Today’s News - Tuesday, February 25, 2020

●  Pacheco reports on the passing of visionary architect Yona Friedman 96, "known for his imaginative paper architecture visions that blended Metabolist, High-Tech, and Futurist tendencies to envision massive technological tapestries that brought a certain type of utopian urbanism to life."

●  Flint tours Foster's Masdar City in Abu Dhabi: "Beacon of hope, feeble experiment, or fig leaf of green for one of the world's leading polluters? [It] is made for walking. The problem is, there aren't many pedestrians to enjoy all the friendliness."

●  O'Sullivan parses Paris mayor's plan for a "15-minute city" in "a radical overhaul of the city's mobility culture - it's an idea that other cities are likely to watch with great interest."

●  Kamin on Chicago's slow-walking building code changes to allow mass timber construction: The city "is known worldwide [for] structural innovation. But when it comes to having examples of this latest design trend within its borders, it is a follower, not a leader."

●  Snyder parses why and how a new generation of architects in Paraguay has made it "an unexpected locus for architectural innovation - scarcity and isolation have allowed them to produce an awe-inspiring architecture of poverty, made from affordable materials and archaic technologies cobbled into structures of acrobatic grace and defiant imagination."

●  Goody Clancy's Ferriss makes the case that without a new understanding of Net Zero that includes embodied carbon, the profession will not hit its critical 2030 goals (embodied carbon reduction strategies included).

●  Miranda crunches LACMA's debt-load numbers and compares them to 7 other arts institutions - it doesn't look great - "Zumthor's complicated building isn't making things any easier."

●  Lubell on LACMA's "teardown bug. But Zumthor's plan is a return to an outmoded form of architecture and urbanism" - LACMA's strength is that it's more like a "vibrantly messy" city. "What if the museum combined the best of old and new? Why not preserve its boisterous, jumbled, urban feel?"

●  Davidson sees "a bittersweet success" in L.A.'s "beguiling idea" to "reshape" Crenshaw Boulevard "to set down a marker of blackness in a zone that is gradually changing complexion - it's difficult to disentangle the processes that are raising people up from those that are pushing them out."

●  Cep takes a deep - and fascinating - dive into efforts to preserve African-American history, and the activists and preservationists who are "helping communities identify 'adaptive reuses' that can lead to an afterlife - preservationists in communities of color have become more creative about what constitutes conservation."

●  13 notable NYC projects designed by black architects, and how "groups like NYCOBA/NOMA have worked to shine a spotlight on these pioneering creatives who've left an indelible mark on New York's built environment."

●  Holder on Raleigh, North Carolina's decision to dismantle its Citizen Advisory Councils that critics say "function largely as a stronghold for NIMBYs" - a new Office of Community Engagement will "develop new forms of participatory democracy," part of a "nationwide effort to reimagine CACs - and what should take their place."

●  Sisson says "public meetings are broken - outsized power of those who espouse an anti-development, NIMBY mentality is a national issue" - and parses what some cities are doing to get things right.

●  Walker & Lange make the case that competitions "to fix everyday urban issues create spectacles instead of solutions" - ideas that have worked elsewhere don't need to be juried or prototyped. "They just need to be done."

●  Finch bemoans the architectural world becoming "infected by the message bug" when it comes to awards. "The moment you start arguing that a project should be premiated because it is by a small practice/woman/BAME/LBGTQ+ architect is simultaneously insulting to the 'minority' and destructive of the whole idea of architectural excellence."

●  ICYMI: ANN feature: Bloszies' Left Coast Reflections #6: Charrette: The word has evolved and taken on a new meaning. Some Beaux-Arts terms have retained their original meanings - "atelier" is often used as a pretentious substitute for office.

Winners all:

●  Adjaye and Guo-Qiang win the 2020 Isamu Noguchi Award, given to those who "share Noguchi's spirit of innovation, global consciousness, and commitment to East/West cultural exchange."

●  Eyefuls of the winners of the ArchDaily Building of the Year 2020 Awards, who "are a reflection of the vast outreach of the profession."

