Places are brands that are made up of collective memories and ever-changing stories. Exploring how place-brands are used and what they can tell you about the built environment.

the universe in a nutshell

“Home is where you hang your hat.”

Closets and storage spaces are not only utilitarian. We use them, yes, to store utilitarian things; but we also use them to store things we keep near and dear, whether they be books, crafts, photographs, old letters, clothes, trinkets, or souvenirs. Things that we couldn’t imagine living without, things that make us who we are.

Seeing a complex object as a single line requires us to compress the object’s visual information and allows us to see what lines and edges differentiate it from the rest of the world, while maintaining eye contact with the subject limits improvisation and eliminates pressure to make ‘good’ or realistic art.

Ice suggests that split second of instability, the shock of almost losing connection to the ground. Or dare say, we slip.

Hanghar is an architecture practice led by Eduardo Mediero. Only two years out of architecture school, Hanghar already boasts a short (but entirely impressive) list of built work, all of them interiors located throughout Spain. Interior renovation projects provide Hanghar with exciting opportunities to experiment with materials and material assemblies without the legal structures present in the construction of architecture from scratch (aka buildings)… but it’s not without its own obstacles, many of which Hanghar solves over WhatsApp.

Around the world, valuable natural resources are running out. As a result, more and more designers are looking into ways to repurpose waste or abundant resources into more sustainable materials..

Ephemera can become an external hard drive, storing and preserving moments in time otherwise likely to disappear.

Exploration of the role of branding in urbanism efforts and appreciation of the unbranded projects in our streets.

Undoubtedly, we have all spent more hours at home this past year than normal. Spending more time in our homes, with less stimulus, distraction, and rush, has provided the opportunity to slow down and to appreciate and connect more with our immediate environment. I look forward to 2021 in hopes that it brings the day in which we can finally emerge from our WFH lives, but whenever that day comes, I look especially forward to emerging as different humans than those that withdrew. Humans with a deeper sense of shared humanity and appreciation for the little things like the passing of light across a room.

Easy enough, right? All I needed was for nothing to go wrong.

Jesse Hammer and her studio practice and online-store, Puuuulp, are difficult to categorize, so I won’t try to. Trained as an architect, Jesse has always found a way to use her representational skills to design and make non-representational objects that are so colorful, you might just want to eat them. Her sources of inspiration range from Ron Nagle, Miranda July, 90’s horror television series (PG rated), and sometimes even… Jello. Jesse’s ability to flow in and out of architecture allows Puuuulp to appeal to audiences beyond those we are typically used to, but looking to non-architecture studio practices has also helped her turn Puuuulp into a profitable business

A maker? Sure. A researcher, a designer, an engineering intern? Absolutely. But never an artist.

Musings on branding and urban planning

The divisions between labor and leisure are, in my room, one in the same.

As a SMArchS AD, I am currently interested in designing “real” things, rather than representational things that may or may not come into existence. Previously, my MArch thesis at the GSD was interested in conceiving of architecture beginning to end - that is, designing and simultaneously making architecture ourselves. However, this interest inherently means buildings are out of the question, and questions of fabrication and construction begin to surface. This episode introduces topics like “real” construction taken on by architects themselves, how objects smaller than building begin to to take on architectural meaning, and how we might learn to build ourselves by looking at other disciplines, like sculpture.

“in so many ways the collaboration is amazing because no one is going to get what they want”

On the warmth and frigidity of street furniture, and how objects take on roles in enforcing social norms of use in space. An uncomprehensive bench tour of East Cambridge.

What if in the near future, a new generation of products is grown by microbes, instead of using materials as we find them?

The Singaporean Shophouse: An Interpretation