Today’s News - Friday, February 26, 2021
EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to technical difficulties beyond our control, we were unable to post the newsletter yesterday (stuff happens). If the technology gods stay on our side, we'll be back Tuesday, March 2, and Thursday, March 4 (no newsletter next Wednesday).
● NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports that President Biden has revoked Trump's "controversial classical architecture order - it was clearly an out-with-the-new, in-with-the-old approach to architecture." Commission of Fine Arts Chair Justin Shubow: "We intend to work with the Biden administration - historically our advice is always heeded."
● Jason Sayer explains why "the axing of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's London Centre for Music should be music to our ears - no effort was made to retain the [1976] Museum of London by any of the competition submissions - what message does that send to future architects currently being taught that the climate crisis rests in their hands?"
● In advance of the Classic Planning Institute's online Traditional Architecture Gathering, Feb. 26-28, Stockholm-based founder of New Traditional Architecture Michael Diamant weighs in on how trad is faring in Europe: "A handful of very excellent projects, a much larger number of general or mediocre ones." France is "the best at traditional urbanism by far."
● Mark Alan Hewitt considers why "so many skyscrapers resemble teetering stacks of skewed boxes. Were the architects playing beer pong while building the models?" (Hood & Pelli must be "turning in their graves").
● Audrey Wachs parses Amazon's spiraling "corporate Eden" in Arlington, Virginia: "In both form and rhetoric, it taps into eco-fantasy architecture" - we can "appreciate the Helix's potential for advancing the forest-building concept, but its green intentions only distract us from Amazon's full ecological impact" (it's not good).
● Duo Dickinson: "Every young architect or student today is trapped in a shell-shocked building industry that no one can safely predict - let alone teach - how buildings will be made in a decade - it will be addressed by a new generation who cannot rely on the past to control their future."
● Wainwright uses Tim Gill's "Urban Playground: How Child Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities" to explore "ambitious child-friendly planning visions - enabling children to play freely outdoors is the sign of a healthy, liveable place."
● Meanwhile, Emma Haslett looks into "why swings are disappearing from U.K. playgrounds - potentially furthering inequities in access to outdoor recreation - repeated lockdowns have exacerbated a situation in which kids' play areas were becoming an afterthought" (Tim Gill weighs in here, too).
● Laura Raskin, on a brighter note, brings us Weiss/Manfredi and Reed Hilderbrand's plans for 17 acres of the 1,077-acre Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania that includes a 32,000-square-foot glass house and the reconstruction and preservation of Roberto Burle Marx's tropical Cascade Garden.
● Edinburgh unveils its £32m car-free plans for its historic George Street, transforming "one of the capital's most iconic streets" and a World Heritage Site into a "European boulevard" designed by Tetra Tech Architects with LDA Landscape Design (great pix & fly-through video).
● Hannah Feniak profiles "10 Black architects making history today. From established award-winners to up-and-coming talents, they are both innovative designers and powerful advocates for a more equitable AEC industry."
● Steven Heller's Q&A with Martin C. Pedersen, co-founder & editor of Common Edge, re: his website and "the power and future of architecture in the U.S.": "Despite the 21st-century baggage they lug around like an anvil, architecture and design are still capable of positive social change" - though "they have limitations - we have to be critical and skeptical of their claims as well."
● Buckminster Fuller's personal library of 3,000+ volumes is heading to Southern Illinois University, giving researchers the chance to study the former the SIU professor more closely - the "library is unique because it stayed intact and includes Fuller's notations and drawings within margins and spaces."
● ICYMI: ANN feature: Tom Marshall, AIA, LEED AP: Resurrection: Architecture Rebuilds Community Connections in Memphis: The site of a dying mall is reinvented with new public buildings and activities designed to create a critical mass of vibrancy and social cohesion.
Deadlines:
● Call for entries (no fee!): International £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize 2021: planning and design ideas that will "radically improve patient experiences, clinical outcomes, staff wellbeing, and integration with wider health and social care."
