California: The Latest Architecture and News

This year is looking positive for women in the architectural field in San Francisco. As The Architect’s Newspaper reported, the city just sent out an RFQ to firms for its “as-needed work” list, a procedure which happens every three years.

The University of California, Berkeley just announced that they have chosen to work with Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design the new Berkeley Art Musuem + Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA). The site of the new museum is a crucial component for connecting the Berkeley campus while also activating the downtown arts and commerce districts.

Yesterday, architect William McDonough and chemist Dr. Michael Braungart launched their Green Products Innovation Institute, Inc. , an addition to their Cradle to Cradle Movement® (C2C). This new non-profit organization is focused on being a valuable resource for all consumers, and ultimately, will help people achieve a higher level of environmentally safe and healthy products. The driving force behind the movement is that through the innovation of “redesigning products and ingredients to become nutrients, and enabling old products to become the raw material for new goods and services” a cycle of reusing elements will eliminate waste.

Access to Trestles, one of North America’s most celebrated waves, is under threat due to safety and environmental concerns. Currently, over 100,000 people each year follow informal trails through marshlands and over active train tracks to gain access to the surf breaks at Trestles. These impromptu manmade paths present a safety hazard with passing trains and threaten the fragile ecosystem of Trestles.

In response, a coalition of concerned groups organized by the volunteer non-profit organization Architecture for Humanity, are launching “Safe Trestles,” an open-to-all, two-stage design competition to create a safe pathway to serve surfers, the local coastal community and day visitors to San Onofre State Beach.

For more information on submission and requirements, click here. Watch a video after the break.

The Tafoni Floating Home is a conceptual project from designer Joanna Borek-Clement. The primary goal is to change the attitude towards living on a houseboat and promote a lifestyle that limits disruption of the environment. Tafoni is spacious, yet compact. Typical houseboats have low ceilings and often feel cramped, which can detract from comfort many residents desire of their homes. In contrast, even though Tafoni has a relatively small floor plate, it is spacious because of the high ceiling and the minimal amount of full-height interior partitions.

The partial-height sculptural walls divide the space visually and increase the interaction between people without limiting views. Tafoni is a multi-purpose living pavilion that serves as a permanent house, a weekend retreat, a relaxing summer destination or a place to entertain friends and hold business parties. In the current era of overpopulation and decreasing greenfields, building houseboats is a solution we should consider. More after the break.

wHY Architecture has shown us their expertise on cultural projects at different scales: the Grand Rapids Art Museum (the first LEED Gold certified museum) on the large scale in one side and the Royal/T Gallery on a smaller scale, among other cultural projects shown on their website.

And now they share with us a cultural project on the infrastructure scale that I had the chance to see when I visited their office early this year, which got green light and enters construction phase in 2010: the Art Bridge.

The project is located over the Los Angeles river and it’s very related to it, as most of its structure will be built from trash salvaged from the river itself. This project will achieve what many have been looking for, and that is to reconnect with the river that crosses LA. And I think that it will make it.

You can also watch our interview with Yo-ichiro Hakomori from whY Architecture, filmed at Postopolis! LA earlier this year.

Project description and more images after the break:

The Frontier Project, located in Cucamonga, Southern California, is a 14,000 square foot demonstration building that will educate all in the community about the latest information, technologies and approaches regarding environmental friendliness. The project will make resident consumers, commercial builders, and sustainable advocates aware and informed of the alternative building methods to encourage sustainability. HMC Architects’ building will not just be something for visitors to look at and admire; rather, the building will become more of a learning experience as visitors are welcomed into its spaces and sustainable strategies are pointed out with their importance explained. “Everything from material and plant selection, the layout of space, and the maintenance regime will have a purpose, demonstrating the principle of green design for home owners, consumers, contractors, design professionals, sustainability advocates and the general public,” explained the Frontier Project founders.

More about the demonstration building, including a video and images, after the break.

HOK‘s Los Angeles office, with Parsons Brinckerhoff, was just announced the winner for the ARTIC (Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center) in Anaheim, California. This new transit center, featuring a high-speed rail network, will update Anaheim’s public transportation system and ignite further development in the city. “We’re getting the critical infrastructure in place where you can actually envision a day in the future where you can reliably get around without a car,” added Todd Osborne, vice-president at HOK.

More about the ARTIC transit center after the break.

Our friends from XTEN Architecture just sent us one of their latest projects. The Saphire Gallery is a residential gallery addition to a private residente in Los Angeles, California. It is designed to display a private collection of contemporary art while also providing for a home office with views to the sorrounding hills.

More images and architect’s description, after the break.

Eric Owen Moss Architects designed a multi-media tower which will sit at the primary entrance of the re-developed zone in Culver City, California. The objective of the tower is to distribute art and other relevant content to the local and in-transit audiences passing by the site.

Further project description and more images after the break.

NBBJ just revealed their latest design for UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, slated to begin February 2010 and be completed just in time for the 2012-2013 basketball season. Upon UCLA’s decision to renovate the existing Pavilion due to its strong sentimental value, NBBJ’s design includes new lobby and concourse space, as well as new facilities for the athletes and additional seating for fans.

Project description and more images after the break.

University of Southern California’s School of Architecture presents Border Architectures 2000-2008, a lecture by colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti.

wHY Architecture shared with us an interesting project for a house in Hollywood, a series of spaces contained by a single stripe, alternating between open and closed.

Read more about it:

Postopolis! is an architecture blogging event that started in 2007, hosted by the Storefront for Art and Architecture, as a collaborative event by Inhabitat, Subtopia, City of Sound and BLDGBLOG.

Our green friends at Inhabitat just featured a stunning new development set to break ground this month that will convert a desolate disused sand mine into a thriving environmental preserve and eco-resort. Replete with living walls and a five acre green roof, the development boasts an impressive list of green design elements and is working towards LEED Platinum certification. Now, saying that you’re the “Greenest Eco Resort” is quite a claim, but if the Resort builds out all that they have promised, it really will be the most environmentally friendly resort in the US, and possibly in the world.

Paris / NY based architects PLANDA designed this house based on the cover of Cross, the album by the french band Justice, by inserting a residential program on the iconic shape of the Cross. The Cross is placed on a cliff at Santa Catalina island, California.

More after the break.