Recently, we visited the Meulensteen gallery to hear an update on Steven Holl’s latest project in Virginia - the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Slated for completion in 2015, the project was presented in a series of Holl’s trademark watercolors and models, complete with a slideshow given by project architect Dimitra Tsachrelia who previously worked on the Glasgow School of Art for the firm. As we shared earlier, the project’s formal gestures are a reaction to its site context along the busy intersection of Richmond at Broad and Belvidere, with the intention to create an open gateway with a building that forks in the X-Y direction to illustrate the “non-linear” path of art, and torques in the Z direction to shape a dynamic volume of circulation. Although the weather was quite unforgiving, those who packed into the gallery enjoyed Tsachrelia’s friendly demeanor as she walked us through the process and progress of the project.

More about the event after the break. 

During the summer months, The Municipal Art Society will be leading over two dozen urban design and architecture tours throughout New York. MAS is a non-profit membership organization committed to making New York a more livable city through education, dialogue and advocacy for intelligent urban planning, design and preservation. Since 1956, MAS has been offering such tours as a way to share knowledge and spread appreciation for New York’s varied cityscape. The tours are conducted by architectural, urban, and art historians, urban geographers, architects, teachers and writers, and offer a way to explore historic, evolving and “renewed” neighborhoods, the waterfront and specific residential and commercial projects. The tours will explore some neighborhoods we have featured on ArchDaily, such as Gansevoort with a look at apartments designed by Asymptote, the High Line and the construction site for the new Whitney Museum of American Art. And, even older gems such as New York’s Art Deco buildings from the 1950s.

sharing the design

following the development

Ron Beit

More about the development after the break.

Our friends from Italian design firm sTARTT have shared their most recent restoration project which transforms an abandoned warehouse into a spatial urban kaleidoscope. Situated in the historic center in Porfiri of the Latina Province, the area is marked by architectonic elements from the city’s earliest foundation that now co‐exist with “inconsistent” contemporary parts of the center. In that sense, the project seeks to bring a continuity to the context, as sTARTT has envisioned a way to allow users to appreciate the historic roots of their city within a contemporary atmosphere.

More about the project after the break.

While the excitement builds for the Olympic Games this summer, London is also preparing for their Design Festival of mid-September. In a joint effort between Arup and Sound and Music, the installation at Trafalgar Square will focus on the idea of design you cannot see by creating a black rubberized portal that will transport visitors to inaccessible places and remote environments through a series of three-dimensional soundscapes created by leading musicians and sound designers. By isolating the sense of sound, visitors will be submerged in a completely new environment as they stand in one of the busiest squares in the world.

More about BE OPEN after the break.

Foster + Partners was awarded first prize for their museum design in collaboration with Adrien Gardere for Narbonne in southern France. The museum’s central collection includes more than 1,000 ancient stone relief funerary blocks excavated from a nearby archaeological site, as Narbonne’s historical past as a vital Roman port has left an impressive legacy of buildings and ancient relics. Within the new design, Foster + Partners has created a wall to insert the stones that will act as a natural barrier to separate the public galleries from the more private restoration spaces. The building will also reinforce the strong landscape connection between water and gardens due to the site’s adjacency to the Canal du Midi.

More about the museum design after the break.

Last night, dozens packed into the Center for Architecture to join the conversation among some of the most influential in our field. With the energy levels high, panelists Bjarke Ingels of BIG, Toru Hasegawa and Mark Collins of Morpholio and Cloud Lab Columbia University GSAPP, and ArchDaily founders David Basulto and David Assael, shared insight into the impact social media and technology have on our profession and the way in which we design. While the panelists all share a background in design, their differences in applying technology to their particular niche – whether to aid the design process, to collect and redistribute data, or to share information and bring awareness - fueled a dynamic dialogue that kept the crowd engaged and informed way past the closing hours of the Center for Architecture.

Read on for the story behind ArchDaily, and, if you happened to catch the event, let us know in the comments below.

Nearly two years ago, we introduced Farshid Moussavi’s first major US building – a sleek geometrical design for Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art. With its strong formal moves, the museum intends to aid the city’s urban-revitalization efforts by shaping an iconic cultural destination alongside its neighboring concentration of museums, such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. MOCA Executive Director Jill Snyder says, “We believe MOCA is contributing a great building to Cleveland, one that will stimulate critical thinking and animate social exchange. MOCA is expanding its scope and activities on all fronts, supported by new architecture that allows for flexibility, unconventionality, and technological capacity in the presentation of contemporary art.” The 34,000 sqf building is nearing completion, and a public opening will be celebrated in early October with the inaugural exhibition, Inside Out and from the Ground Up, featuring an in-depth look at how international artists engage with architecture and spatial ideas.

More about the project, including facade photos, after the break. 

