Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
Watch Abolish Everything right now! nebula.tv/abolish?ref=stewarthicks
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The A-Frame house looks like the purest image of “home”: two walls meeting in a perfect triangle. It’s ancient, familiar, and everywhere—from mountain cabins to Instagram feeds. But as a place to actually live, it’s kind of a disaster.
This video looks at where the A-Frame came from, why it exploded in popularity in the 1950s and ’60s, and what makes it so impractical today. We’ll follow its evolution from Alpine chalets and Japanese Gassho houses, through Rudolf Schindler’s experiments in California, to its rise as the ultimate American weekend cabin—cheap, portable, and easy to build.
It’s strong, efficient to construct, and beautiful to photograph. It’s also acoustically terrible, thermally inefficient, and impossible to adapt. The A-Frame isn’t really a home—it’s an icon of escape.
#Architecture #AFrame #DesignHistory #Modernism #VacationHomes #RudolfSchindler #MidcenturyModern #BuildingDesign
Special Thanks:
Evan Montgomery: Producer
Daniela Osorio Sanudo
__Membership__
Join this channel to get access to perks:
youtube.com/channel/UCYAm24PkejQR2xMgJgn7xwg/join
__About the Channel__
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
__About Me__
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
__Contact__
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/
__Attributions__
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound and includes music from Chromatic by Tom Fox
youtube.com/@chromaticbytomfox"
#architecture #urbandesign
Watch Abolish Everything right now! nebula.tv/abolish?ref=stewarthicks
Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: go.nebula.tv/stewarthicks
The A-Frame house looks like the purest image of “home”: two walls meeting in a perfect triangle. It’s ancient, familiar, and everywhere—from mountain cabins to Instagram feeds. But as a place to actually live, it’s kind of a disaster.
This video looks at where the A-Frame came from, why it exploded in popularity in the 1950s and ’60s, and what makes it so impractical today. We’ll follow its evolution from Alpine chalets and Japanese Gassho houses, through Rudolf Schindler’s experiments in California, to its rise as the ultimate American weekend cabin—cheap, portable, and easy to build.
It’s strong, efficient to construct, and beautiful to photograph. It’s also acoustically terrible, thermally inefficient, and impossible to adapt. The A-Frame isn’t really a home—it’s an icon of escape.
#Architecture #AFrame #DesignHistory #Modernism #VacationHomes #RudolfSchindler #MidcenturyModern #BuildingDesign
Special Thanks:
Evan Montgomery: Producer
Daniela Osorio Sanudo
__Membership__
Join this channel to get access to perks:
youtube.com/channel/UCYAm24PkejQR2xMgJgn7xwg/join
__About the Channel__
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
__About Me__
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
__Contact__
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/
__Attributions__
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound and includes music from Chromatic by Tom Fox
youtube.com/@chromaticbytomfox"
#architecture #urbandesign
![The Most Endangered Building in Chicago [Thompson Center by Helmut Jahn]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cxXHKNHKZ2s/mqdefault.jpg "The Most Endangered Building in Chicago [Thompson Center by Helmut Jahn]
In this video, we visit Chicagos most endangered building the Thompson Center by Helmut Jahn and discuss issues related to its preservation and impending demolition.
(Can you spot the awesome typo mid video?)
Perhaps no building in Chicago is closer to a date with the wrecking ball than the Thompson Center by the architect Helmut Jahn. While those responsible for initiating this threat cite years worth of deferred maintenance and high costs of operation as the primary reasons for their decision, these are not the real reasons for the building’s demise. It suffers from a much more lethal ailment — treating it like a normal building. In this video, Stewart explains why the Thompson Center is definitely not a normal building and offers alternative ways to evaluate it. What if we considered it to be a piece of urban infrastructure or public plaza instead? Relating the building to Rem Koolhaas’ theory of ‘Bigness’, this video builds the case that the Thompson Center should be valued for how it brings people together in space rather than its colors, or material palette, or any other normal ways of evaluating mere buildings.
3D Model Team from UIC School of Architecture: John Gritsonis, Ricardo Sandoval, Aaron Cortez, Andrew Sterniuk, Brandon Hogan, Eugenia Dittmar, Juan Reyes, Katherine Denemark, Lindsey Louisma, Masumi Thakkar, Eric Nunez, Julian Gonzalez
Explore the Space on your Device: https://api2.enscape3d.com/v1/view/bb6593b2-7fb1-41cd-82ef-89f663a4472d
Download Rhino 3D File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B6sIzAemxjq1MdxnyURZd2SlifMsVp1T/view?usp=sharing
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: https://designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/")
![Inside a Bizarre LOST House for Josephine Baker [by Adolf Loos]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f70UfPWo4eA/mqdefault.jpg "Inside a Bizarre LOST House for Josephine Baker [by Adolf Loos]
The unbuilt design of a home for Josephine Baker by the architect Adolf Loos is perhaps one of the most analyzed unbuilt homes of Modernism. Its design and history touch on a number of complex social and political issues during the early 20th century. The design comes when Josephine Baker, an African American entertainer is beginning her rise to superstardom and represents a thoroughly modern and fresh artistic voice. Meanwhile, Adolf Loos was a physically ailing man on a steep moral and social decline. The house itself was never truly commissioned by Baker, rather it lives mostly as a fantasy concocted by the architect. This video presents the house through a 3D model and narrated walkthrough to discuss how and why the house was designed and allow you to explore this unique house for yourself.
Link to explore the Josephine Baker House
https://api2.enscape3d.com/v1/view/8050d35a-a5d6-4fa8-9dd4-94c83601e341
Membership
Join this channel for access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYAm24PkejQR2xMgJgn7xwg/join
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:30 Timeline
04:06 Analysis
07:08 3D Modeling
08:03 Exploration
10:38 Takeaways
About the Channel
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
About Me
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.")
