Architects: The Latest Architecture and News

Part I – Part II – Part III

National Building Museum and Metropolis Magazine contributor Andrew Caruso takes you “inside the design mind” of architect Steven Holl.

This year, the American Institute of Architects conferred its highest honor – the AIA Gold Medal – upon Steven Holl. I had the opportunity to talk with Steven about his sources of inspiration, a mid-career enlightenment, and his recent recognition as one of the most celebrated “American” architects.

Andrew Caruso: Balancing your practice with teaching and art is clearly a part of the designer we know you to be. How do these explorations shape your design point of view?

Steven Holl: Every project is unique: a site and a circumstance, a culture, a climate, a program. All of these forces are unique and you need a concept to hold the manifold pieces together, an idea that makes the project significant in its place and for its purpose. That is always the way I begin projects.

Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Provost Alan Cramb announced today the appointment of Wiel Arets as the new dean of the IIT College of Architecture. Born in the Netherlands, Arets, an internationally acclaimed architect, educator, industrial designer, theorist, and urbanist, is known for his academic progressive research and hybrid design solutions. He is currently the professor of building planning and design at the Berlin University of the Arts. His architecture and design practice, Wiel Arets Architects, has multiple studios throughout Europe and its work has been nominated for the European Union’s celebrated ‘Mies van der Rohe Award’ on numerous occasions.

Arets, who was dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam from 1995-2002, will join IIT this fall and will lead an academic program originally shaped by the vision and work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Considered by many to be one of the founders of modern architecture and design, Mies chaired the IIT architecture program from 1938-1958 and designed the IIT Main Campus, home to many of his iconic structures including S.R. Crown Hall.

Continue reading for more. 

Raimund Abraham (1933-2010), who would have turned 79 today, was far from your typical architect. A striking figure – usually sporting a black fedora, thick moustache, and cigar – Abraham was a radical thinker who believed passionately in the sacred importance of architecture.

For Abraham, architecture existed just as legitimately in the mind as on the ground; as he put it: “I don’t need a building to validate my ideas.” In fact, many of his visionary drawings were exhibited as art, including in the MOMA. Although most of his designs were never actually built, those that were gained critical acclaim.

He was best known for the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City, a 24-story, “guillotine-like” building curiously squeezed onto a plot only 25 feet wide. Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton called it “the most significant modern piece of architecture to be realized in Manhattan since the Seagram Building and the Guggenheim Musuem of 1959.”

To celebrate this great mind, we present you his final work, Musikerhaus (House for Music or Musician’s House), as photographed by Thomas Mayer. The House, a former NATO missile base turned artists’ residence/exhibition gallery (you can see the latest exhibition “The Reality of the Unbuilt” in the photos below), will be completed next year.

More photos & quotes, after the break…

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Luis Barragán was a formally trained engineer and self-trained architect. He is known for his emphasis on color, light, shadow, form and texture. In 1980 he received the profession’s highest honor – the Pritzker Prize. This video gives a brief overview of the prominent Mexican architect and his work.

In April, Black Spectacles filmed a discussion with Stanley Tigerman and the AIA Chicago Education Knowledge Committee revealing an intimate look at Tigerman’s 60+ years in the profession in his own words. The discussion is guided by a series of questions from the audience that send Tigerman into stories from his experiences, his attitude towards the profession today, technology and ethics.

Read on for key points from the interview after the break.

The AIA sat down with famed architect Frank Gehry - recipient of the 2012 Twenty-five Year Award - to discuss his eccentric Santa Monica home that has enormously influenced both theory and practice over the last 25 to 35 years. In the late 1970s, Frank Gehry transformed an existing Dutch colonial home in a quiet Southern California neighborhood into a controversial symbol of deconstructivism by surrounding it with an unconventional new addition. As the AIA describes, “The exposed structure, chaotic fusion of disparate materials, and aggressive juxtaposition of old and new communicate a sense of real-time formal evolution and conflict, as if the building were dynamically, violently creating itself with found objects.”

Our friends at Dwell have shared with us their short film featuring the legendary Michael Graves inside his beautiful Princeton home in which he created out of a disused warehouse. In the film, Graves shares the discoveries he made when renovating his house and thoughts about his career, his practice and universal design.

The film was directed and edited by Gary Nadeau. Continue after the break for the complete list of credits.

