Year in Architecture 2022

John Hill
19. December 2022
Image: World-Architects

January

Ricardo Bofill in November 2021 (Photo: Charles Ganz)
In January 2022:


Selected Found: We took a virtual look inside the House of Music designed by Sou Fujimoto, which had just opened in Budapest's City Park.

Selected Insight: Madeline Beach Carey looked inside Apartment Blossom, the book by Li Han and Jin Qiuye that is "full of joy and budding with possibility."
 

February

Free the Air: How to hear the universe in a spider/web by Tomás Saraceno (Photo: John Hill)
In February 2022:


Selected Found: Tomás Saraceno inserted a 95-foot-diameter sphere (pictured above) inside The Shed in New York City.

Selected Insight: After the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC was voted by readers as US Building of the Year, we interviewed Mecanoo's Francine Houben about the project as well as other libraries and renovations.
 

March

Ukrainian flag over Dnipro in 2018. (Photo: The Presidential Administration of Ukraine/Wikimedia Commons)
In March 2022:


Selected Found: The 23rd Biennale of Sydney opened with more than 330 artworks by over 80 participants spread across various venues in the Australian city. We were drawn to the large-scale artworks in the subterranean Cutaway.

Selected Insight: Elias Baumgarten interviewed Ukrainian architect Anhelina Starkova on her experiences in Kharkiv: "I felt the greatest pain a human being can feel."
 

April

Nakagin Capsule Tower (Photo: Ryogo Utatsu/Neoplus Sixten Inc.)
In April 2022:


Selected Found: Japan-Architects curator Ryogo Utatsu sent us some photos of the Nakagin Capsule Tower (pictured above) in the days before the demolition of Kisho Kurokawa's 50-year-old Metabolist masterpiece.

Selected Insight: Ulf Meyer interviewed "poetic and pragmatic" Chicago architect John Ronan, whose Kaplan Family Institute at IIT was 2019 US Building of the Year.
 

May

Model of Town House – Kingston University by Grafton Architects (Photo: John Hill)
In May 2022:


Selected Found: Finding ourselves in Barcelona for the award ceremony for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award, we toured the EUmies Awards 2022 Exhibition (pictured above).

Selected Insight: We interviewed Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion after the duo received the EUmies Award for Town House – Kingston University.
 

June

Glenstone Richard Serra Pavilion by Thomas Phifer and Partners (Photo: John Hill)
In June 2022:


Selected Found: Kazuo Shinohara’s Umbrella House found a new home — on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Selected Insight: Ulf Meyer interviewed "Elephant Whisperer" Boonserm Premthada of Bangkok Project Studio, "Thailand’s most interesting architect." 
 

July

The model shop inside the studio of Flores Prats (Photo: John Hill)
In July 2022:


Selected Found: We highlighted 15 Summer Reads, from a pocket-sized book about Vitruvius’s De Architectura to a large-format reprint of Richard Saul Wurman's 1962 monograph on Louis I. Kahn.

Selected Insight: We visited the Barcelona studio of Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats (pictured above), a former apartment whose rooms are now packed with models and drawings.
 

August

Daigo Town Hall by Endo Architect and Associates (Photo: Neoplus Sixten Inc.)
In August 2022:


Selected Found: Japan-Architects visited the new Daigo Town Hall (pictured above) in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, designed by Katsuhiko Endo Architect and Associates.

Selected Insight: Ulf Meyer visited Kaunas, the 2022 European Capital of Culture, to learn about the Lithuanian city rediscovering its heritage of modern architecture.
 

September

Rose Center for Earth and Space by James Stewart Polshek/Ennead Architects (Photo: Photo: Ajay Suresh/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
In September 2022:


Selected Found: Ulf Meyer hiked the Minett Trail in Luxembourg, looking at some of the lodgings recently designed by young architects.

Selected Insight: Lynnette Widder delved into Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin, an intimate book that "is neither an impressionistic memoir nor a personal essay."
 

October

Model of Casa O'Gorman (1954) by Juan O'Gorman, in In Praise of Caves (Photo: John Hill)
In October 2022:


Selected Found: We visited In Praise of Caves (pictured above), an exhibition with projects by four Mexican artist–architects at The Noguchi Museum in New York City.

Selected Insight: Eduard Kögel spoke with Chinese architect Xu Tiantian of DnA Design and Architecture about her teaching concepts and design strategies for rural contexts.
 

November

Snøhetta's garden at 550 Madison (Photo: John Hill)
In November 2022:


Selected Found: Rana Begum's colorful mesh sculptures were on display at Rice University in Houston as part of the group show Urban Impressions: Experiencing the Global Contemporary Metropolis.

Selected Insight: We delved into Swissness Applied, the award-winning book that focuses its attention on New Glarus, the Wisconsin town whose downtown buildings have facades that exude Swissness.
 

December

Cover of On the Duty and Power of Architectural Criticism, edited by Wilfried Wang (Photo: Elias Baumgarten)
In December 2022:


Selected Found: We toured Eagle + West, the just-completed residential development on the waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, designed by OMA New York under partner Jason Long.

Selected Insight: Elias Baumgarten argued that architectural criticism is in a crisis but found that a new book edited by Wilfried Wang (pictured above) could bring momentum back to the discipline.
 

Wishing wonderful holidays and joyous New Years to everyone — see you in 2023!
 

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