From the architect. The Houtloods is the oldest, still remaining building in the Spoorzone, a former site of the Dutch Railroad Company. The Houtloods is located in Tilburg, the Netherlands, and originally served as the railroad’s lumberyard. The exposed masonry arched structure opened up to the elements and allowed the lumber to dry naturally. Later on the masonry arches were filled in with brick and the enclosed building became a workshop.
During the renovation, Bedaux de Brouwer Architects reopened the infilled arches to highlight the structure and let in natural light. A glass wall behind the arched wall complements and preserves the ‘newly’ opened structure.
Ground Floor Plan
1st Floor Plan
Inside the building, detached from the glass façade and timber roof, Bedaux de Brouwer Architects placed a large oak clad ‘furniture box’ that houses the newly added functions and program. The box facilitates offices, restrooms and storage, while in between the box and the glass façade public spaces are created. One side of the box forms an auditorium, the other side ends with an open kitchen and bar for the trendy restaurant, appropriately named ‘De Houtloods’.
This essay was written by Rem Koolhaas on the occasion of his first trip to Brasília in August of 2011, and has since remained unpublished. Revista Centro (an online Brazilian magazine about architecture, urban studies, art & social science) has now published it in two versions (English and Portuguese) translated directly from its original language, Dutch. In addition to offering his first impressions about the modern Brazilian capital, Rem also emphasizes an autobiographical narrative about the origins of his relation with architecture.
Brasília
In 1956 – I don’t remember the exact circumstances – I happened to come upon an article in TIME Magazine about the new Brasília. The article unveiled the plans for a city-to-be, right in the center of the country; a dream of a city that would soon become a reality. It was there and then that my 11-year-old self made a decision: I was to become an architect. And not just any architect – a Brazilian architect. What followed were years of sketching and planning – emigration plans in particular; a rather ambitious project for a grammar-school student. Practicality caught up with me, and for eight years I managed to ignore the Brazilian pull. I became a journalist, and a co-writer of movie scripts. Until the day I realized – and this was nothing less than a revelation to me – that an architect is the one who decides the scripts of daily life. My initial calling rang more clearly in my ears than ever before.
A lot had happened between 1956 – the year TIME published its article – and 1968. By this time I was studying architecture in London. My conviction that architecture is a creative power, one that has led humanity for over three thousand years, was undermined by doubt and flower power. I became an architect at a moment in time when the foundations of architecture itself seemed about to crumble.
Location: El Poblado, Medellín, Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia
Author Architects: Andrés Felipe Mesa Trujillo, Kevin García Alvis
Collaborators Architects: Luna Barrientos
Area: 12114.96 sqm
Year Project: 2015
Calculation Engineer: Diego Castro
Electric Design: Incoelec
Hydraulic Design: Hidráulicas y saneamiento
Promotor: M+Group S.A.S
Construction Company: Javier Londoño S.A.
This building located on southeast side of Medellin, materializes through the addition of rectangular prisms which are grouped in different heights to find the best direction to different places in the city. The program provides housing solutions for single people or couples, with 71 apartments between 53 and 130 sqm of area, with modular and flexible designs spaces that allow different inhabit typologies.
Diagram
The project opens its perimeter through terraces, balconies and windows overlooking intentionally targeted sites. The arrangement of these prisms generates various scenarios: Views to the south and north of the valley, the river, the nearby mountains, to the far western hills, to the metropolis of concrete and brick. At altitude the building is composed of a game of full and empty and various typologies of apartments that emphasize individuality over repetition.
The architectural plan is a square of 21 x 21 m, the vertical circulations and technical areas are located in the center of the building to occupy the perimeter with the apartment units. The base is a volume that emerges from the prisms and defines the facade facing toward the entrance lane, creating a transition between urban and private.
Plan
At the lobby, there is a restaurant, administrative areas and lounges. Social areas of the building are located on the last floor where the gym and wet areas are located overlooking the city.
1. Rectangular volume, which is divided by the number of floors permitted by regulation. 2. Group of levels to generate a rhythm in the facade, two or more levels are integrated, leaving simple levels in between. 3. The simple levels are pulled back with the intention of forming separate volumes. 4. In order to guide the views to different parts of the city and the mountains surrounding the valley two facades are open to the outside. 5. The openings are oriented to the north – south direction and east -west direction. 6. To emphasize the geometry, some boxes are moved inwards and outwards.
