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Viaducts: new urban encounters
An intelligent approach to repurposing disused viaducts is providing a number of cities with new public spaces that delight users with fresh and intriguing perspectives of familiar urban landscapes. Architonic examines how such projects, in turning us into contemporary flaneurs, make us rethink our relationship with the city.
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Over Site: how Caracas's new cable-car system is making the city's favelas more visible
Once so disenfranchised that they didn't even appear on maps of the city, Caracas's favelas are, thanks to projects such as the technically and politically remarkable MetroCable transport system in San Agustín, acquiring a social legitimacy. Here, we talk to architect Alfredo Brillembourg, co-founder of the multidisciplinary practice Urban Think Tank, about the development of the cable-car system and how it works to fill in those cartographic blanks.
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Design Israel
The completion of Ron Arad's small-scale masterpiece that is Israel's new Design Museum Holon signals a kind of design coming-of-age for the country. With its current design scene set to grow even further, Architonic talks to a number of established and emerging designers, curators and educators about the significance of Israeli design and where it's heading.
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Look Who's Talking: architecture in the global-communication era
If architecture is the accumulation of centuries of knowledge, then what of its existence in an era of perpetual and instantaneous updates that the Internet and social networking brings? For a technology-driven industry, it seems slow to embrace the possibilities of continuous information exchange. A number of young studios appear to have some answers, which in the process of challenging dusty perceptions are 'Twittering' and marketing their names to the forefront of architecture today ahead of the starchitects of yesterday.
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Heavy/Light
They say good things come in threes. Here, Architonic brings you five of the best concrete lamps on the market. It's all about contradiction.
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'It's hard, hard, hard work': One Year On at New Designers 2010
Left brain. Right brain. If we're to believe all that pop-neurology, you're either a creative type or someone who just loves solving maths problems. Design manufacturer and retailer Thorsten van Elten, curator of One Year On, the show for entrepreneurial designers, explains how it's all about firing on both cerebral cylinders...
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Fancy a Joint?: innovative joinery in new furniture design
Screws? Glue? Who needs them? With a number of designers developing intriguing new ways of constructing furniture, Architonic takes a look at some examples of recent innovative joinery methods.
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Medium Rare: Architonic at Design Miami Basel 2010
Described by its organisers as 'the pre-eminent global forum for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating design', Design Miami Basel, the annual European get-together for those who like their design a touch on the exclusive side, put on a robust show this year. With the love-it-or-hate-it market for limited-edition design and one-off pieces clearly here to stay, Architonic spent some serious fair time with three of the scene's leading international design gallerists...
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Camouflage Architecture: underground buildings
If you're familiar with the Wombles, then you probably encountered underground architecture at any early age.
It's unlikely that the following projects were inspired by the Wombles, but that doesn't mean they're any less successful in terms of their functionality and singularity...
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The Measure of Success: INCH Furniture
Architonic talks to Basel-based design label INCH Furniture about their distinctive collection for the Swiss Pavilion at Shanghai's Expo 2010
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A Size Issue
Architonic reviews '1:1 – Architects Build Small Spaces', the latest exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum
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Exhibition: Richard Neutra in Europe (1960–1970)
Between 1960 and 1970, so in just ten years, the American architect Richard Neutra (*1892 in Vienna, †1970 in Wuppertal) had eight villas constructed in Europe; four in Switzerland (one of which was the only one to be built without a flat roof), three in Germany and one in France. ...
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From Start to Finnish: Architonic surveys Scandinavian design hero Tapio Wirkkala's remarkable oeuvre
With leading Finnish design brand Artek reissuing two of its fellow countryman Tapio Wirkkala's striking designs from the late 1960s and early 70s, as well as first-time-round, 'vintage' pieces of his being shown at international design fairs such as Design Miami Basel, now is the time to look back at the work of this highly productive designer, whose contribution to postwar Scandinavian design was as major as it was diverse.
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Slovenian Design
The "ISKRA: NON-ALIGNED DESIGN 1946–1990" exhibition held at the Architecture Museum Ljubljana (AML) came to an end in February. The exhibition provided an insight into the golden age of Slovenian product design, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s. Recently, a new generation of young Slovenian designers is creating a stir...
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Milan Means...
It's almost a cliché now to say that the annual Milan Salone del Mobile has become a behemoth of a design fair, eclipsing every other major show in the design calendar. (Personally, we at Architonic feel that a number of the other large design events such as Stockholm and the imm cologne have a lot going for them when it comes to relevance and business.) Given Milan's elevated status, both in real terms and in those of the imagination, we asked eight leading design practitioners what comes to mind when they hear the name of that Italian city...
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