For those of you currently experiencing the heat of summer, we provide you with this special pool of images where water plays a significant role in the architecture. Continue after the jump to view ten various projects that will refresh your minds during this warm season.
In response to Tennessee being currently ranked as the fourth most obese state in the U.S., the Nashville Civic Design Center has launched Designing Action in an attempt to pursue alternative ideas that will promote active lifestyles and help transform Nashville into a healthier city. Designing Action seeks to re-imagine a 75 acre industrial site along Downtown Nashville’s Cumberland River and envision ways in which infrastructure can promote active lifestyles and increase quality of life for all of Nashville’s citizens.
The registration deadline is set for July 27th, 2012. Continue reading for more information.
In the spirit of the museum’s 25th anniversary, Director Josef Helfenstein has announced Los Angeles-based Johnston Marklee as the architects for the Menil Drawing Institute (MDI) – the Menil Collection’s first major expansion initiated under the ambitious master plan designed by David Chipperfield Architects. Once completed, MDI will be the first freestanding facility in America dedicated to modern and contemporary drawing, and one of the most advanced in the world. Johnston Marklee was selected over David Chipperfield Architects, SANAA and Tatiana Bilbao.
“Johnston Marklee has proposed an approach that sensitively and ingeniously addresses the challenges of accommodating the vital yet inherently delicate medium of drawing,” Josef Helfenstein stated, as reported by Your Houston News. “The firm understands on the deepest level the distinctive role that MDI will play as a focal point for the entire campus, giving us an approach that will serve this important collection and elevate the future experience of the Menil as a whole.”
Continue reading for more.
Today, Krueck+Sexton Architects principle Thomas Jacobs, AIA, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce in an effort to urge Congress to eliminate two impediments facing small architecture firms as they compete for government contracts. Jacobs argues that high design-build fees and lengthy “final teams lists” are prohibiting small firms from competing.
Continue after the break to read more.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute has announced “The Living Building Challenge” as winner for the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Dubbed “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge annually awards a $100,000 prize to support the on-going development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s must pressing issues.
A quote from the 2012 Jury Statement: “Deeply rooted in ecological design principles, The Living Building Challenge successfully shows how humans and their built environment can be harmoniously, benignly integrated within ecosystems. Above all, its rigorous standards and daringly innovative, revolutionary approach to building are already having a considerable impact on the thinking of designers and architects around the world, influencing all levels of design and technological approaches, radically pushing forward the field.”
New York practice Thomas Phifer and Partners have unveiled their design for the new 100,000 square foot North Wing expansion at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. The state of the art, “energy smart” building will provide the ideal interior environment for preserving the Museum’s unparalleled collection of glass art through natural lighting, an intelligent building envelope and sophisticated temperature and air quality controls. The $64 million North Wing is scheduled for completion in 2014.
Continue after the break to learn more about the North Wing expansion.
Mid-March brought the destruction of an important 1970s building that symbolized the experimental nature of industrialized housing that became popular after World War II as an effort to meet the economic demands of reconstruction. Known as the “experimental building of SIRH”, the eight storey abandoned structure was created by sixty prefabricated modules that served as a prototype for the SIRH Process – a construction process that experimented with the idea of prefabricating flexible standard living cells that could be easily assembled on site in a unlimited amount of configurations to provide for affordable individual or collective dwellings. This process was designed by French architect Claude Prouvé – son of the illustrious French architect, designer and metal worker Jean Prouvé, who is widely known for successfully and beautifully transferring manufacturing technology from industry to architecture.
The experimental building of SIRH, along with many other 1960s and 1970s structures, remains largely under-explored. Due to a spontaneous mobilization of architects, students and researchers in January 2012, the SIRH building has been documented and photographed in detail before it was demolished in March. Starting Thursday, June 7th, the Maison de l’architecture Lorraine will be hosting a fascinating exhibition that will display this documentation and explore the innovative process and prototypes of Claude Prouvé.
Continue reading after the break to learn more!
Watch Profile of Robert A.M. Stern on PBS. See more from Architect Robert A.M. Stern: Presence of the Past.
National Building Museum and Metropolis Magazine contributor Andrew Caruso takes you “inside the design mind” of three prominent figures in the 9/11 rebuilding process with this recent interview conducted at the 2012 AIA National Convention.
Heroic. Contemplative. Grieving. Victorious. The rebirth of the former World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan has engendered significant public reaction and reflection. With implications as complex as they are profound, it is not surprising that it has taken more than a decade to heal the urban scars of September 11, 2001.
I had the rare opportunity to sit down with three architects working on the site, Santiago Calatrava, David Childs, and Daniel Libeskind, at the recent American Institute of Architects convention in Washington, D.C., where they were honored along with four others, as “Architects of Healing.” We discussed their experience of reshaping one of the most culturally significant sites in the history of the United States.
Arising from the historic town fortifications, David Chipperfield Architects’ new Musée des Beaux-arts is situated on the periphery of a long green space in between the old and new parts of Reims, France. The Gallo-Roman gate and the modernist market hall, located in its vicinity, are evidence of Reims’s architectural history from antiquity to modern times. Clad with marble slabs and glass ceramic panels, the translucent Musée des Beaux-arts building shares a site with an excavation area filled with mediaeval findings.
Continue reading to learn more about the Musée des Beaux-arts.
Since it’s opening on May 22, the Tokyo Skytree has already experienced an overwhelming amount of visitors. As reported by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the 634-meter (2,080 feet) structure has surpassed the previously tallest communications tower, Canton Tower in China, by 34 meters. The Tokyo Skytree took four years to construct and is double the height of Japan’s 333-meter Tokyo Tower.
Tokyo Skytree’s name and design concept is described by the developer as, “The creation of city scenery transcending time: A fusion of traditional Japanese beauty and neo-futuristic design”. Continue reading for more.
The London Festival of Architecture is a city-wide celebration of architecture and architectural talent in the UK capital. It brings architects and communities together to examine how we make London a better place. The theme of the 2012 Festival – ‘The Playful City’ – responds to the presence in London of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
If you happen to be wandering around Los Angeles, New York City or Washington D.C. this weekend, download the pilot AIA Broadcastr App and transform yourself into a multimedia tourist. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is forming a partnership with Broadcastr to create an app that offers in-depth building information, exclusive interviews with architects and a vast library of narratives from local professionals that reveal the stories and facts behind buildings of architectural significance based on your location.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected the 10 recipients of the 2012 Housing Awards. The AIA’s Housing Awards Program, now in its 12th year, was established to recognize the best in housing design and promote the importance of good housing as a necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit and a valuable national resource.
Continue after the break to view the 2012 recipients.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family has released their thoughts on the latest design changes proposed by Frank Gehry that were released in May. Most changes were “positive and welcomed” by the family, however they remain unhappy with the metal tapestries that surround the memorial. Gehry appeased the families concerns with the memorials original focus on the Kansas roots of Eisenhower by replacing the carved images on the stone reliefs with two sets of 9-foot statues that depict Eisenhower as a World War II hero and president. These statues join the remaining life-sized statue of Eisenhower as a boy, which remains in the center of the memorial.
More about the family’s response after the break.