From the architect. Wah Son @ Seletar Aerospace Park was designed with the intent to make a production and machinery space conducive for people to work and occupy.
Instead of one big shed to accommodate the biggest overhead crane, the design approach breaks down the space into smaller forms, creating a more intimate environment for all.
In-between the production and office block, the office block is peeled at the fulcrum to form an internal courtyard, enjoyed by both production bays and office block. The simple gesture creates a precious space that is unexpected in an industrial estate setting and forms a focal point, a gathering space for respite for both production and office workers.
Ground Floor Plan
2nd Floor Plan
The courtyard enjoys a constant play of shadows against the concrete shell throughout the day housing a vegetable garden that provides food for the kitchen that connects to the office on the 1st storey.
Generous and playful composition of openings were composed along the bare concrete walls on the top, and sides of the building. These openings provide abundant natural lighting within while opening along corridors in the building allows cross ventilation to take place, and to connect users with the natural environment. Light metal screens on its opening allow plants to creep, inviting a layer of green onto the building’s skin. It creates a gentle shade and draws nature yet closer to the users.
From architectural lectures to coverage of local projects and events, The Architectural League of New York presents a wide range of topics through its video series to further its goal of advancing the art of architecture. Through this presentation of some of the world’s most interesting and influential architects, designers, and works, The Architectural League draws international audiences to help shape the future of the build environment by stimulating discussion and provoking design-based thinking.
The Little Free Library Project focuses on making reading accessible to everyone through the installation of small book stands based on the premise of “take a book, return a book.” As the project gained traction, architects were brought on board to design sleek containers for the books. In New York, projects were installed in the East Village and Lower East Side.
In this lecture, Annabel Selldorf discusses two of her most notable projects, the Sims Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility in Brooklyn and the David Zwirner 20th Street gallery space in Chelsea, as well as her working philosophy of “paying attention to absolutely everything all the time.”
In this talk titled “Between Nature and Architecture,” Sou Fujimoto explains how he draws architectural inspiration from nature and embraces openness, flexibility, and transparency across his work, through the lens of three conceptual early works and six recent projects including his 2013 Serpentine Pavilion design and House NA in Tokyo.
HeartBeat is a glowing, pulsing urban drum made from 2 plastic septic tanks. This video shows how the interactive sculpture’s “massive heart” modulates a pulsing light to the rhythm of a deep heartbeat sound.
In David Chipperfield’s 2015 lecture “Two cities, two projects,” the architect focuses on two recent museum projects: the James Simon Galerie at Berlin’s Neues Museum and the Museo Jumex in Mexico City.
For his 50th anniversary in practice, Richard Meier gave a special lecture surveying his 50 years and over 25 of his most acclaimed projects.
This video takes a closer look at the 2013 edition of the Architectural League’s annual Beaux-Arts Ball event, including video of the installation of the architectural environment at the 69th Regiment Armory by SITU STUDIO.
This throwback lecture from Bjarke Ingels shows where BIG was at in an earlier phase of the practice, which Ingels describes as “programmatic alchemy, mix[ing] conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking, and shopping into new forms of symbiotic architecture.”
Check out more Architectural League videos on their vimeo page, here.
The house is located in the outskirts of Coimbra, an area of single family homes in consolidation process. The plot currently enjoys a pleasant view and is a bit isolated, features that will disappear when adjacent buildings rise. Thus the house, elevated as required by the rules, is enclosed seeking one single opening with a porch to the south garden.
The house makes up for its small size by connecting spaces. It seizes the exterior of both the garden and patio, incorporating them through the continuity of the elements. The interiors follow one another, link and relate visually. Always offering distant perspectives and specific visual relations with the outside.
Plan
Plan
The organization on three floors responds to the classical system of services – social areas – bedrooms, characterized by differences in light and materiality: from the cavernous basement to the overhead light that bathes the stairs and the work area adjacent to it at the top floor. The social floor is organised around the kitchen which the owners, a couple with young children, considered the centre of their activity and their house habits.
The two larger divisions occupy opposite ends: the south living room appropriates the garden and the studio to north closes to the street. Both connect through the courtyard, which belongs to them equally. All plans that connect these spaces are continuous and fluid, and hidden door and window frames fade limits.
Section
The construction of this house was made with a strict economic control and quality, aiming at the correct execution of the details thus allowing, with a very limited budget, surprising results.