Marcel Breuer, born in Hungary in 1902, was educated under the Bauhaus manifesto of “total construction”; this is likely why Breuer is well known for both his furniture designs as well as his numerous works of architecture, which ranged from small residences to monumental architecture and governmental buildings. His career flourished during the Modernist period in conjunction with architects and designers such as founder of Bauhaus Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

In 2009, Syracuse University’s Special Collection Research Center recieved a National Endowment for the Humanities grant with which it began creating the Marcel Breuer Digital Archive. The digital archive, available online, is a collaborative effort headed by the library and includes institutions such as the Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Harvard University, the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of East Anglia, and the Vitra Design Museum. It is in the first phase, which includes Breuer work up until 1955, of digitzing over 30,000 drawings, photographs, letters and other related material of his work.

More about Marcel Breuer’s career and the archive after the break.

As we have shared with you earlier, CNN’s The Next List has profiled the young, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Originally aspired to be a cartoonist or graphic novelist, Ingels quickly became fascinated with architecture when a Fall storm rolled through his hometown in North Copenhagen, knocking over trees and leaving him a surplus of lumber. It was then that he was inspired to design his first project, the ultimate childhood “fantasy fort” with a moat, drawbridge and all. In Ingels first experience with value engineering, he quickly learned that “unless you really begin with the perimeters of reality you’ll end up sort of amputating your ambitions quite quickly.” Enjoy the video and be sure to check out CNN’s recent video focusing on the bold ideas behind BIG.

We had the incredible opportunity to interview Winy Maas, the M in MVRDV, one the most influential contemporary practices, which has been able to push the boundaries of our field in different scales, from buildings to master plan, from construction to theory. In this interview Winy shares interesting thoughts on the role of the architect and how he runs this design/research practice.

Beijing-born architect Ma Yansong has become an important, emerging voice to a new generation of architects. Shortly after establishing MAD architects in 2004, his practice earned worldwide attention (2006) by winning an international competition to design a residential tower near Toronto, expected to be completed in the summer of 2012. In this interview with Studio Banana TV, Yansong discusses a few of his latest works, including MAD’s first museum completed last year in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. Continue reading for more information.

Toshiko Mori, FAIA, founder and principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, discusses her work, including the Darwin D. Martin House Visitors Center. The lecture begins with a 15 minute documentary “A Girl is a Fellow Here: 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright”, produced by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.

In 1995, Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza packed a few changes of clothes, some poetry books and a single sketchbook as he set forth to Peru. These few items were all he needed to record and interpret his voyage, allowing him to integrate his investigations into his architecture. More than a half a century earlier, Peruvian photographer Martín Chambi ventured into the peaks of Macchu Picchu were he captured a famous series of portraits of the ancient Inca ruins. His project was more political, it acted as a re-appropriation of the site by its locals, but the tools of Chambi and Siza are the same: the production of images to define a reality.

The Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) presents Alturas de Macchu Picchu: Martín Chambi – Álvaro Siza at work – an exhibit featuring thirty-five original sketches by Álvaro Siza alongside the historic 1920s photographs by Martín Chambi, now on view at in the CCA’s Octagonal Gallery until April 22, 2012. Continue reading for more information.

+ 14

Tonight in Brooklyn, New York – Architect, alumnus and longtime Pratt Architecture Professor Theoharis David, FAIA, will deliver a lecture which will be introduced by visionary architect Lebbeus Woods reflecting on David’s 43 years as a teacher through the work of his former students, many of whom have gone on to become accomplished architects and teachers. The lecture will be followed by an opening reception for “Built Ideas: A Life of Teaching, Learning, and Action,” an exhibition of models, photos, and concept drawings by David that will be on view at The School of Architecture through March 30. The Pratt’s Department of Exhibitions are also presenting “An Architect Drawing,” an exhibition of drawings and texts from David’s architectural experiences through September 28.

Tonight’s lecture is open to the public; however please note that seating priority is reserved for members of the Pratt community at 5:30PM and members of the public will be admitted at 5:50PM. Continue reading for more information.

+ 8

RIBA President Angela Brady discusses design in 2012 with British architect Richard Rogers. Together, they discuss the important issues surrounding housing and cities, both agreeing that “intensification is critical”. Homes built within a compact city are said to be five times more efficient than those built outside the city. This realization is an important fact that should guide government officials, builders and architects to work together towards more intelligent and beneficial growth patterns.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN’s “The Next List” features the bold and innovative ideas of Bjarke Ingels, focusing on the West 57th project that is transforming Manhattan skyline. Ingels states, “In the big picture, architecture is the art and science of making sure that our cities and buildings fit the way we want to live our lives.” The video also features comments from Robert A. M. Stern, Dean at Yale School of Architecture, and Douglas Durst, the developer of West 57th. Check it out!