2022 round-up: best architecture and design for a better future. Studio DRIFT’s ‘Social Sacrifice’ at the Venice Biennale, 2022 – Photos by Ossip van Duivenbode. Videos by Arjen van Eijk, Xinix Films.
Architecture & design for a better future – A memorial for the victim of the Qatar World Cup, the global response in support of women’s rights in Iran, the immense work and teaching of the first black architect to win the Pritzker Price, and more…
Women, Life, Freedom
Illustration by Mahdieh Farhadkiaei – Image via IG, follow @mahdieh.farhadkiaei.
On September 17, Mahsa Amini, 22, died after being arrested and reportedly beaten by Iran’s so-called ‘morality police’ for showing a lock of hair under her hijab. The news ignited an ongoing nationwide protest supporting Iranian women’s freedom. Artists and designers worldwide joined the protest with projects and initiatives. Cutting a lock of hair has become a symbolic act supporting the protesters’ cause. Our selection includes Iranian illustrator Mahdieh Farhadkiaei who drew a lone queen taking a pair of scissors to her hair. Read more…
Qatar World Cup Memorial
Qatar World Cup Memorial by 1week1project – image by 1week1project.
Over 6,700 migrant workers died in the construction sites of the stadiums and infrastructures built for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Such a gigantic figure inspired French Studio 1week1project to propose the conceptual evolving Qatar World Cup Memorial. The high rise is made up of concrete blocks, each representing a deceased worker. The more the number of deaths increased, the higher the tower grew. With the FIFA World Cup in full swing, the horrible figure of 6,700 deaths would have led to an impossible 4.4 km-high skyscraper. Read more…
Diébédo Francis Kéré
Léo Doctors’ Housing – Photo courtesy of Francis Kéré.
Earlier this year, Burkina Faso-born architect, educator, and social activist Diébédo Francis Kéré was the first black professional to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Nobel equivalent for architecture. Kéré is known for schools, health facilities, and professional housing built in Africa by local communities with the bare minimum of resources. “It is not because you are rich that you should waste material. It is not because you are poor that you should not try to create quality.” Said Diébédo Francis Kéré. “Everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves comfort. We are interlinked. Concerns in climate, democracy, and scarcity are concerns for us all.” Discover more about the work of Diébédo Francis Kéré.
Stronger as one
At Venice Art Biennale, in the aisle of San Lorenzo church, Studio DRIFT presented Social Sacrifice, an artificial intelligence-powered, mesmerising installation with a swarm of drones behaving like a school of fish when threatened by a predator. “Social Sacrifice is about group behavior and how, as a group, we can work together when something is menacing us [e.g., a pandemic]. At Studio DRIFT, we work on the intersection of nature, humans, and technology, and we are very interested in behaviours we can see in animals and plants. We believe we can learn a lot from them.” Read more…
The Solar Pavilion
Solar Pavilion by Marjan van Aubel and V8 Architects – Photo by ©Aiste Rakauskaite.
As part of the Solar Biennale and on show at Dutch Design Week, The Solar Pavilion by V8 Architects and Marjan van Aubel featured a swooping roof topped with 380 colourful photovoltaic tiles acting like a sun power-harvesting ‘solar cloth.’ The chair-shaped structure collected energy from the tiles and used infrared radiation to spread our star’s heat in the dark space underneath. Here, visitors could experience the poetic power of the sun. “Solar energy needs a new perspective, something more personal, which is part of our culture. It’s time for Solar design.” Marjan van Aubel told Archipanic. Read more…
LGBT+ furniture design?
For the launch of Netflix’s LBGT+ movie The Invisible Thread, the DUDE agency has created the HOM tongue-in-cheek campaign and a furniture and homeware collection specifically designed for families with same-gender parents. For example, PastaScola is a terrific colander designed to allow two dads or two mums to make pasta for their kids, thanks to practical holes and handles. The irony is that the HOM products are totally ordinary home products, which represent domestic family normalcy, no matter what the orientation of the family might be.