●  Eyefuls of the two 2020 City of Dreams Pavilion Competition winners - alas, .because of "time, space, and fundraising constraints," only one will be assembled on NYC's Roosevelt Island this summer.

●  AIA announces the recipients of the 2020 Young Architects and Associates Awards (our congrats to all!).

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To subscribe to the free daily newsletter click here Obituary by Antonio Pacheco: Visionary architect Yona Friedman, 96: ...the Hungarian-born French Jewish architect who helped develop the concept of "mobile architecture" in the 1960s and 70s...He is widely known for his imaginative paper architecture visions that blended Metabolist, High-Tech, and Futurist tendencies to envision massive technological tapestries that brought a certain type of utopian urbanism to life...Later, he expanded this notion to the urban scale "Spatial City" (Ville Spatiale) concept... He worked with the UN and UNESCO to create disaster and self-built housing...always pushing toward his concept of the Utopies Réalisables, or "feasible utopias."- Archinect Anthony Flint: What Abu Dhabi’s City of the Future Looks Like Now: At the UN’s World Urban Forum...attendees toured Masdar City, the master-planned eco-complex designed to show off the UAE’s commitment to sustainability: Beacon of hope, feeble experiment, or fig leaf of green for one of the world’s leading polluters? [It] is made for walking...a pocket of Greenwich Village-style urbanism...The problem is, there aren’t many pedestrians to enjoy all the friendliness...the entire utopia is little more than one full city block in Midtown Manhattan. There’s no shame in starting small to demonstrate feasibility...But current reality keeps imposing in jarring ways. -- Foster + Partners- CityLab (formerly The Atlantic Cities) Feargus O'Sullivan: Paris Mayor: It's Time for a '15-Minute City': In her re-election campaign, Mayor Anne Hidalgo says that every Paris resident should be able to meet their essential needs within a short walk or bike ride: ...leading a radical overhaul of the city’s mobility culture...would require a sort of anti-zoning...mixing as many uses as possible within the same space challenges much of the planning orthodoxy of the past century...“hyper proximity"...is driving many of the world’s most ambitious community planning projects...As a rethink of the way cities should be planned - and exactly who they should serve, and how - it’s an idea that other cities are likely to watch with great interest.- CityLab (formerly The Atlantic Cities) Blair Kamin: Nearly 150 years after the Great Fire, the city steps, gingerly, into innovative ‘mass timber’: Wood is having a moment in the world of architecture. Other cities...are going all-in...the biggest reason behind the surging interest in the material may be its perceived environmental benefits...Chicago’s building code...barely cracks open the door to the material...Chicago is known worldwide [for] structural innovation...But when it comes to having examples of this latest design trend within its borders, [it] is a follower, not a leader. -- Korb + Associate; Carol Ross Barney; cross-laminated timber/CLT; Todd Snapp/Mark Walsh/Perkins+Will; Michael Green Architecture; DLR Group- Chicago Tribune Michael Snyder: Paraguay’s Response to Modernist Architecture? Clay, Mud and Timber: A new generation...is devising daring structures that celebrate natural materials, push for eco-consciousness - and argue for a more democratic future: ...daring, low-cost buildings...have made [it] an unexpected locus for architectural innovation...scarcity and isolation have allowed...architects...to produce a national vernacular...an awe-inspiring architecture of poverty, made from affordable materials and archaic technologies cobbled into structures of acrobatic grace and defiant imagination...[It] now finds itself at the international vanguard not in spite of its late arrival to modernity but because of it. -- José Cubilla; Javier Corvalán/Laboratorio de Arquitectura; Lukas Fúster; Solano Benítez/Gloria Cabral/Gabinete de Arquitectura; Jenaro Pindú; Javier Rodríguez Alcalá; Ramiro Meyer; Taller E; Viviana Pozzoli/Horacio Cherniavsky/Equipo de Arquitectura; Francisco Tomboly & Sonia Carisimo- New York Times T Magazine Lori Ferriss/Goody Clancy: The New Net Zero: Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. The design and construction industry has responded to this challenge...However, we are...not seeing the whole picture...practices must be dramatically and immediately reshaped to drive down emissions associated with all stages of a building’s life...in order to meet critical global climate goals...By rethinking our approach to building materials and life cycle carbon, the built environment can become an asset in combatting climate change rather than a liability.