An architect’s tool of choice for visualising designs is not important, says Aaron Betsky, as long as the effects of time and use on the finished creations are considered during the process. Who cares whether you use a pen, a pencil, or a stylus? Quite a lot of people. Over the last few years, I
The post “It makes no difference whether you draw with Rhino or a Pelikan” appeared first on Dezeen.
Whether for client meetings or the silver screen, architectural renderings that sell fantasy need to be grounded in ambitions for improving the world, rather than sugar-coated versions of reality, says Aaron Betsky. The last embers of a campfire glow by the shore of a river, meandering towards us from a waterfall overshadowed by mountain peaks
The post “Renderers: if can’t show us where we are, show us where we might go” appeared first on Dezeen.
New York’s plans for replacing Rikers Island jail will require input from design’s brightest minds if the buildings are to integrate with the neighbourhoods, and conditions for inmates and staff are to improve, says Aaron Betsky. It seems as if New York will actually do something smart about one of the biggest blots on its
The post “New York’s new prisons will be more than just places of incarceration” appeared first on Dezeen.
Aaron Betsky examines the emergence and popularity of Jenga-style towers and pixelated buildings around the world, and hopes that future examples don’t tumble into mediocrity. They rise up in pumps and jumps, pushing in and out of the sky while they teeter on bases that seem too small for the pulsations of the shaft. No,
The post “Jenga architecture proposes the unstable, the tentative, and that which tends to dissolution” appeared first on Dezeen.
Walmart’s textureless surfaces are intended to look as cheap possible. But surely, mulls Aaron Betsky, even a little tactility could improve the stores and other similar spaces without breaking the bank. Texture is a class thing. The more money you have, the more texture you get. The reverse is true of lighting and sound: the
The post “Could architecture and design do anything to alleviate ‘walmartism’?” appeared first on Dezeen.
The cohesive core of Casablanca, Morocco, is unmatched by few city centres and shows how modernism can be used to its full potential on a large scale, says recent visitor Aaron Betsky. At the corner, the white box fractures. A bay window at the base, framed with stone, in the floors above turns into an
The post “Casablanca presents one of the best models of modernism” appeared first on Dezeen.
Published in partnership with The Greenhouse Talks, the following essay by Aaron Betsky examines limbo spaces and the opportunities presented by these ambiguous areas.
In the spaces where we wait, tarry, or just while away the time, the strictures and structures of good architecture dissolve. In the waiting rooms at airports, government bureaucracies, or doctors’ offices, in the places to where we escape to do little to nothing, and in the cocoons we create by using either the latest technology or ancient meditation techniques to come to ourselves, boundaries dissolve. We spend more and more of our time in such spaces. They are the purgatory between the hell of everyday reality and the seamless heaven of virtual social space—or the other way around. What is the architecture of such not-quite-free spaces, and how should we design what is meant to fade away? What do such spaces tell us about the future of architecture?
Postmodernism proponents Terry Farrell and Adam Nathaniel Furman should broaden their range of influences and definition of the style to help the controversial architecture movement remain relevant, says Aaron Betsky. Revisiting Postmodernism, a rereading of that particular movement by pomo prince Terry Farrell and young pretender Adam Nathaniel Furman is, like its subject, a strange
The post “Revisiting Postmodernism is a careening joyride through 20th-century architecture” appeared first on Dezeen.
North American cities are fiercely vying to secure Amazon’s second headquarters, but will the retail giant really improve the culture and infrastructure of the area it finally chooses? Aaron Betsky doesn’t think so. As the competition for the second Amazon headquarters heats up and the Republican’s war on cities intensifies, we have to wonder whether
The post “Will Amazon’s HQ2 actually be good for whatever city wins the race?” appeared first on Dezeen.
If sprawling desert metropolises like Phoenix, Arizona, are going to survive an increasingly scorching climate, they will require a different kind of sustainable urbanism than typical cities, says Aaron Betsky. Is Phoenix doomed to fall back into the ashes? In his 2015 book, The Water Knife, the author Paolo Bacigalupi imagines a future Valley of
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