a city of mirrors

In the public eye, the success of architects is inextricably connected to the scale and number of buildings they have erected. Monumental architectures are the most obvious kind of legacy. However, in the fight against climate change and ecological devastation, theoretical plans for the future have often contributed more than immediately attainable ones. Paolo Soleri’s 1969 book, “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man”  is filled with incredibly complex plans for buildings that were never built. Despite this, Soleri significantly contributed to the world of climate change design by expanding the public consciousness, demonstrating the importance of architectural storytelling when advocating for a greener future. Climate change media is often judged by its relevance to the modern day. Yet, the transformative societal shifts that must happen in order to prevent climate disaster necessitate a lack of “practicality” when imagining climate solutions. Solari himself saw only one pat...

  Credit: Rick Guidice/NASA      One of the things that has always interested me about design history is tracing back the threads that made the modern world what it is today. There is something fascinating about reading the façade of a building and tracing back its features to a long-forgotten art movement, or listening to the story of how curb cuts came to be on the podcast 99% Invisible (https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/). However, it is easy to get so lost in the historical design decisions that changed everything to realize that choices of a similar magnitude are being made every day. And one area that I believe will change the future is the design of living spaces beyond Earth.     Designing on Earth means designing buildings that fit into the patchwork quilt of the built environment. It means designing within a societal structure that has existed for tens of thousands of years. This can be beautiful- there is something poetic abou...

  © Dover Publications      All across Europe, scrolling vines and metal flowers weave across iron railings and carved doors . Art Nouveau is a movement that is often associated with a brief moment in the past. Yet, if one looks closely, is it clear that Art Nouveau continues to influence and inspire the present and future of the design world.       Originally, Art Nouveau was meant to be the style of the future. Its swirling, vining forms twined through the most forward-thinking architectural works of the time, from the Eiffel Tower cafe to the spires of La Sagrada Familia. It was like it suddenly sprouted from the pavement of the most avant-garde cities of the age. Contrary to this first impression, there was an unseen web of factors behind the popularity of Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau exterior of the Pavilion Bleu, a cafe that was located on the Eiffel Tower site for the 1900 World's Fair      Like every design movement, Art Nouv...

    Once I observed a spaceship building, I couldn't stop seeing them . The Miller Outdoor Theater (above) is aimed directly upwards, poised delicately on a grassy slope like a paper airplane of steel. It is a dream of the future, a form that wouldn't look out of place soaring through the void in a sci-fi.      While this theater is a particularly dramatic example, I began noticing that buildings constructed in the sixties often pointed directly upwards in sharp, angular lines.       What were they reaching for?      This is a question that sent  me into a rabbit hole of architectural research. It all leads back to the sixties.     The sixties began with the first man going to space, and ended with the first astronauts setting foot on the moon. Suddenly, space was a place of strange and infinite worlds that existed beyond the imagination. It was a decade defined by dreaming of far away stars.  So perhaps it ...