Courtesy of Detroit Publishing co. via US Library of Congress (Public Domain)
Architecture inherently appears to be at odds with our mobile world – while one is static, the other is in constant motion. That said, architecture has had, and continues to have, a significant role in facilitating the rapid growth and evolution of transportation: cars require bridges, ships require docks, and airplanes require airports.
In creating structures to support our transit infrastructure, architects and engineers have sought more than functionality alone. The architecture of motion creates monuments – to governmental power, human achievement, or the very spirit of movement itself. AD Classics are ArchDaily’s continually updated collection of longer-form building studies of the world’s most significant architectural projects. Here we’ve assembled seven projects which stand as enduring symbols of a civilization perpetually on the move.
Separated by the turbulent waters of the East River, New York City and Brooklyn spent years as independent metropoles before the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge united them. In order to reach the deep seabed and avoid obstructing the waterway, engineer John Roebling designed what would become, until 1903, the world’s longest suspension bridge. His unprecedented decision to use steel cables would lead to its standardization as the structural metal of choice, fuelling a new course in the fields of architecture and civil engineering.
Built to showcase Trans World Airlines, the TWA Flight Center would ultimately come to represent far more than an architectural advertisement. The soaring, upturned curves of the terminal’s concrete structure were claimed by Eero Saarinen to capture the spirit of flight itself. Although the Flight Center was eventually outmoded by advances in aviation technology, it will soon be transformed into an airport hotel, allowing it to continue serving the traveling public into the future.
Situated in the second most populous city in Japan, the Yokohama International Passenger Terminal is a masterwork of circulation planning. With a complex, multilayered design achievable only with the aid of computer modeling, the Terminal creates a highly dynamic series of spaces tied together by a deceptively simple circulatory loop. Its transit program is sheltered neatly under an open plaza that connects seamlessly with nearby parks, creating a continuous urban parkscape along the waterfront.
Already noted for his work on the TWA Flight Center, Eero Saarinen was again commissioned to design a terminal for Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport. Sharing the former’s graceful curves and representation of flight, the Dulles Main Terminal is also noted for the luxurious “mobile lounges” that could shuttle up to ninety passengers from the terminal to their plane. It remains one of the busiest and most iconic airports in the United States to this day.
Similar to the Brooklyn Bridge, the Bac de Roda Bridge was conceived as the tie that would bind two disparate communities together. Santiago Calatrava, who posited that the aesthetics and engineering of the bridge required equal consideration, designed a structure that would place experiential quality above practicality. A pair of parabolic arches support the roadway, with an additional pair of canted arches meeting at their apexes to create pedestrian walkways bounded by the cable stays, resulting in a markedly different experience for those passing on foot and those in cars.
Once a monument to American transportation and economic success in the Edwardian Era, New York City’s Pennsylvania Station became the center of controversy and protest upon its destruction in the 1960s. Occupying four full city blocks, the station was envisioned as the new main point of entry into New York; accordingly, rail traffic was stratified into three levels to reduce congestion, with cavernous waiting areas based on the Baths of Caracalla above. Pennsylvania Station’s demolition would directly prompt the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a turning point in the preservationist movement.
Comprising 182 unique stations, the Moscow Metro is more than a transit system: it is an underground museum of Russian cultural history. Built in five phases, the Metro stations range in style from lavishly ornamented Baroque to sleek, minimalist Modernist. The wide variety of designs represents not only the pre-Communist history of Russia, but the changing attitudes of the Soviet Union from its creation to its twilight years.
The ensemble of the Village House, the existing community center and church – what may seem unspectacular in advance – should prove a convincing spatial dialogue experiment how a previously not existing village center can function in the future and contextual relations can be sustainable. The aim was to reactivate a traditional construction, without stumbling into the depths of a superficial, sentimental architecture. The subtlety of the intervention may be revealed only at second glance.
Territorial context and setting in the settlement structure The municipality Steinberg am Rofan is dominated by few small scale public buildings, small houses and wide open spaces. The project tries sensitively to respond to this complex situation and embed numerous contextual references to the environment in the existing village structure. Thus the new community center is presented by means of a very precise spatial village setting as a link between private and public space and interweaves calmly and naturally in a local grammar.
Through the setting, a new village square is generated, with a spatial quality that meets the requirement of various usages. The resulting gate effect generates an exciting entrée and ensures the visitor a pleasant “surprise” at the end of the valley.
Floor Plan
By the elongated shape of the building and its parallel placement to the road the outside is divided into two areas. At the entrance a forecourt, oriented to south-east and laid out with stones, with high amenity value can also be used by the café in summer. Between school, the old and the new community center, the actual village square stretches and is used for larger events.
