Insta-Insta-Insta: Instagram Inspiration

Gone are the days of taking trips to local photo centers and developing the enigmatic negatives from the family camera, only later to return and open that familiar yellow envelope unveiling each 4x6 glossy moment. Today the ‘need it now’ paradigm, as in most processes of to the digital revolution, has transformed photography into a medium as accessible as pen and paper (maybe even more so). Following the introduction of smartphones, capturing and sharing our life became as easy as the touch of a screen.

Generous Pragmatism: A Feature in Kansas State University's OZ Magazine

In their introduction to the book, Nurture, about BNIM’s work, authors Rodolphe el-Khoury and Andrew Payne spoke about the emergence of a new pragmatism in contemporary architecture, a concern with “how well buildings perform in response to the full range of social and ecological issues they are called on to organize.” They described the practice as “Generous Pragmatism,” or the notion that “what a building can do matters just as much as what it looks like.”1   Since then, we at BNIM have adopted this notion as one way to both speak of and, more importantly, critically think about

The Starting Point (Cloud)

Recently, BNIM and a team of collaborators* began work on the renovation of Kansas State University’s Seaton Hall, home of the school’s architecture department. When an architecture firm begins work on an architecture school, it’s a daunting task to be sure. Unlike other projects, these schools represent the future of our own profession and bring back memories of our education. The building an architect learns within inevitably has an effect on them as they progress towards, and later join, the world of architects.