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Ligne Roset’s Co-CEO on the Value of Companies Taking it Slow

Elizabeth Pagliacolo — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:35:00 +0000

“If there is a model that I don’t want to reach, it’s the fast fashion model,” Antoine Roset says. On the terrace of the Palais de Tokyo, the Eiffel Tower glorious in the distance, Roset explains how he and Olivier, his cousin and co-chief executive officer, have been easing the tempo at which their family’s renowned brand, Ligne Roset, operates. From launching fewer products each year to showing them in an exhibition and mini trade fair at the Palais every April before Milan Design Week, they are embracing a praxis that’s very much in contrast to the hyper accelerated direction of much design production, both in how it’s manufactured and how it’s communicated. They are also responding to the very real economics that make selling...

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Two Weeks To Go! AZURE’s Human/Nature Conference

Azure — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 14:35:53 +0000

It’s right around the corner! On October 24 and 25, a curated lineup of architects, urbanists, policy-makers and designers is set to converge in downtown Toronto. Taking place at the Waterfront Campus of George Brown College, the two-day AZURE Human/Nature conference will bring together an impressive array of Canadian and international talents, harnessing interdisciplinary knowledge from around the world to address the issue of climate change through design.

Get Tickets!

Featuring a diverse series of CEU-accredited Keynotes, Panels and Workshops, the Human/Nature conference talks will be complemented by social gatherings and networking opportunities, an immersive field trip organized in partnership with the Toronto Society of Architects, as well as exciting co-programming with the Architecture and Design Film Festival.

Keynotes

Julia Watson

Susan Carruth

Four world-leading designers will deliver keynote presentations. Our opening speaker is an acclaimed New York-based landscape designer and and author. Julia Watson is a leading proponent of what she describes as “LO–TEK,’ a design philosophy (and a best-selling book of the same name) that embraces site-specific, highly local strategies — adopted by Indigenous peoples around the globe — as a wellspring of contemporary design thinking.

To cap Day 1, Susan Carruth, a partner at 3XN/GXN, will deliver a talk examining the Copenhagen-based firm’s world-leading portfolio of low-carbon and recycled buildings. A leading specialist in behavioural design, Carruth will also explore GXN’s innovative research practice, which integrates material and environmental sustainability with a distinctly human-centred ethos.

Kongjian Yu

Tommaso Bitossi

On Day 2, the visionary founder of Beijing landscape firm Turenscape, Kongjian Yu will share insight from his globally renowned “Sponge Cities” concept of regenerative landscape design. Guided by a rigorous triple bottom line — which integrates environmental, economic and social benefit into every built project — he boasts a portfolio that includes the award-winning Fish Tail Park in Nanchang City and Tongnan Dafosi Wetland Park. He is also the winner of the 2023 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.

Finally, Tommaso Bitossi of Transsolar — the climate engineering company that has collaborated with firms including Renzo Piano Building Workshop, KPMB and MASS Design Group, to name a few — will explore how a synthesis of design and engineering can reshape our shared environments and our daily lives.

Panels

Our multi-perspective plenary panels bring together Canadian and international expertise for a global design audience. Acclaimed Vancouver-based Indigenous architect Alfred Waugh, together with Tsleil-Waututh Nation Councillor Dennis Thomas, will discuss a landmark project to redevelop the 90-acre ʔəy̓alməxʷ/Iy̓álmexw /Jericho Lands site in Vancouver’s West Point Grey neighbourhood as part of the ʔəy̓alməxʷ/Iy̓álmexw /Jericho Lands: Indigenous Urban Futures panel. In Forecast for Hotter Cities, meanwhile, our international panelists — including Rasmus Astrup of Danish landscape firm SLA, and Dorsa Jalalian of DIALOG — will share design-driven (and socio-political) strategies for mitigating rising urban temperatures.

La Quebradora Water Park in Mexico City, a landmark project by panel speaker Loreta Castro Reguera of Taller Capital. PHOTO: Aldo Díaz

How do we develop furniture and textiles for a cleaner planet? Featuring Caroline Cockerham of Cicil Rugs, Justin Beitzel of Common Object and Stephanie Lipp of MycoFutures, Circular Design for a Circular Economy will present ways of closing the loop through design, manufacturing, shipping, storage and end-of-life strategies.

Finally, The Green Public Realm, featuring Pat Hanson of Toronto’s gh3*, Loreta Castro Reguera of Mexico City’s Taller Capital, SpruceLab’s Sheila Boudreau, and Paul Kulig of Perkins&Will, will spotlight projects that make the most of our shared outdoor spaces.

Workshops

Complementing our plenary keynotes and panels, 12 immersive and collaborative workshops will deep dive into specific projects and practices. Architects including affordable housing champion SmartDensity, net-zero civic design specialists specialists MJMA, and adaptive reuse innovators Giaimo will share their expertise across a range of typologies and context. Perkins&Will and KPMB will explore emerging tools for assessing carbon, and LGA Architectural Partners and MabelleArts will discuss the integration of community wellbeing and food security into design practice.

MJMA’s Churchill Meadows Community Centre is among the impressive case studies presented as part of the Human/Nature workshops. PHOTO: Scott Norwsorthy

Led by Gensler, a look at healthy, low-carbon interiors will explore strategies for combining wellbeing and sustainability in fit-outs, while the innovative duo of Arper and PaperShell will share their experiences using bio-based materials in furniture design. Tackling the public scale, the Lemay team will offer a look at Montreal’s public realm and transit infrastructure, which holds vital lessons for the rest of North America. What’s more, authors and thought leaders including American mass timber specialist Lindsey Wilkstrom and healthcare design visionary Tye Farrow will share the thinking that informed their acclaimed recent books.