Earlier this week at a meeting given by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, Frank Gehry unveiled a revamped design for the controversial Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial for the Mall at the base of Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. This redesign responds to strong family objections in which Gehry’s vision had been criticized for largely misrepresenting the strength and achievements of the former Commander in Chief (check out our previous coverage of the controversial memorial and its heated meeting on March 20 here). After being selected to design the memorial in 2010 by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, Gehry looked to highlight the President’s great achievements as a source of inspiration to children, to “give them courage to pursue their dreams and to remind them that this great man started out just like them.”

The original design featured an 80-foot high colonnade from which large metal tapestries hang, and a statue depicting Eisenhower as a youth gazing upon his future accomplishments.  To Gehry, the memorial celebrated a hero who was deeply proud of his Kansas roots and an icon children could identify with; to Eisenhower’s surviving family members, particularly granddaughters Susan and Anne Eisenhower, the design diminished the President’s accomplishments by depicting Ike as a “dreamy boy”.

More about the new design after the break.

And, we are back with our monthly updates of the Architecture Billings Index. Last month looked promising as March marked the fifth consecutive positive rating. However, April’s index has been calculated as 48.4 – a drop from March’s 50.4. The index has been a roller coaster ride of slight positive trends followed by negative setbacks, and AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, explains, “Considering the continued volatility in the overall economy, this decline in demand for design services isn’t terribly surprising. Also, favorable conditions during the winter months may have accelerated design billings, producing a pause in projects that have moved ahead faster than expected.”

More about April’s index after the break.

Greek firm, KLab Architecture, has designed a series of suites for Mykonos, one of the most popular summertime destinations (the island’s population rises from 10,000 to 50,000 seasonally). As is typical of KLab’s work (check out their Urban Cubes project previously featured), their hotel project looks to the vernacular language of island’s vocabulary and capitalizes on the environment’s relationship between the landscape and the sea, to formulate a modern interpretation of the cycladic architecture that has evolved over centuries.

More about the hotel room design after the break. 

Earlier this week, Pratt Institute extended an invitation to the ArchDaily team to attend their 123rd commencement, celebrating the achievements of 1300 bachelor’s and master’s degree candidates at Radio City Music Hall. The event also marked a special day of recognition for four honorary degree recipients: artist/curator/critic Ai Weiwei, architect, engineer and artist Santiago Calatrava, patron on the arts and education Kathryn Chenault, and the Metropoitan Museum of Art’s longest-serving director Philippe de Montebello.

We were privileged to have an opportunity to congratulate Mr. Calatrava on his doctor of architecture degree, and pose ArchDaily’s traditional interview questions.   Mr. Calatrava’s contributions to the professions of architecture and engineering can be found scattered across the world, and bring a sense of dynamism that result from the merge between art and technology, expression and functionality.

Calatrava’s charm and good humor made for a friendly conversation that we hope you enjoy.

We recently shared six conceptual visions for the transformation of Los Angeles’ Union Station. Upon the release of the vision boards, the team’s proposals (EE&K, a Perkins Eastman Company, in association with UNStudio; IBI Group with Foster+Partners; Grimshaw with Gruen; Moore Ruble Yudell Architects and Planners, with Ten Arquitectos and West 8; NBBJ with Ingenhoven Architects; and Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Parsons Transportation Group Inc.) sparked much public interest. As we reported earlier, the Metro staff will recommend a winner to the Metro board on June 28th, but in the meantime, we’d like to share a closer look at some of the proposals.

UNStudio’s proposal with EE&K imagines Union Station as a multi-modal transit hub filled with mixed use development and outdoor spaces.  The conceptual vision board explores possibilities for the station and its surrounding areas, highlighting a key integration of transportation and outdoor park spaces with its “green loop” strategy.

More about the vision board after the break.

Yesterday, Marina Abramović and OMA announced the creation of the Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (MAI) under the performance dome at MoMA’s PS 1 in Long Island City. Abramović will team with the architects to create an art, education and performance venue that will not only focus on Abramović’s performance methods, but, interestingly, on educating the public with regards to viewing and appreciating long duration performances.

Perhaps, Abramović’s name sounds familiar, and rightly so. She has wildly been hailed as one of the most progressive and devoted long-duration performers; one of her most recent New York performances took place at the MoMA where she sat completely silent, just starring at visitors for the museum’s entire opening hours. And, now, with this Institute, Abramović will be able to teach her ways to aspiring performers, and more viewers will be able to experience and appreciate her performance methods. Abramović commented, “The Institute’s aim is to protect and preserve the intellectual and spiritual legacy of performance art from the 1970′s into the future, and will serve as an homage to time-based and immaterial art.”

Danish firm, CEBRA, was recently awarded first prize for their new education center in Odense. The building explores how curved forms can penetrate and define the rectilinear confines of the 134,550 sqf school building. Soft curving levels open to floors below and provide a mixing of visual and auditory experiences in a dynamically changing environment. Moreover, such levels provide a flexible learning environment, with “the human-being placed at the center.”

More about the project after the break, including CEBRA’s awesome hand renderings.

In keeping with our coverage of the ABI, the index scored 50.4 for March, marking the fifth consecutive month showing positive conditions.