Today’s News - Wednesday, October 5, 2011
• World Monuments Fund 2012 Watch List announced: ancient to Modern, and everything in between (great presentations).
• In Miami Beach, the "starchitects are back in town" with "striking, even mold-breaking new buildings" that include an "escalating designer-garage arms race" (Hadid's resembles "those old figure-eight Hot Wheels tracks" - with a pix to prove it).
• Wainwright weighs in on OMA's Maggie's Centre Gartnavel in Glasgow that (though not perfect) "willfully subverts expectations" by melting "unassumingly into the background": "It is the disappearing icon!" + OMA/AMO takes center stage at the Barbican Art Gallery.
• Fortmeyer digs deep into the growing "fetish for fabrication" in "digitally sophisticated" L.A. (particularly what's going on at SCI-Arc).
• Dvir tries to fathom why Tel Aviv is determined to destroy a 1963 "gem" just "to add a few centimeters to a sidewalk that is already wide."
• It's a PoMo vs. Modern vs. Classicist kind of day:
• King postulates that that the discarded fad (a.k.a. postmodern architecture) could be "the Next Big Thing," though he doesn't think "the revival will stick."
• Brussat almost broils about ICAA's upcoming Reconsidering Postmodernism conference: "Why? I could think of a hundred more useful topics. Why not a conference examining the future of contemporary classicism and strategies for promoting it?" Or why are so many so "hostile to any classical revival?"
• His spirits should rise over news that the ICAA has just launched the Beaux-Arts Atelier, with "a rogue band of architects in a retrograde venture: teaching a new generation how to draw and paint the elements of classical architecture" (no computers allowed - ever).
• Olsberg & Hobhouse tackle "architectural anxiety" when it comes to work on paper, "at once a stimulus and a torment" - a drawing "is the construction of arguments, not of buildings."
• Bernstein looks into the burgeoning trend in architecture centers spreading across the U.S.
• UC Berkeley students use a blighted Berkeley lot to "question how architecture can affect change in public spaces and create a link between research and community.
• Marsh gets Balmond to explain the ideas behind the "tangled and lofty mass of pipes" that is the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower: "a metaphor for the way people build up opinions and judgments...coupled with episodic observations" (that explains a lot - or not).
• Call for entries: Architecture at Zero international open ideas competition for urban zero net energy (ZNE) buildings + Coworking Building/CoB Madrid 2011 international student competition: Designing 21st-century workspaces.
• We couldn't resist: the mayor who used a tank to run over illegally parked luxury cars in Vilnius, Lithuania, receives the Ig Nobel Peace Prize (which honors achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think").
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World Monuments Fund 2012 Watch List announced: ...places that mean the most to people are threatened by neglect, demolition, or disaster. -- Gordon Bunshaft/Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/SOM (1954); Jehangir Framji Karaka/coal brokers (1915); Benjamin Mountfort, (1800s); Dom Paul Bellot (1911) [links to info, images]- World Monuments Fund/WMF |
Star architects rolling into Miami Beach: After just a brief lull...the starchitects are back in town...demonstrate how skilled designers can devise striking, even mold-breaking new buildings while fitting in with the old. It’s a rare art, they say, that...planners have grown increasingly successful at...fostering, through a combination of tight urban regulation and a liberal approach to design. Foster + Partners; Raymond Jungles; Zaha Hadid; Herzog & de Meuron; Enrique Norten/TEN Arquitectos; Arquitectonica; Frank Gehry [slide show]- Miami Herald |
Maggie’s Centre Gartnavel: OMA willfully subverts expectations at its Glasgow Maggie’s Centre, which melts unassumingly into the background...bucks the trend for formal novelty and signature styling...It is as if a Case Study House has been chopped up into chunks and redeployed across the site in a scrambled cloister. By Oliver Wainwright -- Charles Jencks; Rem Koolhaas/Richard Hollington/Ellen van Loon [images, video]- BD/Building Design (UK) |
"OMA / Progress": London’s Barbican Art Gallery to host exhibition on Koolhaas's OMA and its research unit AMO...will explore the radical conceptual, formal and material qualities in the built work...to coincide with the opening of OMA’s first two buildings in the UK...6 Oct 2011 – 22 Jan 2012- BD/Building Design (UK) |
A Fetish for Fabrication: In digitally sophisticated Los Angeles, the Southern California Institute of Architecture's new Robot House ups the ante...five robots might not be people, but they may well populate the next frontier of digital design. By Russell Fortmeyer -- Testa /Weiser; Greg Lynn; Gehry Partners; 2ndwnd; FreelandBuck; Knowhow Shop; Jason Payne/Hirsuta; Ball-Nogues Studio; Buro Happold [slide show, links]- Architectural Record |
Back to the Future / Closing the book on a building without a chapter: B'nai B'rith may not be as popular as it once was, but Tel Aviv should appreciate the gem it left behind...it must be asked why the city is determined to destroy a building of such high standard instead of converting it into something else. And why the building has to be destroyed so as to add a few centimeters to a sidewalk that is already wide. By Noam Dvir -- Yitzhak Yehoshua Gvirtzman (1963); Shulamit and Michael Nadler; Shmuel Rozov; Shmuel Mestechkin; Gidi Bar-Orian [image]- Ha`aretz (Israel) |