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More information about the AZURE Human/Nature is available here. Tickets are on sale now!

Human/Nature keynotes are sponsored by Keilhauer, Stone Tile and Italgraniti. Plenary panel sponsors are Ciot, Formica and Architek. Workshop sponsors are Ligne Roset, Scavolini, TAS, Ege Carpets, Mitrex, Andreu World and Arper. The TSA-led field trips are supported by Nienkämper. The social gathering sponsor is Urban Capital.

The conference is presented in partnership with George Brown College / Brookfield Sustainability Institute, MaRS, Lemay, Flash, GFI Investment Council Ltd., Instituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, and Small Change Fund. It is supported by the City of Toronto.

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DesignTO Festival 2025

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 20:36:58 +0000

DesignTO Festival 2025 brings people together to celebrate contemporary design across Toronto. As Canada’s largest annual design festival celebrating design as a multidisciplinary form of thinking and making, the show hosts over 100 exhibitions and events forming Toronto’s design week each January. Since 2011, the DesignTO Festival has welcomed over 1 million visitors, showcased the work of over 6,500 artists and designers, and reached over 2 billion people through print and digital media.

Here are three ways you can participate in the Festival:

1. Independent Projects:

Independent Projects are exhibitions, events (e.g. tours, talks, workshops), and window installations that are wholly created and executed by an individual or organization during the DesignTO Festival at a venue of their choice (in-person or online).

2. Venue-Designer Matchmaking Program

This program pairs designers with a venue to host their project. Projects include exhibitions, events (e.g. tours, talks, workshops), and window installations that are wholly created and executed by an individual or organization during the DesignTO Festival at the host venue. Host venues provide their spaces free-of-charge and pay the registration fee.

3. DesignTO Projects

DesignTO Projects are exhibitions and events at the Festival curated and executed by DesignTO. Participation in these projects is through a combination of open calls for submission and by invitation.

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AZURE Talks x Tile of Spain: Tile, Trends & Tapas

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 19:16:31 +0000

A global leader in design and technology — boasting sustainable, recyclable and naturally sourced ceramics — the Spanish ceramic sector continues to breaks new ground in architecture and interior design. This November, 11 top Spanish ceramic manufacturers using Tile of Spain products will showcase in the AZURE Talks x Tile of Spain exhibition and talk entitled Tile, Trends & Tapas that showcases the breadth, versatility and sustainability of Spanish tile — as well as the growing presence of Tile of Spain products across the North American market.

Tile, Trends & Tapas will take place at the University of Toronto’s Hart House on November 8 along with a talk exploring the design possibilities offered by the Tile of Spain portfolio and the emergence of a Spanish-Canadian design culture. Moderated by Azure senior editor Stefan Novakovic, the talk will feature two of the country’s most acclaimed emerging designers, Aránzazu González Bernardo and Nicolas Koff, who will share their insights about Spanish ceramics and Spanish-Canadian design culture.

Tile of Spain is used by more than 100 companies as a seal of guarantee of a product made in Spain manufactured under the highest quality standards. On November 8, Tile of Spain will be represented by an exhibition featuring 11 companies: ADEXUSA, Azteca, Cevica, Decocer, Estudio Cerámico, Natucer, Peronda Group, Porcelanosa, STN Cerámica, TAU, Vives Cerámica.

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AZURE Talks: Spanish Design in Canada Comes to Hart House on November 8

Azure — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 17:12:01 +0000

From large yet exceptionally slim panels and ventilated facades to heated floors and emerging self-cleaning technologies, the evolving world of Spanish ceramics presents new opportunities for aesthetic evolution and environmental leadership. A global leader in both design and technology, the Spanish ceramic sector harnesses sustainable, recyclable and naturally sourced ceramics to break new ground in architecture and interior design. United under the Tile of Spain banner, 11 of the country’s leading producers are coming together for an exhibition showcasing the breadth, versatility and sustainability of Spanish tile — as well as the growing presence of Tile of Spain products across the North American market.

Taking place at the University of Toronto’s Hart House on November 8, the free exhibition will be complemented by a talk exploring the design possibilities offered by the Tile of Spain portfolio and the emergence of a Spanish-Canadian design culture. Moderated by Azure senior editor Stefan Novakovic, the talk will feature two of the country’s most acclaimed emerging designers, Aránzazu González Bernardo and Nicolas Koff, who will share their insights about Spanish ceramics and Spanish-Canadian design culture.

Educated at the at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in La Coruña, Spanish architect and Odami co-founder Aránzazu (Arancha) González Bernardo leads one of North America’s most acclaimed emerging studios. Established by González Bernardo and Michael Fohring in 2017, Odami is celebrated for its distinct merging of Spanish and Canadian design sensibilities, creating elegant yet culturally rich work elevated by a passion for materiality and craft. Selected as one of AN Interior’s Top 50 Architects and Designers of 2023 and lauded as Designlines Designer of the Year in 2022, the studio has quickly emerged as a leading North American design practice, thanks to projects such as the Aesop stores in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood and Palisades Village in Los Angeles. Odami’s award-winning residential interiors also make prominent use of ceramics, with the firm’s Beaches House showcasing rigorous aesthetic unity — and a distinctly Spanish sense of texture — in its eye-catching bathroom.