Compactness | Interior and exterior spatial quality Like a traditional farmhouse (living quarter / threshing floor/ stable) the new community center is zoned into three areas. The multi-purpose hall and farmers’ café are accessed via a central foyer, which can divide functions or, in case of a major event, merge space. The front part of the building is organized compact and two-story and opens on the ground floor generously to the village square and the church, while the multi-purpose hall, slightly recessed in the slope, has skylights and a greater degree of privacy.
The internal spatial sequences are designed both exciting and varied with a very high quality of stay, characterized by diverse insights and outlooks. The result is a very simple and reduced space continuum, which has both economic and creative strengths.
Construction and materials | The Best is so close The consistent use of the building material larch ought to be understood as a vote for the continuation of a local tradition. Static simplicity and a very high degree of prefabrication of the external wall and ceiling elements guaranteed a short construction period. Untreated domestic wood has been consistently used as building material for all parts of the interior fittings and for all facades. The sensory quality of the untreated wood is complemented by measurable criteria, such as pollution-free air and an excellent life cycle assessment. The wood used was provided exclusively and in an exemplary manner from larch forests of the Rofan Mountains. Through the introduction of own resources and also of their own work in terms of a proper value creation (sawyers from the village, drying, processing) a portable guiding principle for the project existed at a very early stage before the beginning of all joint efforts.
Nørreport Station in Copenhagen is Denmark’s busiest transport hub. It was originally established in 1916, modernized in 1934 and in need of fundamental renovation in 2012. Following three years of construction work, the station in the heart of Copenhagen has been transformed into an open and accessible urban space with clear focus on the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.
Diagram
Diagram
Plan
The few buildings on the forecourt are built mainly in glass and have rounded shapes, providing room for the constant swarm of people and emphasizing the clarity and natural flow of the layout, which gives people a sense of security. Materials are simple with natural surfaces, securing low maintenance demands– white concrete, granite, glass and stainless steel. When darkness falls, the lighting becomes a feature as well as a means of navigation and the towers ventilating the underground platforms rise as luminous landmarks for the area.
This cohesive space has no backs or corners. The design and layout of the buildings and bicycle parking facilities on the forecourt are based on a study of the flows of pedestrians from the surrounding roads and across the forecourt or down the stairs into the station.
The forecourt has been designed as an extension of the city’s ‘floor’ and direct pedestrian access has been established from the surrounding pedestrianized zones to the station forecourt, while vehicular traffic has been redirected, leaving only one traffic artery north of the station. Parking facilities have been made for 2100 bicycles on the forecourt in the so-called ‘bicycle beds’ which are recessed in relation to the general surface of the forecourt in order to secure a clear hierarchy and unobstructed views of the space as a whole.
The station and the forecourt are used by about 350,000 train passengers and passers-by on a daily basis, making it Denmark’s busiest transport hub. Therefore, the efficiency of the flows created was a crucial aspect of the project proposal from the outset. In addition, priority was given to making space for an urban atmosphere with activities which reflects the vibrant, dynamic metropolitan city of Copenhagen. In line with this idea, the parked bicycles are not hidden away; on the contrary, they are on display as an important aspect of the life of the city and of Copenhagen’s identity as the world’s best city for cyclists.
What was a tired urban space characterized as chaotic, unsafe and noisy is after the transformation characterized as a place where safety, comfort and efficiency are the key words and the daily user is in focus. In contrast to before, the area is now a place where people sit down, take a break and watch the world go by.
Gottlieb Paludan Architects and COBE designed the new station and forecourt with all its functions and facilities, having submitted the winning entry in the international architectural competition in 2009. SWECO (previously Grontmij) was engineering consultant and Bartenbach was in charge of lighting design.
For more than 3 decades now, the annual TED Conference and its many affiliated events have served as an important platform for, as their tagline puts it, “ideas worth spreading,” and has inspired countless people through its fast paced thought-provoking presentations. Founded in 1984 by architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman, there have been many architecture presentations throughout the conferences—but there are even more inspirational talks which aren’t necessarily about architecture. Here we’ve compiled 21 of the best TED Talks in recent years which, while not strictly about architecture, will certainly appeal to the architectural mindset. Covering a variety of topics such as creativity, art, productivity, technological advancements, and the science of cities and the natural environment, these videos will inspire you to become a better architect.