Postmodern architecture poised for revival: ...it's time for trend-setters to proclaim that the discarded fad is the Next Big Thing...Honestly, though, I don't think the revival will stick...Style is essential to architecture...But content and cultural impact count for more than clever wrapping. If that's what we've learned in the past 40 years, then we're moving in the right direction. By John King- San Francisco Chronicle |
A classical conference on Reconsidering Postmodernism: Why?: I could think of a hundred more useful topics. Why not a conference examining the future of contemporary classicism and strategies for promoting it? ...why so many schools of architecture, architectural historians, historical preservationists and architecture critics are hostile to any classical revival? By David Brussat -- Institute of Classical Architecture & Art/ICAA; Tom Wolfe; Robert A.M. Stern; Andres Duany; Michael Graves; Stanley Tigerman; Witold Rybczynski; Robert Adam; Thomas Gordon Smith; Vincent Scully; Paul Goldberger; Robert Campbell; Charles Jencks; Demetri Porphyrios- Providence Journal (Rhode Island) |
Sketching Out A New Course For Architects: ...a rogue band of architects is engaged in a retrograde venture: They're teaching a new generation how to draw and paint the elements of classical architecture...with nothing more than pencils and paints on paper. No computers. Ever...at the just-launched Beaux-Arts Atelier... -- Richard Cameron; Institute of Classical Architecture & Art/ICAA- Wall Street Journal |
Work on paper, part III: Architectural anxiety: It is sometimes on paper that the challenge from the past — at once a stimulus and a torment — is revealed most starkly. In a drawing...It is the construction of arguments, not of buildings... By Nicholas Olsberg & Niall Hobhouse -- William Butterfield; HT Cadbury-Brown; Carlo Marchionn; Mies van der Rohe; Armando Brasini; Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine; Basil Spence; James Wines/SITE; Charles Moore; Cedric Price; etc. [images]- BD/Building Design (UK) |
Building Architects’ Centers to Capture Public Attention: ...the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village has expanded again, inspiring other projects across the country...A similar center is expected to open in Boston in November, under the auspices of the Boston Society of Architects/BSA. By Fred A. Bernstein -- Rick Bell; Andrew Berman Architect; Rogers Marvel Architects; Höweler + Yoon- New York Times |
Urban think tank: UC Berkeley’s Department of Architecture student visions for blighted Berkeley lot: ...spent the summer working on bold and unlikely proposals...“an opportunity to investigate the relationship between public discourse, architecture, and ideology"...encouraged to question how architecture can affect change in public spaces and create a link between research and community. [images]- Berkeleyside (California) |
Olympic landmark goes into Orbit: ArcelorMittal Orbit is a tangled and lofty mass of pipes that intrigues some Londoners and appalls others...Cecil Balmond explains the ideas behind what could soon become one of the UK’s most internationally recognised landmarks...a key part of the thinking...was to be “radical and different...a metaphor for the way people build up opinions and judgments...coupled with episodic observations." By Peter Marsh -- Anish Kapoor- Financial Times (UK) |
Call for entries: Architecture at Zero international open ideas competition: seeks creative and feasible approaches to urban zero net energy (ZNE) building; cash prizes; deadline: November 28- AIA San Francisco / PG&E ZNE Pilot Program |
Call for entries: Coworking Building/CoB Madrid 2011 international student competition: Designing 21st-century workspaces foucsing on collaborative approaches, flexibility, connectivity, accessibility, sustainability and energy efficiency; cash prizes; registration deadlines (save money): October 15 - December 16; submission deadline: January 20, 2012- Arquideas (Spain) |
Celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative: 2011 Ig Nobel Prize winners announced: ...to honor achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think"...Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, who ran over illegally parked luxury cars with an armored tank received the Ig Nobel Peace Prize.- Gizmag (Australia) |
You Survived Part 2: Mapping the Path to your Next Project and a More Predictable Workload: It is essential to establish a specific, easy, and brief Go/No Go decision process, allowing you to quickly determine where to invest limited marketing resources. By Michael Bernard, AIA, and Nancy Kleppel, Assoc. AIA- ArchNewsNow |
When a Train Rumbles Past this Recording Studio, Nobody Hears It: SubCat Studios, Syracuse, NY, has rapidly established itself as a catalyst to rebrand and revitalize the city's core. -- Fiedler Marciano Architecture [images]- ArchNewsNow |
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EASTERN design office: Three Houses: Keyhole House; A House Awaiting Death; Mountain Opening House. Three poetic residential projects in Japan by architects Anna Nakamura and Taiyo Jinno. |
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