Articles by Andreea Cutieru

The Hungarian Pavilion at the 17th Venice Biennale explores the often challenging socialist architecture and looks at how this heritage could be reconsidered and given a new future. Titled Othernity – Reconditioning our Modern Heritage, the exhibition curated by Dániel Kovács presents twelve iconic modern buildings of Budapest and the visions of twelve architecture practices from Central and Eastern Europe for their reconditioning. The Hungarian Pavilion’s project looks into how architecture can build on its past to foster resilience, sustainability and strong cultural identities.

In the last decades, architecture has embraced the medium of film to explore new readings of spaces and atmospheres. Crafting a visual narrative of the underlying design concepts while also establishing a connection with the viewer, architecture films use cinematic camera movements and carefully curated sound designs to convey emotion and create a compelling impression of the built object. The article looks into architecture films as a means of capturing the experience of a space, with films by 9sekunden, a team of young designers who combine their passions for film and architecture into an alternative means of exploring architectural atmospheres.

For Design and the City’s sixth episode – a podcast by reSITE on how to make cities more liveable, the team interviewed Christele Harrouk, Archdaily’s Managing Editor and Salim Rouhana, Senior Urban Governance and Resilience Task Team Leader at the World Bank Group. The two Beirut natives talk about the devastating explosion in August last year and share their perspectives on what rebuilding the city could look like.

One of the most iconic examples of Metabolist architecture, Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower, might be headed for demolition, as the building was sold by the management association to the landowner earlier this year, as reported by Japan Forward. The tower’s demise has been intensely speculated in recent years due to the structure’s precarious state and incompatibility with current seismic standards.

Lehrer Architects converts several leftover plots in Los Angeles into micro-homes developments, unfolding an experimental template for tackling homelessness. Together with the Bureau of Engineering for the City of Los Angeles, the architecture firm creates an efficient yet functional design using prefabricated pallet shelters and brings character to the project through vibrant colours to shape a new sense of community and restore dignity through design.

The Russian Federation Pavilion for the 2021 Venice Biennale explores the role of cultural institutions across physical and digital spaces. Titled Open, the program investigates the subject on multiple fronts, from the renovation of its physical architecture to the research into the social role of virtual environments and a collection of perspectives on the new ways of thinking in the institutional realm. The contribution builds on the Open? project, which debuted in May 2020 and continued throughout the year as a virtual platform for creatives and thinkers.

For its latest design in China, the Australian firm Koichi Takada Architects takes inspiration from Shanghai’s forest-rich landscape and creates a series of architectural “trees” that branch out, forming a canopy above a new marketplace. Through its open, biophilic design, the Solar Trees Marketplace will be an extension of the outdoor public space, reinterpreting the traditional Chinese market as a community place.

For the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Finland’s Pavilion revisits a moment in local history when a refugee crisis led to new ways of building and a reconfiguration of domestic space, which ended up influencing different places around the world. Titled New Standards, the exhibition curated by Laura Berger, Philip Tidwell and Kristo Vesikansa presents the story of Puutalo Oy, an industrial enterprise specialized in prefabricated wooden buildings that set new standards for residential design in the 20th century and created Finland’s most widespread architectural export.

Titled Oræ -Experiences on the Border, (oræ, Latin for “borders”) the Swiss contribution to the 17th Venice Biennale explores the spatial and political dimension of the country’s border, investigating the social implications of this inhabited territory. Created by a Geneva-based team of architects and artists comprising Mounir Ayoub and Vanessa Lacaille from Laboratoire d’architecture, as well as filmmaker Fabrice Aragno and artist sculptor Pierre Szczepanski, the exhibition details a series of participative processes performed along the Swiss border that investigate the frontier and its inhabitants, revealing the poetic character of the space.

Although architecture itself is universal, the day-to-day practice still varies across the world, influenced by a wide range of factors, from the professional requirements and responsibilities of an architect, the local environment, history and building customs, to local priorities and challenges. In a hyper-connected world, where architecture seems to become more uniform, how do local contexts and characteristics shape the built environment? This article taps into the commonalities and the variations within the architecture profession.