A co-founder of Toronto-based architecture practice Office OU, University of Pennsylvania alumnus Nicolas Koff leverages a background in architecture, landscape architecture and regional planning to lead one of Canada’s most exciting emerging practices. The firm’s diverse portfolio ranges from co-housing to artist studios across Ontario, while also encompassing educational facilities in the Czech Republic, and a recently completed landmark, the National Children’s Museum of Korea. Clad entirely in Spanish ceramics, the latter cultural complex is defined by its terracotta facades, which were designed as uneven triangular extrusions that would only be glazed on one side, creating an alternatingly soft or vivid look as one walks around the building.

Alongside the panel discussion, the event will also explore the evolution of the Spanish ceramic industry, and the themes — including environmental stewardship, respect for labour rights, attention to detail, investment in innovation, tradition and cultural heritage — that define the brands united under the Tile of Spain banner.

Today, Tile of Spain is used by more than 100 companies as a seal of guarantee of a product made in Spain manufactured under the highest quality standards. On November 8, Tile of Spain will be represented by an exhibition featuring 11 companies: ADEX USA, Azteca, Cevica, Decocer, Estudio Cerámico, Natucer, Peronda Group, Porcelanosa, STN Cerámica, TAU, Vives Cerámica.

Tile, Trends & Tapas takes place at Hart House on November 8. Registration for the free event is open now!

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Farshid Moussavi: Building Cultural Commons

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 20:23:20 +0000

Farshid Moussavi is an architect, the founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture, and an architecture professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In this lecture, Moussavi will use the urban and ecological scale of the Ismaili Center in Houston (for which she was one of the lead architects) as a starting point to address her process for generating new forms of urbanism, as well as discussing what makes her projects urban and how that urbanism plays out. Furthermore, drawing on her experience as an educator and prolific architect, Moussavi will discuss the “practicality” of architecture as being in the world (as opposed to existing as an abstraction). She will share the cultural translation that the Ismaili Center deploys and how those multicultural references might relate—if at all—to urbanism and the “practicality” of architecture.

Find more lectures on architecture and design taking place across North America this Fall with our curated list.

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Four Sconces, Four Stories: Little Wing Lee on Her RBW Lighting Collection

Eric Mutrie — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 15:24:49 +0000

Some of the best products are born out of interior design projects. For instance, take Dimple, the charming sconce from New York lighting brand RBW that features a domed diffuser with a central indent. Originally developed as a custom fixture for Sister City, a hotel designed by the Ace Hotel’s Atelier Ace creative team, the light has since gone on to illuminate all manner of other spaces — from cozy home offices to communal spa showers. Given the modern design’s enduring success, it is no wonder that one of the leading creative forces behind its development — Little Wing Lee, who formerly worked as the director of Atelier Ace but now runs her own operation, Studio & Projects — has since gone on to create not one, not two, but four follow-up sconces with RBW.

Photos by Atticus Radley

The first of these designs, Cape, launched early this year, while the other three — Copia, Crepe and Cuff — followed in May with an official unveiling at RBW’s office during New York Design Week. During the launch event, each debut was accompanied by an entire scrapbook’s worth of inspiration images and research material charting its development process. “Every designer has their own approach, and I really wanted to get my thinking across in that exhibition and distill down my design process — all the presentations and drawings and prototypes and images. So that was a collection of all the images and things that had inspired me,” says Lee.

Not that we should be surprised by such rich documentation — as a former documentary filmmaker, Little Wing Lee is a natural storyteller. Here, she talks us through the origins of her design career and her latest modern sconce designs for RBW.

Photo by Atticus Radley

Prior to your design career, you worked in documentary film. How does that background in storytelling play into your design?

Little Wing Lee

Producing a film or designing a space or creating a product are all a similar process in the sense that you’re starting out with this big idea that you’re trying to get across and then working through that concept. It’s also a very collaborative process in both the film and design worlds. In film, you’re working with these other experts, whether they are the camera person, or editor, or sound person. And in interior design, you’re working with the engineering consultants and the environmental graphics person. Everyone is coming together to make something real.

For me, designing a space is also about telling a story. I think of the way that a visitor will be using the space, and what their experience will be. What kind of emotion is being brought through the design? And what are the experiences or important moments that people will have in these spaces — whether that’s celebrating your friend’s birthday, or toasting a big milestone, or just finding a place to relax. Thinking about spaces as the backdrop to these big moments in people’s lives is kind of special.

Crepe sconce by RBW

How did you make the transition from film to design, and then from interior design into product design?

I have always been interested in art and design — even as a kid, I remember making pillows for my bedroom, and changing the paint colour and putting up different posters. Design is something that I was very aware of, but I never thought to study it in a formal way. In undergrad, I studied religion and African American Studies because I really love history and culture. I found film as a way to further explore that and share those stories with a larger audience.

It was my mom who had always told me, “Study architecture.” I started to wonder what she saw in me that I didn’t see, so I listened to her. In between productions, I did a program at Harvard, the GSD Career Discovery Program, and that was my introduction into studying design. It was life changing. At first I thought I wanted to do landscape architecture, but when I worked at a firm doing that for a bit, the scale and the timelines weren’t what I was looking for. Then I landed in interior design, graduating from the Interior Design Masters Program at Pratt Institute.

In terms of product, whether you’re designing a hotel or a museum, you’re always designing custom pieces — custom light fixtures for guest rooms, or collaborations for blankets. That was just a part of the design process, so it was a natural transition into product development for the studio.

Cape

How did your partnership with RBW begin?

I met RBW at their first show at ICFF and then we worked together on Sister City, which was a project by Ace Atelier. We developed a custom light fixture for that, Dimple, and that was a good experience. From then on, I just kept working with RBW — on other Ace Hotel projects, and then additional projects when I started my own firm. Their fixtures were just always a good fit and made sense for the projects.

