Free and open to the public, the PhD program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design is pleased to invite you to the 7th annual Cambridge Talks conference, which will take place on Friday, March 29, from 9:00am to 4:30pm. This year's conference seeks to bring fresh historical themes and tools to bear on the problem of 'Architecture and the Street'. New research promises to enrich and challenge perspectives pioneered by Spiro Kostof, Jane Jacobs, and William H. Whyte. You will be challenged to critically think about questions such as 'How might we theorize and historicize modern streets as sites of cultural memory and nostalgia? And above all, what are the effects of such social, political, and technological forces on architectural form? For more information, please visit here.
Woolworth Building at Night, April 24, 1913. Library of Congress
The Woolworth Building @ 100 Exhibtion, taking place at the Skyscraper Museum in New York City until July 14, 2013, celebrates its centennial year in the process of conversion, with office space remaining below and luxury residences planned for the upper tower. Still radiant on the lower Manhattan skyline, the landmark heralds both the past and future of New York as it became the preeminent silhouette on the New York skyline and took the title of world's tallest office building in 1913 when eighty thousand incandescent bulbs illuminated the New York night. The brilliant spectacle was a career-crowning achievement for the tower's owner, the five-and-dime store king Frank W. Woolworth, who paid for the skyscraper with his personal fortune and took a hands-on role in every decision of its design. For more information on the event, please visit here.
The New York office of The Trust for Public Land recently issued an RFP for a feasibility study, framework plan, and conceptual design for the QueensWay--a potentially transformative 3.5-mile project which will enhance quality of life in central and southern Queens, New York by reclaiming the abandoned Rockaway Rail Line, a largely elevated rail corridor. The project, which includes a pedestrian and bicycle pathway connecting the communities of Rego Park, Forest Hills, Richmond Hill, and Ozone Park, will provide a new public green space, celebrating the cultural diversity of Queens with art, sculpture, and food from around the world. There is a mandatory Pre-Submittal Meeting March 28, and the proposal submittal deadline is April 23. For more information, please visit here.
Striving to provide the nation’s children with a healthy place to learn is not a new concept. As long as there have been school buildings, there have been advocates for architectural improvements to ensure that students had proper lighting, heating, and fresh air. But with the real problems of overcrowding, age, and budget crises, many green visions have fallen short. With that being said, the Green Schools exhibition at the National Building Museum, which began this month and will run until January 4, 2014, will look at several examples of what is possible—at the future that, in some places, is already here—and provide resources for all of us to consider as we look toward constructing the next generation of school buildings. For more information, please visit here.
Amateur Architecture Studio. Ningbo History Museum, 2003-2008. Ningbo, China. Photo by Lv Hengzhong.
The Architecture & Design Society at the Art Institute of Chicago is presenting the Butler-VanderLinden Lecture on Architecture featuring Wang Shu: 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate and co-founder of Amateur Architecture Studio, founded by him and his wife, Lu Wenyu, in 1997 in Hangzhou, China. They are known for a keen dedication to handicraft, a penchant for sustainable building methods, and thoughtful projects that are contextualized within Chinese culture and history. The firm’s work has been described by the Pritzker Prize jury as “timeless, deeply rooted in its context, and yet universal. The event will be held in the Rubloff Auditorium on March 28th from 6:30pm-7:30pm. For more information, please visit here.
Adopted by the City of Green Bay in 2003, the Smart Growth Plan 2022 relied heavily on the participation of the citizens of Green Bay and provides city leaders with a guide to use while assessing policy and development proposals. The city of Green Bay Planning Commission is now accepting proposals for the Downtown Green Bay Master Plan Update. The selected firm must have a deep portfolio in results-proven city planning and design projects with an understanding of the urban redevelopment process. In demonstrating competence in developing and translating context-minded plans into actionable implementation strategies, the firm must be capable of creating an exciting and supportable vision for downtown that is grounded in local opportunities and realities.The deadline for submissions is March 25. To download the full RFP and for more information, please visit here.
Duke University Law School / Courtesy of Shepley Bulfinch
As part of AIA San Francisco's continuous effort to highlight women in architecture and better understand the imbalance of gender in the profession, they are hosting two great women for a conversation on firm culture, leadership and mentorship which will take place March 19th from 6:00pm-8:00pm PST. Carole Wedge, FAIA - Shepley Bulfinch's first female President in its 130 year history- will talk with emerging designer Jessica Lane of EHDD to discuss Carole's start at Shepley Bulfinch, in 1986, working in the mailroom as a co-op architecture student at the Boston Architectural Center, as well as her appointment, in 2004, as president. For more information, please visit here.
The Applied: Research Through Fabrication exhibition which took place the first weekend in March highlighted the winning proposal of their competition, titled 'Cast Thicket', designed b yo_cy’s Ken Tracy and Christine Yogiaman. The project was exhibited at the two-day event led by internationally recognized instructors within the field of parametric modeling provided a robust opportunity for participants to be exposed to the highest level of concentrated learning possible. More images and information on the event after the break.