- BSA - Boston Society of Architects/AIA Carolina A. Miranda: Can LACMA afford its massive re-design? A look at the numbers: Michael Govan responds to critics who say...Peter Zumthor-designed complex will leave the museum swimming in debt. With demolition just weeks away, we look at LACMA’s...current debt load: Govan says...fears are wildly overblown...there is still the question of the museum’s existing debt, and what it might mean to add even more...LACMA’s total debt...almost $443 million...does raise a red flag on the issue of additional debt...Zumthor’s complicated building isn’t making things any easier. -- Greg Goldin; Joseph Giovannini; William L. Pereira & Associates; Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer- Los Angeles Times Sam Lubell: LACMA caught the teardown bug. But the architectural cure isn’t a bulldozer: DS+R's careful approach [to MoMA] is quite the opposite of Peter Zumthor’s plan...His building is a return to an outmoded form of architecture and urbanism...[it] is just a building. The strength of LACMA...is its complexity; it’s more like a city, and a vibrantly messy one at that...a true urban environment, not a newly manufactured one...What if...the museum combined the best of old and new? Why not preserve its boisterous, jumbled, urban feel? MoMA and LACMA...both contain outdated thinking about the city around them. -- Diller Scofidio + Renfro; William L. Pereira & Associates; Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer; Renzo Piano; Bruce Goff; Michael Govan- Los Angeles Times Justin Davidson: L.A.’s Beguiling Idea: An African-American Arts Destination: In South Los Angeles - formerly known as South Central - Destination Crenshaw will be an elevated park amid the traffic arteries: ...to reshape...Crenshaw Boulevard, into a place where people want to linger, take pride, and spend money...construction is about to start on...an optimistic, uncertain stretch of public art, parks, plazas, and memorials...to mix pragmatic, cultural, and even spiritual commitments - to set down a marker of blackness in a zone that has gradually changing complexion...upcoming groundbreaking a bittersweet success, because the same accomplishment that can help anchor a fragile community might also wind up memorializing it...it’s difficult to disentangle the processes that are raising people up from those that are pushing them out. -- Zena Howard/Perkins & Will; Studio MLA- New York Magazine Casey Cep: The Fight to Preserve African-American History: Activists and preservationists are changing the kinds of places that are protected: The struggle over the physical record of slavery and uprising in Richmond, Virginia, is part of a larger, long-overdue national movement to preserve African-American history. Of the more than 95,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Place...only 2% focus on the experiences of black Americans...part of the work...involves helping those communities identify “adaptive reuses”...that can lead to an afterlife that not many would recognize as preservation...preservationists in communities of color have become more creative about what constitutes conservation. -- Brent Legg/African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund; National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP)- The New Yorker 13 notable NYC projects designed by black architects: ... in recent years, groups like NYCOBA/NOMA have worked to shine a spotlight on these pioneering creatives...who’ve left an indelible mark on New York’s built environment...from museums to memorials to apartment buildings. -- David Adjaye; J. Max Bond, Jr./Davis Brody Bond Aedas; Rodney Leon Architects; Roberta Washington; Percy C. Ifill/Ifill Johnson Hanchard; Vertner Woodson Tandy; John Lewis Wilson, Jr.; Sarah Caples/Everardo Jefferson/Caples Jefferson; Yolande Daniels/StudioSUMO- Curbed New York Sarah Holder: Raleigh Wants to Raze and Rebuild the Community Meeting: Facing a housing shortage, the North Carolina city is dismantling its Citizen Advisory Councils, which have shaped development decisions since 1974: ...critics have long complained that the councils function largely as a stronghold for...NIMBYs...progressive lawmakers...voted to dismantle the CAC system entirely...require the city to...create an Office of Community Engagement to develop new forms of participatory democracy...nationwide...effort to reimagine CACs is part of an often painful conversation about how community meetings enable restrictive policies, and what should take their place...