I knew when I started my firm that I wanted to do not only interior projects, but also product development — that was the mission. I had been collecting ideas and thinking about it, and eventually I went to RBW and asked if they would be up for a collaboration.

I had lots and lots of ideas. We talked through all of them and kind of edited down to a few that we thought were strong and could move forward with, thinking that through the development process more would kind of fall away. But we ended up keeping the original four that we started off with. They each feel very different — in terms of aesthetic and material — but they all came from my brain, so in that way they’re connected.

Cape came first, earlier this year, and then three more designs — Copia, Crepe and Cuff — launched in May. Tell me a bit about each of them.

Cape

: I started Cape thinking about industrial lighting, like the caged fixtures that you might find in a construction site, but wanting to create something that’s more refined and elegant than that — and also thinking about colours, but colours that would feel kind of neutral. In this case, that ended up being a very deep blue, a warmish red, a terracotta beige, and a high-gloss black.

Cuff

: Cuff was born out of my mom’s jewelry collection. My mom was a modern dancer and a model, and she has really great taste and style. I was thinking about the way that jewelry nestles together, like in a stack of bracelets. In this case, the diffuser kind of nestles into the metal frame.

Copia

: Copia came out of my collection of cast glass objects, and thinking about the play of light that results from transparency. So the diffuser has this ziggurat shape. I’d been struggling during development to get the glass diffuser into the glass collar and then RBW came up with the idea to make it in silicone. When I saw the sample, it looked like glass, but when I touched it, it moves. That allowed us to squeeze it into the glass collar while still keeping the form, which was a really important element to me.

Crepe

: Crepe again explores my love of vintage and glass, and thinking about the way that light is playing — it’s reflecting off the glass plate, but then you’re also seeing the wall behind the glass plate. It was interesting to me to think about the different perceptions and textures you get from that fixture.

Crepe

You previously worked as the director of Atelier Ace and now lead your own interior design studio, Studio & Projects. As an interior designer, what was on your wishlist in terms of what makes a good sconce?

Because of my experience working as a designer in different typologies, I was able to think about the different ways that architects and designers might use the fixtures. As I was designing, I was thinking about how I would use them in spaces that I would design, thinking “this is a sconce that could be used at a bar,” or, “This sconce could be in the hallway of a hotel.” Cuff is so elegant, that I was thinking about using it in more intimate spaces — whether that’s a bar or a dressing room where you could get close enough to see the texture and appreciate the patina. Cape I imagined by a pool, or at a resort.

I wanted to give as many options as possible for myself and for other people in the industry. All of these are indoor-outdoor to give that kind of flexibility, and they can also be plug-in or ceiling-mounted. Plus, RBW is so open to making adjustments depending on what designers need. My favourite colour temperature is 2,700K — that’s my default. But I know that some people want it to be cooler or warmer, and RBW always gives that option.

Photo by Atticus Radley

You’ve started with sconces. Any plans about how to adapt these designs into a larger lighting family?

We’ve had initial discussions about how you could translate these fixtures into a pendant or chandelier. We’ve also discussed different materials — could you do Copia in ceramic? So we’ll see.

For now, I’m working on some interior design projects in early stages — we have a residential project in Manhattan where we’re using Copia in the bathroom, and I have another project that I’m using Cape and Cuff in. So it’s great to now be getting to use the fixtures in my own projects.

Copia

Along with starting your own studio, you also founded Black Folks in Design in 2017. How have you felt the impact of that organization so far?

I started that in 2017 after working on the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC. It was such an amazing experience working with so many Black designers on that project. And so, for the past two years, we’ve done a Spotlight exhibition that has been really successful both in terms of getting designers exposure but also commercially. So many of the products have sold, whether to be part of people’s personal collections, to be used in commercial projects, or even to be parts of museum collections. It’s very exciting.

I’m actually in the process of getting ready for our next series, which will be part of the Salon Art and Design Show here in New York in November.

It’s also incredible to see the network and relationships between Black designers grow. I was in Milan earlier this year and went to openings of work by fellow Black folks in design, and just going to those events and meeting designers from Brazil, London and South Africa, I could see things growing very organically. I’m starting to hear about new kinds of collaborations between designers, so it’s exciting.

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Artweeks Istanbul 10th Edition

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 20:06:53 +0000

Artweeks Istanbul, one of Istanbul’s most anticipated contemporary art events, returns for its 10th Anniversary. Since its inception in 2018, Artweeks Istanbul has evolved into a biannual cornerstone of Istanbul’s artistic and cultural calendar; this unique gathering will be attended by Turkey’s leading galleries, collectors, artists, and art aficionados, and will explore the captivating world of art and creativity.

The 10th Edition of Artweeks Istanbul will commence with an exclusive preview on Tuesday, October 1st, followed by a special opening ceremony in the evening. Over the following two weeks, the event will host Turkey’s leading art galleries, numerous private and corporate collections, as well as various talks moderated by Harvard Business Review. Art enthusiasts will also be able to visit cafes and restaurants featuring different concepts within the event area.

Bringing together renowned artists and collectors from various disciplines as well as passionate art enthusiasts, the event will be a vibrant celebration of Istanbul’s artistic and creative culture following the summer season. Furthermore, due to Artweeks Istanbul’s commitment to public accessibility, all exhibitions and talks featured in the 10th Edition will be open to the public and free of charge.