● Call for entries (international): HER PLACE Design Challenge: "innovative design proposal for a development center for girls from Nepalese municipalities to come for help, support, refuge, and education about their rights," sponsored by Building Trust International.
Weekend diversions:
● Jess Myers cheers the "expansive vision" of MoMA's "Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America": "Wouldn't it be interesting if, above even preserving and collecting, the highest mandate of cultural institutions were producing new knowledge?" The show "positions Blackness as an analytical lens through which to deconstruct - and possibly reconstruct - the built environment."
● Sertan Sanderson considers MoMA's "Reconstructions": "The idea of architecture being 'racist' might sound strange at first - after all, how can an edifice encourage division and hate? Even in the 21st century, one needn't look far to discover further instances of systemic injustice built into America's urban landscape by design."
● Soft-Firm's "Love Letters," winner of the 13th annual Times Square Design Competition, "comes alive with notes of care - from above, it resembles the shape of two intertwined hearts" - passersby can "affix colored 'wish' ribbons with their own short messages - those who can't make it in person can submit short messages via an online form."
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Elizabeth Blair: President Biden Revokes Trump's Controversial Classical Architecture Order "Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture": ...it was clearly an out-with-the-new, in-with-the-old approach to architecture...One entity that might be affected is the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts...Trump appointed one of modern architecture's biggest critics to chair the CFA: Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society...the driving force behind Trump's executive order..."We intend to work with the Biden administration...historically our advice is always heeded."- NPR / National Public Radio |
Jason Sayer: Op-ed: The axing of DS+R’s London Centre for Music should be music to our ears: Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s pyramidal project...costliest expense wouldn’t have been a financial one...[it] meant that the existing [1976] Museum of London would have to be taken down...part of the Barbican... far from being...so terrible that it deserves to be demolished...The fact that no effort was made to retain it by any of the competition submissions speaks volumes of both the architecture and art industries’ antipathy for the environment, regardless of how many declarations they sign. This isn’t to say that [museum’s] building is perfect...What a waste it would be to destroy so much embedded energy and carbon, and what message does that send to future architects currently being taught that the climate crisis rests in their hands? -- Philip Powell & Hidalgo Moya; WilkinsonEyre; Stanton Williams- The Architect's Newspaper |
David Brussat: Michael Diamant on trad in Europe: ...a connoisseur of architecture living in Stockholm and founder of the website New Traditional Architecture: A handful of very excellent projects, a much larger number of general or mediocre ones: Russia: The most creative architects...are forced by developers to be over-dimensioned, ruining streetscapes and aesthetics despite talent, creative decoration and ornamentation. UK: Excellent projects in both scale and quality, but quite boring and zero push forward. France: The best at traditional urbanism by far. Sweden: The paradox: few new projects but the best national discourse...lack of knowledge and expertise is a huge problem. -- Classic Planning Institute- Architecture Here and There |
Mark Alan Hewitt: The Scourge of the Boxy Skyscraper: Why are we seeing so many...that resemble teetering stacks of skewed boxes? Were the architects playing beer pong...while building the models? Did Rem Koolhaas try to patent a “Pruitt-Igoe in mid-explosion” concept...Zaha Hadid Architects tends to add a few curvy surfaces...to hide the boxy banalities...But why would someone like Frank Gehry...succumb to these fickle winds of fashion [in Toronto]? Alas, the trend in development is still to hire a starchitect whenever the going gets tough with city officials or art mavens...Hubris still attracts capital, and developers have some of the biggest egos on earth...It will probably take a few leaky apartments and the resulting lawsuits to steer developers away from an idea that was bad from the start... -- Cesar Pelli; Raymond Hood; Adrian Smith; Rafael Viñoly- Common Edge |
