Month: April 2019

Reading all aROUND

For those of us who like books, who like to read, who like to look at pictures in books, well we have a place for you to go round. It is in Glasgow Scotland, and it is a round “Reading Room” (a kind of library space) that makes you feel good just to sit in. […]

Wrapping up a Building

Artist Christo is going to wrap another huge structure in fabric. This time it will be the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. And it will take A LOT of fabric. And A LOT of rope. Specifically, it will take 270,000 square feet of a polypropylene fabric and 22,965 feet of red rope. It will be […]

1000 Phone Face

In the Galaxy phone headquarter store in Shibuya, Japan, Samsung used 1000 phones to create a lighted facade, or building face. Tokyujin Yoshioka is the designer of the facade and the idea was to program each phone so that it would blink and light up and create a kind of light show. The phones extend […]

Got Milk? Or a Milk Crate Shelter?

Wow. Someone sure must have liked drinking milk. A LOT of MILK! A few years ago, a group of LAU (Lebanese American University) students used ordinary milk crates and zip ties to build an emergency shelter. These milk cartons are the same ones you can find anywhere in the world. Why milk crates? Milk crates […]

A Minty Tiny House Project

Sometimes you might want to build a project about space that is small and simple. In this case, if you can get your hands on a bunch of mint tins or candy tins, you can create some sweet little spaces. For instructions on making a teeny tiny doll house out of a metal mint tin, […]

Who Moved My House?

A few years ago, in Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago, lived a house that was designed by John Van Bergen, a colleague of Frank Lloyd Wright. The house in in the design of the Prairie School, a style that you can identify by an emphasis on horizontal lines, large overhanging eaves on the roof and […]

Point me to This Building

Artist Steve Messam enjoys making sculptures that live in buildings. Often, he takes structures that are falling down or in ruins and adds inflatable pieces to them to create quirky and unusual art/architecture works. This “Pointed House” is located in Mellerstain House, Gordon, Berwickshire. Scotland He describes this work with the pointed roof here: ” […]

Color Geometry on Buildings

Sometimes you see a mural or painting on a building that makes the difference between a drab or uninteresting structure and something worth remembering. Spanish artist, Okuda San Miguel, uses geometric shapes and bright colors to create huge murals to bring buildings to life. Okuda is from Spain and has painted murals around the world, […]

Newhouse Competition for High Schoolers!

The Chicago Architecture Center invites Chicago area high school students to participate in the 2019 Newhouse Architecture + Design Competition. The deadline for registration is Thursday, April 25th! Areas to apply to include graphic design, photography, model making, advanced architecture and fine arts. This is a well-known competition. It is an excellent opportunity to learn […]