a water management system that “captures, stores, and treats rainwater and inserts it into pre-existing water networks.” 

James Stirling  (1926-1992) was a British architect who is considered by many as the premier architect of his generation and an innovator in postwar architecture. Some of his most famous projects include the Sackler Museum, No 1 Poultry, and the Neue Staatsgalerie. Through the influence of his teacher Colin Rowe, Stirling had a deep understanding of architectural history, yet never adopted a singular doctrine. His career began with designs that were more aligned with what would later be labeled as the deconstructivist style, but evolved into buildings that were a series of dynamic and often colorful arrangements. Stirling’s aesthetic tropes ultimately gave the final push that broke architecture free from the clutch of post-war European Modernism as he turned the Modernist canon of “form follows function” into a hyperbole by celebrating the expression of a building’s program with his over-the-top details. Stirling’s work is still largely influential, and the recursive wave of history has shown that the underlying implications of his oeuvre remains somewhere in all architectural practice of the present day.

Are you in the market for a new home? If so, you may want to consider looking at a former parking garage, because they just might be the next place where developers are looking to build. In the United States alone, there are more than 500 million parking spots for 326 million citizens, covering a staggering 3.5 million square miles of land. Despite the push for a “car-free” future, more of these structures keep springing up across the country. If cities are building parking garages to support the need for the cars of today, how might we rethink their design so they can outfit the autonomous vehicle ambitions of tomorrow? 

When you think of your favorite spot to grab a beer, what architectural features come to mind? Is it the swanky furniture, themed artwork, or the heavily designed cocktail menu? Today, the aesthetics of bars are now as much a draw as the drinks themselves. From movie set inspired spaces to rooftops that offer spectacular city views, we’ve compiled a list of nine bars and beer gardens that every architect needs to cross off their list.

Los Angeles-based studio EC3 has revealed its design entry for a new 14.5-acre, cultural & sports center in Shenzhen’s growing Dalang neighborhood, hosted by the Shenzhen Longhua District Government and the Vanke Real Estate Co.

The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991 came not only with political, economic, and social implications but also left behind a distinctive style of architecture. This architecture, under the Soviet regime, was a system which relied on quantifiable targets, such as the Five Year Plan. These quotas forced architects to evaluate building projects in terms of material and labor costs, number of units, volume of skilled and unskilled labor, and so forth. As a result, architecture across these regions became an industrial commodity, an outward flex of power and technological innovation, and a collective of architects executing a Stalinist vision.

When you think of the age of hand drafted architecture drawings, what images come to mind? Is it the iconic plans of the Palladian Villas? Fast forward to present day, where architecture software is favored over hand drawings due to its efficiency and ability to create increasingly innovative structures. With all of the software available to architects, have you ever wondered which one might be the “best”? Luckily, TechRadar has just released their list of leading architecture software for this year.