Which non-architectural TED talks have inspired you? Don’t forget to share further recommendations in the comments below!
Janet Echelman is a world-renowned American installation artist whose large-scale productions have appeared in cities across the globe including New York, Vancouver, Singapore, and London. In this visually captivating presentation, Echelman recalls her journey from a 7-time art school reject to a successful self-trained artist who has figured out a way of creating a unique art form—all from taking imagination seriously.
Architects and architecture students are well-known for sacrificing their sleep in favor of increasing the time they can spend on their projects. In this video, Arianna Huffington speaks about her own personal epiphany regarding the importance of getting enough sleep. At what gain? She declares that “we can sleep our way to increased productivity and happiness—and smarter decision-making.”—work smarter not harder.
The process of learning never ends for architects; we are often encouraged to expand our field of knowledge in order to incorporate new ideas within our architecture (case in point: you’re reading this article). But sometimes learning can be a daunting task when you are not in the environment of a classroom or research laboratory, and “learning” is not the primary task of your daily routine. How can adults continue to learn independently? This TED talk encourages us to find learning communities on the internet, and shows how one might go about doing that. John Green is perhaps best known as the novelist behind The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, but he is also known for creating “Crash Course,” an educational Youtube channel that teaches a wide array of subjects from literature and history to economics, science and philosophy.
City planners and architects today are embroiled in dealing with a retrospective problem: the urban inequality produced by the car-congested megalopolis in cities all over the world. Enrique Peñalosa is a two-time mayor of Bogotá, Colombia (serving from 1998 – 2001 and now from 2016 – 2019). In this video, he discusses the transformation of the Colombian capital through a public transportation initiative and how it is a solution against urban inequality. He suggests increased mobility as an integral part of smart cities all over the world.
Stress is public health’s enemy in the 21st century, and the phenomenon continues to plague architecture schools at alarming rates. Psychologist Kenny McGonical presents new research which suggests that “stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case.” She urges the viewer to see stress as positive, so that it can actually help to improve your performance. Essentially, the talk details with how to actually achieve a well-known saying: “If you can’t change something, change your attitude about it.”
The creative process is a complicated thing. In school, architects are regularly encouraged to rely on precedents, incorporating the successful ideas of others into their work in order to guarantee success. But in the real world, intellectual property laws can make this a risky business. In this refreshingly honest talk, Kirby Ferguson makes the case that all creative works are simply remixes of things that already exist, suggesting that when it comes to creating something new, understanding this is “an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves and to simply begin.”
Desertification is believed to be an ever-present effect of Global Warming that has been observed on practically every continent, and Allan Savory has dedicated his entire life to understanding the phenomena. In this video, he presents a startling discovery which goes against previously accepted theories of desertification. It turns out large herds of livestock and pastoralism is the “realistic and low-cost” solution to reverse desertification.
If ArchDaily’s Facebook comments are anything to judge by, architects can be a pessimistic bunch; it seems this pessimism can kill your dreams leading to… more pessimism. In this video, Bel Pesce recalls her journey to success and offers a dose of reality, making us realize how faulty perspectives can hinder you from succeeding and achieving your dreams. Pesce is a Brazilian national, who studied at MIT and had a successful career in Silicon Valley before opening a school in Brazil dedicated to helping students achieve their dreams.
In this talk design critic Alice Rawsthorn recounts the design work of “unlikely heroes” from Blackbeard to Florence Nightingale and connects these people with well-known designers like Buckminster Fuller. Rawsthorn paints a narrative of how the greatest designers are often the most rebellious. In her own words: “All of these designers and many more are pursuing their dreams, by the making the most of their newfound freedom, with the discipline of professional designers and the resourcefulness of rebels and renegades. And we all stand to benefit.”
Here, the father-son duo behind Gapminder.org present incredible insights into just how easily, thanks to today’s media environment, we are led to make ignorant assumptions and how we can work towards being more aware of fact-based realities. In the first portion of the talk, Hans Rosling presents a few examples of how people seem more ignorant than chimpanzees. Then, as director of Gapminder, Ola Rosling provides 4 points on how to drop our preconceived notions and be… well, less ignorant.
Participating in philanthropy offers a sense of fulfillment for anybody, including architects. Unfortunately, the work of the architect, no matter how down-scaled, requires substantial capital which virtually disables architects from applying the tools of their trade towards positive change. With inspiration from Dureen Shahnaz, architects can be the bridge between capitalist practices and philanthropic endeavors by designing the infrastructure that facilitates a hybrid program of socially-conscious capitalism for various charitable pursuits.