Audrey Wachs: At Amazon, Pretending to Be Green Takes a Lot of Energy: Turns out, growing trees on a tower isn’t all that sustainable: Amazon teased the Helix...its upcoming Arlington, Virginia, headquarters...a 350-foot-tall, conical tower...the extent to which it provides a net ecological benefit is up for debate. In both form and rhetoric, [it] taps into eco-fantasy architecture...But the dream of carbon-canceling headquarters often obscures the actual ecological footprint...it’s incumbent on future eco-fantasy designers to figure out how to mitigate the additional materials required to support a green landscape...While SCAPE and NBBJ hash out the design details, we should contextualize any sustainability claims...appreciate the Helix’s potential for advancing the forest-building concept, but its green intentions only distract us from Amazon’s full ecological impact. -- Emilio Ambasz; MVRDV; Stefano Boeri; Jean Nouvel; Thomas Heatherwick; Kate Orff- Curbed New York |
Duo Dickinson: The Next Generation of Architects Will Remake How We Make Things: Out of disruption and necessity will come change: Every young architect or student today is being formed in the riptides of economic, technological, and medical turmoil...new questions are making the old answers irrelevant...Into this cauldron of uncertainty, [they] find themselves trapped in a shell-shocked building industry that is evolving so quickly that no one can safely predict - let alone teach - how buildings will be made in a decade...The architectural canon...once dominant, has now been largely bypassed by the realities of professional survival...It’s a daunting prospect, and it will be addressed by a new generation who cannot rely on the past to control their future.- Common Edge |
Oliver Wainwright: Set children free: are playgrounds a form of incarceration? Play has been the invisible casualty of the pandemic...a look forward to a post-Covid world of parklets, play streets and repurposed parking spaces: ...after a year...[No. 10] finally clarified that children can use playgrounds - strictly for exercise only...Tim Gill, author of "Urban Playground: How Child Friendly Planning and Design Can Save Cities"...cites the Hackney play street... the first flowering of the borough’s ambitious child-friendly planning vision...enabling children to play freely outdoors is the sign of a healthy, liveable place - with kids acting as a kind of “indicator species” for the wellbeing of cities. -- Liza Fior/Muf; Heat Island architects- Guardian (UK) |
Emma Haslett: Why swings are disappearing from UK playgrounds: Local authorities have been dismantling the most popular piece of playground equipment, potentially furthering inequities in access to outdoor recreation: ...repeated lockdowns have exacerbated a situation in which kids’ play areas were becoming an afterthought...cities already struggle with providing equal access to green spaces...Taking away swings...cuts down on the number of people lingering, and potentially socialising...What the mystery of the UK’s disappearing swings actually symbolises, says Tim Gill, is the fact that the country’s local authorities haven’t historically taken children’s play seriously...A renewed focus on the needs of children...may change that.- City Monitor |
Laura Raskin: Weiss/Manfredi and Reed Hilderbrand Release New Plans for Longwood Gardens [Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]: The design includes a 32,000-square-foot glass house and the reconstruction and preservation of Roberto Burle Marx's Cascade Garden: ...transforming 17 acres of its botanical gardens, woodlands, and meadows...glass conservatory appears to float on top of pools and plantings...also designing a new 3,800-square-foot glass house for Brazilian landscape architect Marx’s 1992 tropical garden...team’s plan follows a historic and additive lineage in landscape design. -- Pierre S. du Pont; West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture- Architectural Record |
Watch: Edinburgh Council's £32m car-free plans for George Street: ...plans to transform one of the capital’s most iconic streets into a car-free “European boulevard”...World Heritage Site has become a car park...“We’ve got this phenomenal street of immense beauty that has been obscured"...concept design...by Tetra Tech Architects with LDA Landscape Design...will include landscaped areas with seating in place of current car parking spaces and space for play.- The Herald (Scotland) |
Hannah Feniak: 10 Black Architects Making History Today: From established award-winners to up-and-coming talents, these architects are both innovative designers and powerful advocates for a more equitable AEC industry. -- Curtis Moody/Moody Nolan; Jason Pugh/Gensler/National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA); Pascale Sablan/S9 Architecture; Kimberly Dowdell/HOK; Michael Marshal/Michael Marshall Design; Sean Canty/Studio SC; Mark I. Gardner/Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects; Tiffany D. Brown/400 Forward/SmithGroup; Steven Lewis/RAW International/ZGF Architects; Sekou Cooke- Architizer |