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Essential Architecture Talks and Lectures for Fall 2024

Stefan Novakovic — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 16:24:22 +0000

While the last of the summer weather still lingers, the fall semester is underway. Alongside the return to classes, architecture schools across North America are also gradually announcing their fall/winter 2024 public programs, with a wealth of talks, lectures and exhibitions now scheduled. Below, we round up a selection of events — most of which are free to attend — at universities across Canada and the United States.

Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Architectural Science

Opened on September 5 and on until October 10, the Buone Nuove/Good News – Women In Architecture – from MAXXI to MET exhibition anchors TMU’s fall schedule. Alongside the popular traveling exhibit, this semester’s public lectures include the likes of Omar Gandhi (October 3) and Alison Brooks (October 31), while talks by Claire Weisz, Sarah Lynn Lopez and Chris T. Cornelius have already been announced for early 2025.

Rice University School of Architecture

A characteristically eclectic and thought-provoking program for the Houston-based institution includes lectures by visual artist David Wiseman (September 23), as well as architects Sebastián Adamo (October 2), Sean Canty (October 9), Farshid Moussavi (October 16) and Joshua Jih Pan (November 1), to name just a few. In addition, the 13th edition of the school’s influential PLAT journal launches with an event on November 11.

Carleton University Azrieli School of Architecture

Ottawa-based design enthusiasts can look forward to an October 2 lecture by Toronto-based architect Heather Dubbeldam. Organized by the Azrieli school in collaboration with the Ottawa Regional Society of Architects, the talk — titled “Building Impact: Architecture, Research and Advocacy” — will take place at the Ottawa Art Gallery, kicking off the 2024-2025 FORUM Lecture Series.

University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design

In Philadelphia, the busy fall schedule includes a talk by artist, writer and photographer Virginia Hanusik (September 16). While the impressive roster features multiple lectures and events per week, a few highlights include a September 25 lecture by Lina Ghotmeh, as well as Marina Tabassum’s address on “Displacement of Architecture and Transition,” taking place on October 9. A November 6 talk by Steven Holl is another highlight — among many others — for an action-packed semester.

University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture

While a talk by SO-IL recently kicked off the fall lecture series, the accompanying “Urban Domesticity” exhibition remains on show at 1 Spadina Crescent’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery until October 25. Meanwhile, the fall lecture schedule continues with the September 25 “Future Ancestor” talk by architect — and citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin — Chris T. Cornelius.

Columbia University GSAPP

This year’s busy fall program includes lectures by Mariam Issoufou (September 26), Marina Tabassum (October 10), Kate Orff (October 21), Minsuk Cho (October 30) and Edourda Souto de Moura (November 7). Throughout the semester, the Lectures in Planning series complements the architectural talks, while a series of multi-disciplinary Actioning Summits bring together a wealth of experts — encompassing design, art, history and civic activism — to tackle pressing cultural and socio-economic issues through the lens of the built environments.

McGill University Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture

Berlin-based designer and Deadline Architekten co-founder Matthew Griffin comes to Montreal on September 26, followed by legendary landscape architect Laurie Olin, who will deliver a talk on November 12. Rounding out the fall program, details of a lecture on lighting – taking place November 25 – are set to be announced in the coming weeks.

Harvard Graduate School of Design

The GSD’s packed fall 2024 calendar includes a September 24 talk — titled “Building with Care: Feminist Perspectives on Design in Conflict” — by Malkit Shoshan, Tatiana Bilbao and Elke Krasny. The lecture series continues with Signe Nielsen (September 26), and a pair of events (October 9 and 10) marking the much-anticipated release of Richard Sennett’s book Democracy and Urban Form. Later in the semester, Anne Whiston Sprin will deliver this year’s Frederick Law Olmstead lecture on October 29.

University of British Columbia SALA

On the west coast, the Vancouver-based School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture kicks off the 2024-2025 lecture series with “The DNA of Belonging: False Creek South” on September 25, with further events set to be announced soon.

University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning

Architecture and Labor author Peggy Deamer comes to Ann Arbor on September 30, while the likes of Bjarke Ingels (November 1) and Eyal Weizman (November 18) round out a can’t-miss fall program. In addition, the school’s Climate Futures Symposium takes place on October 17-18, “exploring the ways architecture and planning can help to bring about a better future for people and the planet.”

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Looking for more fall events? Taking place in downtown Toronto on October 24-25, Azure’s inaugural Human/Nature Conference will bring together thought leaders from across Canada and around the world to share proven strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change. Tickets are on sale now!

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Language Barrier: Rethinking How We Talk About Architecture

Sydney Shilling — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 13:22:00 +0000

Most of my friends (industry colleagues notwithstanding) could count the number of architects they know by name on one hand; a select few could name the designer of their favourite Toronto building without the help of Google. Musicians, directors, authors and other creatives are frequently name-dropped in casual conversation — but not architects. I’ve always wondered why. As a former architecture student, I often feel as though my access to architecture was earned through study. Granted, most kids haven’t developed an obsession with Frank Lloyd Wright by the time they’ve hit middle school. Unlike arts and literature, architecture remains largely missing from the K–12 curriculum and, given the lack of accessible resources on the subject, the average person’s engagement with the field is fairly surface-level — limited to home reno shows on HGTV. And while this content may offer an initial point of connection, it doesn’t grapple with the pressing issues facing the built environment today.