“This isn’t about taking things away - this is about doing it better."- CityLab (formerly The Atlantic Cities) Patrick Sisson: Public meetings are broken. Here’s how to fix them: Neighborhood planning is governed by a biased, unrepresentative system: ...public meetings we hold today...haven’t shifted very far from that original [1630s] format. Sadly, that includes the part about older, white males, especially homeowners, tending to have outsized power...the overrepresentation...of those who espouse an anti-development, NIMBY...mentality is a national issue...Officials need to convince people their voices will actually be heard...architects and designers need to connect with the community before such an event to truly claim they have community buy-in. -- Sara Aye/Greater Good Studio; Damon Rich/Hector- Curbed Alissa Walker & Alexandra Lange: Design competitions won’t solve your city’s problems: Contests to fix everyday urban issues create spectacles instead of solutions: New York City’s American Idol for garbage is the latest in a long string of efforts by city leaders to jury, select, study, brand, pilot, and prototype shiny branded solutions to urban problems instead of picking a perfectly serviceable solution already in existence...city competitions end up ignoring what the public might actually need...with the most outrageous entries generating the most publicity...Ideas that have been proven to work elsewhere don’t need to be juried...They don’t need to be prototyped. They just need to be done.- Curbed Paul Finch: Awards should be about excellence, not messages: Giving prizes to social housing in Norwich at the expense of Grimshaw’s London Bridge triumph shows how the architectural world has become infected by the message bug: Look at the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the Bloomberg headquarters won the Stirling Prize...By contrast, happiness all round when...Norwich Goldsmith Street council-housing...won the Stirling in 2019. Plenty of architects have told me they did not think this scheme should have won...but would never dare say so in public for fear of being branded as enemies of social housing...The moment you start arguing that a project should be premiated because it is by a small practice/woman/BAME/LBGTQ+ architect is simultaneously insulting to the ‘minority’ and destructive of the whole idea of architectural excellence.- The Architects' Journal (UK) David Adjaye and Cai Guo-Qiang Win 2020 Isamu Noguchi Award: ...annual prize given to those who “share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, global consciousness, and commitment to East/West cultural exchange.” -- Adjaye Associates- Artforum Winners of the ArchDaily Building of the Year 2020 Awards: Highlighting a wide range of interventions, typologies, scale, material and locations, the winners are a reflection of the vast outreach of the profession. -- REM'A; COBE; Studio KO; gad; Kengo Kuma & Associates; MUDA-Architects; Aires Mateus; Sou Fujimoto Architects + Nicolas Laisné + OXO architects + Dimitri Roussel; BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group; X+Living; SelgasCano; Safdie Architects; John Pawson; El Sindicato Arquitectura; Marc Mimram- ArchDaily Two winning designs selected in the 2020 City of Dreams Pavilion Competition: "The Pneuma" by Los Angeles-based Ying Qi Chen and Ryan Somerville and "Repose Pavilion" by Brooklyn-based architect and educator Parsa Khalili...envisioning a temporary gathering place while also considering the environmental impact of their designs and the full life-cycle of their materials...time, space, and fundraising constraints only allow for one design to be assembled on New York City's Roosevelt Island this summer, the choice ultimately fell on "The Pneuma." -- Karpf Khalili Architects; WAZEONE; FIGMENT; ENYA; AIANY; SEAoNY- Archinect AIA selects recipients for the 2020 Young Architects and Associates Awards: Young Architects Award honors individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers...Associates Award is given to individual Associate AIA members to recognize outstanding leaders and creative thinkers for significant contributions to their communities and the architecture profession.- American Institute of Architects (AIA) ANN feature: Charles F. Bloszies: Left Coast Reflections #6: Charrette: The word "charrette" has evolved and taken on a new meaning - one that belies its origins. In 19th-century Paris, charrettes were not at all collaborative. Some Beaux-Arts terms are still used in architectural parlance, and many have retained their original meanings - "atelier" is often used as a pretentious substitute for office.- ArchNewsNow.com

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