The National Building Museum, in partnership with the Environmental Film Festival will be showing two films related to both the natural and built environment. Taking place Sunday, March 17 from 11:30am to 12:45pm, 'Mother Nature's Child' focuses on nature’s powerful role in children’s health and development is explored through the experience of toddlers, children in middle childhood and adolescents, from Vermont to Washington, D.C. Then, on Thursday, March 21 from 6:30pm-7:30pm, 'Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line' film includes a discussion of their projects and interviews with New York City planning commissioner Amanda Burden and other civic figures. For more information on the events, please visit here.
Taking place April 8-9 at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning the 'Infrastructural Monument' Conference hosted by the Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU), focuses on the development of infrastructural research agendas and projects which is a key mission for MIT’s CAU. This conference is the first in a series, devoted to a series of strategic design challenges facing cities worldwide. The conferences challenges you to answer the question, 'Can a typical American city be transformed from a collection of fragments assembled regionally by interstate highways, to a more durable regional constitution, using targeted infrastructural investment projects?' For more information, please visit here.
On view now until April 13, is the Stamberg Aferiat + Associates designed exhibition for Frank Gehry prints and a sculpture for the Los Angeles-based artists’ workshop Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl in New York City. The exhibition celebrates architecture, a more than ten-year collaboration with the renowned architect, and their one-year anniversary in a designed space by architects Peter Stamberg and Paul Aferiat. The exhibit features a newly editioned sculpture and an enlarging of Gehry's Marques de Riscal Winery image. More images and description of the exhibition after the break.
Summarizing the philosophy and methodology of C+S Architects, the Keller Gallery at MIT Department of Architecture will serve as a new context for the work of C+S Architects. As if lifted from their Treviso, Italy studio and planted directly within MIT, a working table of models and drawings will compose the central space of the gallery, juxtaposed with the firm’s recent built works. Taking place March 14-April 10, C+S re-writes the contexts as a map of the potentialities, where to graft interferences which react with the physical, economic, social and political spheres. These interferences are frames in search for the beauty of the ordinary, open to the flowing of time, energy, people. For more information, please visit here.
The City of Orlando's Mayor, Buddy Dyer, has challenged the community to develop a plan that would transform Orlando, within a generation, into one of the most environmentally-friendly, economically and socially vibrant communities in the nation. In an effort to do so, the city is introducing the Envision 2040 competition, which aims to illustrate what the city will look like in the future. Participants are being called to visualize what Orlando, the most sustainable city in the southeast, will look like in 2040. If all the goals and objectives of the plan were implemented today, what would our city look like in the future? The deadline for registration is March 18 and the deadline for submissions is April 15. For more information, please visit here.
Currently on display at the Portland Museum of Art until May 19, 'Voices of Design: 25 Years of Architalx' showcases the power of design through an interactive exhibition featuring work of some of the world's leading architects and designers. The display, designed by architects Tim Ventimiglia and Jennifer Whitburn of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, includes a 17-foot-tall tower with three levels of images that alternately reveal themselves and disappear. A dynamic image projection will light up two sides of the tower by using projectors embedded in the interior of the tower and will feature infrared light sensors, creating touch interactivity for visitors. More images and information on the exhibition after the break.
Courtesy of the artist and Leslie Feely Fine Art, LLC.
On display at Leslie Feely Fine Art in New York from April 11 to June 30, 2013, the Frank Gehry At Work exhibition features a selection of over 30 diverse process models by Gehry, which are drawn from significant constructions and concepts of the architect’s prolific career. These organic forms, which consist of a wide array of materials, stand as testament to Gehry’s tactile approach, enhancing our perception of this sculptural architect and his work, illuminating the subtleties of Gehry’s thought—and working—process. More images and information on the exhibition after the break.
Coming up this Friday, March 8th, at the Center for Architecture in New York, the 'Beyond New York: Organic vs Geometrical Context' lecture is part of the Architecture Dialogue Committee’s on-going series to introduce the next generation of architects not practicing in New York City. For this event, they have invited Spela Videcnik from OFIS arhitekti of Ljubljana, Slovenia to share insights about architectural and urban design from 6:00pm-8:00pm. Videcnik will present OFIS’s design approach through their most recently built projects, such as the Basket Apartments (Paris) and The Cultural Centre for Space Technologies (Slovenia), and how these different geometries inform their current work. For more information, please visit here.
Architects, artists, and designers are invited to participate in the competition to Rethink the Post-Sandy Rockaway. MoMA PS1’s Young Architects program is seeking ideas for alternative housing models, creation of social spaces, urban interventions, new uses of public space, the rebuilding of the boardwalk, protection of the shoreline, and actions to engage local communities and to aid in the effort to rebuild from Hurricane Sandy. Judges will be selecting 25 proposals to be displayed on Rockaway Beach in April. The deadline for submissions is March 15. For more information, please visit here.
AIA Cincinnati, in partnership with the Over-the-Rhine Brewery District Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation, recently announced the winners of their LIVE-MAKE Industrial Arts Center Cincinnati competition. The challenged was to design a membership based facility that will feature private residences, maker-in-residence studios, light industrial studios and an open workshop that will help shape a new economic opportunity for the neighborhood. The grand prize went to Frenchman Olivier Terrisse’s scheme, whose iconic element consisted of a silvery residential loft tower rising from the rear hill over the renovated factories, whose fabric the architect cut to continue the existing street patter and to open up the spaces of the factory building. More information on the winning proposals after the break.
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