The permanence of architecture, among many things, sets it apart from other issues in the popular consciousness. “Buildings tend to stand for a bit longer than a theatre performance. I can decide not to go to the theatre, I can decide not to listen to certain music, but once a building is built, it’s there for everyone,” says Reinier de Graaf, partner of Rotterdam firm OMA. Given that over half of the world’s population now lives in urban centres and the average North American spends 90 per cent of their time indoors, people interact with the built environment as much as they do with music, movies or books, if not more. Many also care deeply about the way their city looks and functions. So why are people fluent in pop culture, while architecture remains a foreign language?

It wasn’t always this way. At one point, architecture — and those responsible for creating it — were celebrated in the mainstream. The term “starchitect,” coined in the 1940s, describes this very phenomenon: practitioners whose influence not only catapulted them to canonic status within their industry but also made them bona fide celebrities in their own right. Eero Saarinen, for his part, made the cover of Time magazine in 1956. The Finnish American was a modernist icon whose work represented the progress, technology and optimism of the postwar period. In the decades that followed, seven more architects would grace Time’s cover — including both lesser-known practitioners like Edward D. Stone and the legendary Le Corbusier, who was featured in a 10-page profile; Daniel Libeskind ended the streak in April 2005. These cover stories weren’t just adulatory project reviews (though architecture features prominently in them). They were chronicles of the subject’s life, both professional and personal, and often featured commentary from their contemporaries. The expansive feature on Le Corbusier in the May 1961 issue of Time painted a profoundly personal picture: “His moods are as unpredictable as his talent is unlimited. He can whisk off a sketch on something that seems little bigger than a postage stamp, and it will turn out to be almost exactly in scale. He has few close friends, and though he says he enjoys having people around to talk to, it is always a rather unilateral affair.”

While it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that the starchitect fell from grace, the fact that an architect hasn’t been featured on the cover since reflects the field’s dwindling cultural relevance. Over the same period, print media have also seen a steady decline (Time magazine, which used to be published weekly, now runs only twice per month and with a much smaller circulation), and the effects of both trends have been far-reaching.

Architects’ former status as cover stars — iconic yet knowable, their ideas accessible to the masses — stands in stark contrast to the seeming impenetrability of their contemporary counterparts. “Architects used to be concerned about the perception of their buildings, and frankly, I feel like they’re not anymore. They don’t actually know how to be public-facing. They have an idea of what the public wants, and it’s completely divorced from reality,” says Kate Wagner, architecture critic for The Nation. “I would argue that they’re starting to be more engaged, but there is a sense of being above the public — which I think is bad because the public has to look at your building every day.”

Yet firms’ About Us pages read like a laundry list of laudable values their work aims to achieve: sustainability, livability, well-being and more. According to de Graaf, buzzwords like these are one of the key issues facing the field today. His new book, architect, verb, takes aim at these marketing terms, which he refers to as “the new language of building.” He nearly broke the Internet when he admitted, in an article on Dezeen, that he didn’t know what the term “placemaking” meant. “Maybe the dirty secret is that nobody knows what these words mean. And it’s the first who admits it that then can trigger an avalanche,” he says. If the partner of OMA himself is confused, how can we expect the average person to understand the terms architects use to describe their work?

Inspired by his experience on Zoom meetings during the pandemic, where verbal communication had to stand in for physical plans and models, the book unpacks the criteria on which architecture is now judged. By striving to achieve similar qualities, firms have created an architecture of sameness, he says, and overusing these terms has rendered them meaningless. The result is that it’s become nearly impossible to hold practitioners accountable for their claims. If every studio purports to be world-class, for instance, then by definition, none of them can be. He admits that even OMA falls victim to using this language, which sometimes creeps into corporate communications and business development proposals. “If all I achieve is that whoever uses those words in the future feels slightly more shame than they did before, then I’m already very happy.”

Marketing lingo often flattens architecture’s many meanings. But the complex academic jargon that has long been a barrier to the industry’s accessibility remains an entrenched problem. “As an undergrad at Princeton, I was exposed to a lot of theoretical nonsense,” writer and PR professional Eva Hagberg told me. “The million-dollar question is, why are architects encouraged in school to make no sense? It’s a sickness in the academy — and I think it’s in part due to a profound insecurity about what architects do because it is not culturally valued. And so, they’re always down bad.” Ultimately, it’s learned behaviour: The traditional studio model teaches students to communicate their ideas to other architects, and they are often rewarded for parroting back their professors’ poetic language. Rarely is there an opportunity to practise engaging with those outside the field.

On the flip side, I was frequently told as an architecture student that my drawings should communicate on my behalf, that they should be legible and easily understood with no explanation at all. While this may be perfectly valid advice for presenting to industry professionals, it wrongfully assumes that any layperson can read a floor plan — and insinuates that the labour of explaining one’s work is somehow beneath architects. Hagberg refutes this idea in her recent book, When Eero Met His Match, which places anecdotes from her own career alongside the story of Aline Louchheim Saarinen, wife of Eero Saarinen and one of the first documented marketing professionals in architecture. “One of the most truly pernicious and widely held beliefs by architects is that the building tells a story on its own, and my book was an attempt to argue historically and contemporaneously that buildings cannot speak for themselves, images cannot speak for themselves, and a picture is not worth a thousand words; a picture needs at least a couple hundred words to become legible in some way,” she explains.

In an architectural culture that has historically rewarded opacity over clarity, in both design language and the written word, PR professionals (and the press in turn) have taken on the role of translator between architects and the public. Louchheim Saarinen, the mastermind behind Saarinen’s success, pioneered the idea of the project narrative, conceiving brilliant metaphors that brought his buildings to life — like the iconic comparison of his TWA Terminal to a bird in flight. “Left to his own devices, Eero would say things like ‘This building is about humanism and ideals of man,’ which is meaningless to me. At one point, he got really sick of the bird analogy with TWA, but [Aline kept reminding him] it’s a really smart image,” says Hagberg.