Steven Heller: Architecture on the Common Edge: Editor Martin C. Pedersen riffs on his website...and the power and future of architecture in the U.S.: The articles are informative, timely and inspiring...I asked him how he does it: Do you believe that architecture on the whole is a force for a better society? "Here’s where I shock myself with a somewhat optimistic answer: Despite the 21st-century baggage they lug around like an anvil, architecture and design are still capable of positive social change...They have limitations...we have to be critical and skeptical of their claims as well." -- Steven Bingler- Print / The Daily Heller |
Morris Library receives Buckminster Fuller’s books for research, study: Researchers wanting to know about former SIU professor R. Buckminster Fuller will soon have an opportunity...his personal library of more than 3,000 volumes; part of a recent donation of artifacts and furniture to the R. Buckminster Fuller Dome Not-For-Profit...with the goal of reinstalling the furnishings and library as it was in the 1960s to the dome home in Carbondale [Illinois]...personal library is unique because it stayed intact and includes Fuller’s notations and drawings within margins and spaces...- Southern Illinois University (Carbondale, Illinois) |
Call for entries (international): £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize 2021: planning and design ideas that will “radically improve patient experiences, clinical outcomes, staff wellbeing, and integration with wider health and social care; no fee (jury includes Dame Laura Lee, CEO, Maggie’s Centres & Robert A.M. Stern,); deadline: June 18- Wolfson Economics Prize / Policy Exchange |
Call for entries (international): HER PLACE Design Challenge: innovative design proposal for a development centre for girls from Nepalese municipalities to provide a safe environment for vulnerable young women to come for help, support, refuge and education about their rights; registration deadline: April 1 (submissions due April 10)- Building Trust International (UK) |
Jess Myers: Expansive Vision: "Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America" finds transformative potential in the collective: Wouldn’t it be interesting if, above even preserving and collecting, the highest mandate of cultural institutions were producing new knowledge? What if these institutions put the objects in their possession to work? "Reconstructions" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, will offer tools rather than solutions...By dropping the design-as-solution framing, Sean Anderson and Mabel O. Wilson were able to position Blackness as an analytical lens through which to deconstruct - and possibly reconstruct - the built environment. thru May 31 -- Darby English; Emanuel Admassu; Adrienne Brown; Germane Barnes; Amanda Williams; Jennifer Newsom; D.G. Kelley- The Architect's Newspaper |
Sertan Sanderson: MoMA examines role of architecture in systemic racism: America's history with racism is reflected in brick and mortar: "Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America"...The idea of architecture being "racist" might sound strange at first - after all, how can an edifice encourage division and hate? ...humans have repeatedly used design, construction and city planning to - literally - cement their prejudices, expelling the oppressed to the fringes of society...Even in the 21st century, one needn't look far to discover further instances of systemic injustice built into America's urban landscape by design. -- Sekou Cooke; Mario Gooden; Emanuel Admassu; Germane Barnes- Deutsche Welle / DW (Germany) |
Soft-Firm’s "Love Letters" comes alive in Times Square with notes of care: ...winner of Times Square Arts’ 13th annual Times Square Design Competition [formerly Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition]...on view through March 10...curvaceous form...from above, resembles the shape of two intertwined hearts...one part (socially distanced) communal public hang-out space, and one part for passersby to affix colored “wish” ribbons with their own short messages of hope, goodwill, gratitude, protest, and romantic sentiment...those who can’t make it to Times Square in person but wish to participate can submit short messages via an online form.- The Architect's Newspaper |
ANN feature: Tom Marshall, AIA, LEED AP: Resurrection: Architecture Rebuilds Community Connections in Memphis: The site of a dying mall is reinvented with an assembly of public buildings and activities designed to create a critical mass of vibrancy and social cohesion.- ArchNewsNow.com |
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