Future Cities Lab
Just off the heels of their Van Alen Institute New York Prize fellowship exhibit, The Aurora Project, Nataly Gattegno and Jason Johnson, principals of Future Cities Lab, are putting their lives back together after nearly three years on the road.

Photo © Future Cities Lab

MEx: A Design Cooperative Grows in Brooklyn
Welcome to Metropolitan Exchange (MEx) in New York City, “an architecture, urban planning, and research cooperative” where members “collaborate on architecture and planning projects, pursue development opportunities, and sponsor lectures, film screenings, and exhibitions.”

Photo courtesy Al Atarra

M1/dtw: Mixing architecture and graphics
Detroit-based architectural designer Christian Unverzagt was doing interdisciplinary work before he knew the phrase. As a skateboarding teenager in the ’80s, he says, “We had to create our own landscape, so I would design and build all these backyard ramps. And I would design all the flyers to raise money for them. I was producing a brand.”

Photo courtesy M1/dtw

Lukas Petrash’s MCD House: Trash becomes a family’s treasure
To describe the house Lukas Petrash designed and built in Huntsville, Texas, requires a certain breathless tone. MCD House cost only $24,500 to build. It measures only 484 square feet. And Petrash was only 23 years old when he finished it.

Photo courtesy Lukas Petrash

Changes at NCARB: The Six-Month Rule and other news
Are you ready for the changes at NCARB? Harry M. Falconer, AIA, director of the agency's Intern Development Program, discusses the Six-Month Rule and other new developments.

Photo courtesy NCARB

studiomake: Careful craft, from objects to architecture
Recent Cranbrook graduates David and Im Schafer are bound for Bangkok this summer, where they will launch their firm studiomake full-time. Both say their crafts education will influence architectural output.

Photo courtesy studiomake

UW landscape architecture students take on public works
The University of Washington’s landscape architecture students are putting their studies into practice with a number of non-profit projects as a part of its design build program.

Photo courtesy University of Washington

Laid off? How emerging design professionals are coping
Although this situation can’t be sugar-coated, these six emerging professionals prove that a temporary setback can become an opportunity to reevaluate life, and career path, and to accomplish goals not possible while working full time.

Images courtesy Scott Gustafson, Brian Jones and Karl-Erik Larson

Grand House Cooperative: University of Waterloo, Ontario, students built and live in it
The brainchild of Chantal Cornu, who holds an M.Arch. degree from the University of Waterloo, the $1.1 million (Canadian) Grand House Cooperative in Cambridge, Ontario was the perfect opportunity to connect people in the building trades, and give students an inspired place to live.

Photo courtesy University of Waterloo

Wesleyan University’s SplitFrame: Architecture Research Design Build
Learn about a wildlife sanctuary created by Wesleyan University's year-old design/build studio.

Photo courtesy Wesleyan University

Free Green: Giving it away
Two years ago, archrecord2 profiled Ben Uyeda as his team from Cornell competed in the Solar Decathlon. Following the competition, team members formed Zero Energy Design (Independence Energy Homes), a collaborative effort among architects, engineers, and financial experts to design green residential architecture.

Photo courtesy Free Green

Wikitecture: From clicks to bricks, avatars to architects
It takes a village to conceive architecture. Just consider Studio Wikitecture, which won Architecture for Humanity's Founders Award in the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Challenge.

Photo courtesy Wikitecture

USC’s American Academy in China takes it East
Last year, well-known Chinese architect Qingyun Ma, founder of Shanghai firm MADA s.p.a.m., moved to Los Angeles to become dean of the USC School of Architecture. Now he’s bringing USC back to China.

Photo courtesy USC

Spirit of Space: Elusive design caught on video
Two Chicago-based architecture graduates whose firm, Spirit of Space, translates architectural space into film.

Image courtesy Spirit of Space

Van Alen Institute Fellowship Program
Last year, the Van Alen Institute introduced a fellowship program, meant to support emerging architectural practitioners and scholars. As a result, the institute has become an architectural alchemist, putting together wide-ranging research interests to get at the notion of public architecture.

Image courtesy Van Alen Institute

B+U: Envisioning a city of sound
Talk about frozen music. Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu, partners in the nine-year-old, Los Angeles-based architecture firm B+U, have found a way to turn actual sound into buildings.

Photo courtesy B+U

SCI-Arc’s CHUB table
It's not often—or ever—that a boardroom table causes a sensation. At least not until architects Ramiro Diaz-Granados and Heather Flood created the CHUB table, one of the most original pieces of furniture ever for the board of directors of the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Photo courtesy SCI-Arc

DesignBuildBLUFF: Drawing on two-by-fours
In 2000, University of Utah architecture professor Hank Louis started DesignBuildBLUFF, a lab that gives students the opportunity to create functional and beautiful houses on the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation.

Photo courtesy SCI-Arc

Situ Studio: Finding connections without limits
Situ Studio is a self-described “research, design, and fabrication firm,” and its five partners, who met while studying architecture at Cooper Union in New York City, emphasize the variety of their work. This approach allows the firm to work on diverse projects, such as analyzing the topography of a crater in India while fabricating a lobby installation for Kohn Pedersen Fox.

Photo courtesy Situ Studio

Teaming with larger firms serves opportunities
Eight-and-a-half days is barely enough time for most people to get over jet lag when traveling, but for a group of nine students from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., it's a period of intense work in far-flung locations such as Nepal, Machu Pichu, or Ireland.

Photo courtesy DDA

Spirit of Place: Students go global
Eight-and-a-half days is barely enough time for most people to get over jet lag when traveling, but for a group of nine students from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., it's a period of intense work in far-flung locations such as Nepal, Machu Pichu, or Ireland.

Photography courtesy Spirit of Place