While Louchheim Saarinen held tightly to the reins, for Hagberg, making architecture legible through writing is a deeply collaborative process that involves interviews with the designers, a thorough visual analysis of the project images and sometimes direct consultation with photographers. “I think architects fundamentally don’t know what is interesting about a building and they are often very convinced that they do — and they will push that idea through,” she says. It’s her job to point out the details that will resonate with people other than industry professionals.

Since Louchheim Saarinen was practising, the media landscape has changed dramatically. Architecture criticism, both building reviews and larger discourse about the built environment, was once widely read in local newspapers, rather than confined to niche trade publications. It was a vital resource that helped decode even the most complex buildings for the public to understand. “The best reviews of buildings are not descriptive. When Herbert Muschamp first saw the Guggenheim in Bilbao, by Frank Gehry, he was so wrapped up by the whole building that he described it as the free-flowing skirt of Marilyn Monroe,” says de Graaf. “And I think if that is the effect of a building, the review is as much a piece of creative writing, if not more so, than a reflection of the building. That’s what good architecture does.”

More recently, as publications have transitioned to the digital realm, in-house critics have become fewer and further between (a phenomenon that has also impacted the food and music industries), and the architectural media have become less, well, critical. The thoughtful interpretation of projects has, by and large, been replaced by firm-produced press releases proliferated on online platforms — which serve the business interests of firms, rather than educate the public. The institutions that shape mainstream culture now engage with architecture in a more limited way. In parallel, platforms like blogging, Substack and social media have democratized publishing, increasing the accessibility of content — and acting as a conduit into an industry cloaked in mystery.

Wagner is the ultimate success story for self-publishing in architecture. Her blog, McMansion Hell, went viral on Tumblr in 2016 for her annotated images poking fun at suburban American homes (she has since amassed over 100,000 followers on Twitter, or X). What began as a personal passion project wasn’t about trying to reach architects or even architecture lovers, she explains; she was just “posting into the void.” It became a source of comic relief and an informal educational resource: “I feel like I’m responsible for thousands of Tumblr teenagers knowing what a dormer is, which I consider a personal success,” she laughs. “The annotative approach is effective in giving people the terminology to look at buildings, and also encouraging them to notice the details.” She acknowledges that the financial — and creative — freedom that comes from being self-published has afforded her the ability to be irreverent in her writing.

And yet she’s carried this signature tone into her position at The Nation (she cites Charles Jencks and Ada Louise Huxtable as key references). Her unusual start writing about ordinary buildings, and for a general audience, has shaped her unique voice. “I didn’t invent anything — it’s just that the landscape has changed in a way that, when someone does something that other people were doing 50 years ago, it feels new within the context of the meme-ified social media space. It’s an adaptation of the times,” she says. Still, many architects and academics argue that the conversations that play out online, and especially on social media, don’t constitute true architectural discourse. “When it comes in my direction, it’s nakedly sexist. It’s also because I’m young and people don’t take young people seriously.”

A new generation of publications is leading the way toward inclusivity — capturing the attention of both the industry and curious outsiders. The New York Review of Architecture, which launched its inaugural issue in May 2019, is a prime example. Targeting a culturally curious audience (think readers of the New Yorker or Pitchfork), its approachable content takes a slant perspective, often covering topics that might not necessarily have an obvious connection to architecture or urbanism. One of its most recent issues, for instance, explores U.S. grocery chain Wegmans and the TV show The Curse. By connecting architecture to mainstream and consumer culture, which people are inevitably more invested in, it presupposes that you don’t necessarily even have to be interested in architecture to want to pick up a copy. “People care when things are being changed in their neighbourhood, or when a new building goes up and blocks their view or creates a big shadow across a part of the city. So we had this sense that there was an audience out there for smart, critical and sometimes funny writing about architecture, and we wanted to build a publication that would be able to find that audience. We saw a niche that wasn’t filled,” explains Marianela D’Aprile, NYRA’s deputy editor.

So, whose job is it to produce architectural culture anyway? Practitioners, PR professionals and the media all have a vital role — but they must work together and play to each other’s strengths. According to de Graaf, architects need to spend less time preaching and more time tackling the real issues people care about: “Architects think they are meant to be saving the world, and I don’t think they can, at least no more than any other isolated professional group can save the world. If there is a metaphor appropriate for architecture at present, it’s the ostrich with its head in the sand.”

Many architects think that contextualizing their own work is (or should be) part of their scope, but Hagberg argues against this misconception: “It’s like how artists aren’t their own art historians or critics. An artist attempting to place their own work into contemporaneous or historical context is likely to be disastrous. Architects for some reason believe that they have both the expertise to produce the work, which is difficult on its own, and also represent and analyze it. Thankfully, they are wrong, which is why I have a day job.”

As an instructor (her side gig), Hagberg saw her students challenging the kind of writing that has historically been rewarded in academia. “When I taught in grad schools, I felt like my role was to be a provocateur. I assigned Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and my students ripped it apart — which was great, because it had been presented to me in grad school as a foundational amazing text, and 10 years later, people were like, This makes no sense. I tell my students that if they read something and it doesn’t make any sense, they should read it again and really try to think about it. And if it still doesn’t make sense — it’s not them, it’s the text.”