At the dawn of what is known as “The Internet of Things,” Marco Annunziata presents a future with exciting implications for us all. With the price of computer sensors and memory space having drastically decreased over the last decade, Annunziata declares that machines are now “brilliant: self-aware, predictive, reactive, and social” which effectively creates a world where information itself is intelligent. For architects, the implication of these changes could be that buildings are reactive to their inhabitants, and with information being provided by buildings themselves, maintenance can be performed in these structures just before they break.
One of the most debated issues among practicing architects lies in where to draw the line between working too much, and having dedication to one’s craft. Nigel Marsh of Fat, Forty, and Tired fame, is offering a new perspective on how to achieve a “Work-Life” balance. Unlike the common trope that simply consists of saying “no” to your job and “yes” to your family, Marsh is asking us to scale back our expectations on various aspects of our lives.
In the world of Architecture, one of the most popular documentaries about urbanism and city planning is Jan Gehl’s “The Human Scale” which privileges quantifiable data on cities and changes based on empirical evidence. This TED Talk by physicist Geoffrey West seems to be proposing a completely different way of understanding and thus shaping the city. He states that simple mathematical laws govern the properties of cities. Wealth, crime rate and walking speed among others can be deduced from a single number: a city’s population. In a talk that seemingly echoes Gilles Deleuze’s Postscript on the Societies of Control, West talks about how might our cities be designed differently—differently from Gehl’s happy city but also differently from the 20th century sprawling metropolis.
At the time of this TEDxToronto Talk, Rodolphe el-Khoury was directing the RAD Lab at the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. The research lab is primarily concerned with providing resources and expertise on the “spatial ramifications of embedded technology and ubiquitous computing,” and habitually produces research that extends far beyond the reaches of architecture. In this video, el-Khoury goes through a project-based survey of how technology can disappear but simultaneously be adapted into our everyday lives. Rodolphe el-Khoury is now the Dean at the University Of Miami School Of Architecture.
Stefan Stagmeister is a designer that runs a creative branding and identity studio in New York. Every 7 years, he closes the entire studio for a year-long sabbatical in order to rejuvenate and revive his and the rest of his staff’s creativity. In a presentation which details the subsequent projects that were inspired by Stagmeister’s sabbatical, he urges the rest of us to see the productivity involved in taking time off and pulling ourselves away from our work—a concept which many creatives seem to struggle with.
In a retrospective talk, Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India’s Golden Desert to harvest water which are still being used today—demonstrating their superiority to modern water megaprojects. Contemporary architecture today is interested in the adoption of local folk knowledge for the sake of architectural innovation. Ideas such as Mishra’s help facilitate this effort.
Elizabeth Gilbert is well-known for the freakish success of her memoir Eat Pray Love, and that is precisely her problem. In this talk, Gilbert reflects upon the aftermath of overnight success of creatives and transcending one’s “best work,” as well as the seeming precariousness of the lives of creatives and creativity themselves. Rooted in Greek philosophy, Gilbert’s talk tries to dispel the notion of the “rare naturally creative genius” and show instead that all of us “have” a genius. An inspiring talk for those looking for a kick of inspiration.
The question: “How do we improve the city?” is common in architecture circles—in presentations, symposiums, and the classroom. In some ways that conversation has become muddled, with the same rhetoric simply being reformulated among architecture’s practitioners. In this refreshing talk by the sculptor and non-architect, Theaster Gates discusses the improvement and beautification of his neighborhood of Grand Crossing, Michigan. While architecture is widely implicated in the talk, it is instead culture that is placed at the core of what Gates is talking about. It’s an interesting way to look at infrastructure, urban planning, and urban renewal that departs from the usual language of architecture. Perhaps it takes a talk such as this to state the obvious: that architecture is culture.
The idea of self-promotion is something that many architects are uncomfortable with, and as a result, few do it well. But according to Simon Sinek, there is a simple key to becoming a leader in a field and being successful, whether that’s in a commercial venture or in becoming the leader of a social movement. Sinek uses this single theory to explain why Apple was able to out-compete other equally capable technology companies, why the Wright Brothers were the first to achieve manned flight despite a total lack of funding, and why 250,000 people turned up to watch Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. And the good news for architects? The key to becoming a leader is not through exaggeration or deceit, but in connecting with people over your core beliefs.
Sig Nordal 