Architectural workers, too, can play a part in making discourse more accessible by holding their colleagues accountable for the language they use. “A sort of Socratic interrogation would be good,” says de Graaf. “The moment you don’t understand something, that is the moment to raise your hand and ask, What do you mean? If we just got over the fear of appearing dumb, we would collectively get a lot more intelligent.” Still, he owns the privilege that no one would dare call the partner of OMA dumb (at least, to his face). But what’s the alternative to all this jargon? It’s simpler than one might think: “Try to talk about a project as if you are explaining it to a well-meaning family member who is not an architect, but who is interested in and, in principle, positively disposed towards what you might be doing,” he says.

Architects must also relearn how to connect with the media beyond the corporate press release, even if that means opening themselves up to risk. “Architects are so controlling over their self-image that they don’t actually want the press to pay attention to them,” says Hagberg. This aversion to the press is a symptom — not just of the media ecosystem but of the capitalist system within which buildings are designed. “Architects are not really seen as cultural figures because their position in the market makes it so that it’s incredibly disadvantageous for them to say anything that is cutting-edge or relevant or challenging to the status quo,” says D’Aprile. “If you’re going to be a kind of cultural reference, you need to be able to say some of those things. But architects need power to be on their side, because they need money to make their buildings, and so it doesn’t make sense for them to behave in ways that are required of public intellectuals.” While de Graaf’s musings on the state of architecture have been both commended and contested by his peers, they have been a springboard for debate and conversation.

Events can also play a key role in opening up the discourse and introducing architecture to new audiences. “Architects give talks at schools that are closed off to the public; maybe the public can go to those talks, but they are not publicized for the public. It’s not prohibited, but they’re also not invited,” says Wagner. This is where events like the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Venice Biennale are important. Though criticized for its most recent edition, which invoked the theme of rehearsal to demonstrate the city as a work in process, the former offered a free and accessible look at the built environment, partnering with local organizations to ensure each project had a long-lasting community impact. In contrast, the latter is rife with dense academic language and abstract architectural concepts, which can feel elitist to outsiders but also bridges architecture to art and culture. “These events serve as anchors to the smaller pieces of the discourse that float around them,” says D’Aprile.

Arguably, the most important thing that architects can do to engage the public is to design buildings that benefit their communities — and speak to their larger civic values. This is easier said than done; we also have to acknowledge the politics of how projects get built. “There’s a general cultural assumption that smaller firms are the ones able to do that kind of deep engagement. What turned out to be the truth is that big firms that have a lot of resources behind them are basically able to subsidize affordable housing projects with larger luxury projects,” says D’Aprile. “That’s not sexy, and it doesn’t necessarily create a coherent and singular PR narrative.”

For the past few years, it has seemed that the industry’s priorities are starting to shift, as Lacaton & Vassal and Francis Kéré secured back-to-back Pritzker wins for their community-focused work. “The architects I’m interested in are the ones that actually do things, solve problems, work in their communities; they aren’t flashy,” says Wagner. The architecture media, for their part, should continue to highlight these types of projects — and not shy away from criticism where it’s warranted. “It seems like there’s a market for it. My friends and I all want to read the same thing that doesn’t exist,” says Hagberg.

But beyond producing quality content that relates to a diverse audience, publishers must also make that content accessible to that audience — a losing battle in a world where paywalls are all but necessary to keep media organizations afloat. And while social media platforms have the potential to contribute to meaningful discourse, they’re not a catch-all solution for building a more inclusive design culture: “Social media is a giant performance. I think the value of a really good, smart, thorough article written by a really good writer is worth so much more,” says Hagberg.

The issue of public engagement is bigger than the media, and too complex for any one firm to address. Ultimately, we need architects to speak in a language the public can understand — and a cultural ecosystem that creates more transparency behind the process of how things get built. “People, in some ways, feel disenfranchised from their built environments — like they’re controlled by somebody else who doesn’t have their own interests in mind. Which is probably true. They feel like they don’t have avenues to intervene in those processes, or even develop their own thoughts about those processes,” D’Aprile says. “Something that I get asked often is, Is this building good? And what that question tells me is that the person asking might have an opinion about it, but they don’t have the apparatus that allows them to trust that opinion.”

Perhaps the problem is not that people need an apparatus to access architecture but that they have been convinced that they do. An anecdote from an old professor has fundamentally shaped the way I think about architecture: When visiting the Royal Ontario Museum, he asked a janitor what he thought about the new crystal addition, designed by Daniel Libeskind. He hated it, not aesthetically but because the baseboards don’t sit at a 90-degree angle and were impossible to clean. It taught me two things: First, that the measure of good architecture is not just the way it looks but how it functions. And secondly, that anyone who has experienced a building is entitled to an opinion on it — and can offer important insights that might otherwise be missed by industry professionals. Intuitively, we know what good and bad architecture feels like. Anyone can identify a bottleneck in a department store, even if they’re not familiar with the term “circulation,” or admire the imposing beauty of a concrete building without knowing its roots in the brutalist movement. If you’ve made an honest effort to understand a building and still don’t get it, maybe that’s a fault of the building and not the user.

Of the structural barriers that limit engagement, the largest by far is that architects need to genuinely seek out meaningful connections with the communities they serve. “Public engagement has become a term like ‘sustainability,’ like ‘placemaking,’ that at best is lip service and almost an antonym of what it claims to be,” says de Graaf. “I have a theory that all of these words and ideologies find their origin in their own impossibility; it’s a kind of virtue signaling. The answer to the problem of public engagement is to engage with the public.” What constitutes good architecture in 2024? Ask a janitor, not an architect.

The post Language Barrier: Rethinking How We Talk About Architecture appeared first on Azure Magazine.