Architect: bittonidesignstudio
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Project Team: Mark Bittoni, Ross Jeffries, Salomé Reeves
Client: Private
Structural Engineer: C.W. Howe & Associates
Area: 185.8 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Eric Staudenmaier Photography
At the beginning of the summer we visited SYNTHe, a urban rooftop garden designed and built by professor Alexis Rocha (I/O Platform founder) with SCI-Arc students.
The SYNTHe project is a 3,000sqf structure located on the top of The Flat, a mid rise residential building in downtown Los Angeles, and its the first green garden approved by city official. The idea of this “green blanket” over at the top of the building is to reduce the building heat gain, reduce storm water waste (80% is captured and used for irrigation) and to establish a sustainable plant ecosystem that collaborated with air pollutants filtering. It also reclaims the rooftop area from HVAC, ventilation and fire control systems, giving a new terrace for the users of the building.
Inside this blanket, 1,500sqf are dedicated to the production of edible plant species, and we had the chance to taste them at the restaurant during lunch, very good. The species planted include:
Architecture/Landscape/Interiors presents the 2009 Donghia Designer-in-Residence Lecture by David J. Lewis and Marc Tsurumaki, Principals of Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis (LTL). LTL is an innovative, award-winning architecture partnership founded in 1997 by Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki and David J. Lewis, located in New York City.
LTL actively pursues a diverse range of work, from large-scale academic and cultural buildings to interior architecture to competitions. LTL’s approach is to realize inventive solutions that turn the very constraints of each project into the design trajectory, exploring overlaps between space, program, form, budget and materials.
Founding partners Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki and David J. Lewis are also widely respected for their contributions to design education. Paul Lewis is an Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Princeton University School of Architecture. Marc Tsurumaki is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Columbia University. David J. Lewis is an Associate Professor at Parsons The New School for Design, where he directed the Master of Architecture Program from 2002-2007.
The lecture and reception will take place next 24 September and are free and open to the public, at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) 250 S.Grand Ave, L.A 90012. From 7:00pm till 9:30om. Seating is first-come, first-served. Please call (310) 665-6867 for more information on the lecture, or Architecture/Landscape/Interiors Department.
Sander Architects was awarded first place with their design for the IPAC, a new performing arts center for Idyllwild Arts Academy, one of the country’s top three feeder high schools for the arts. Situated in the mountains outside Los Angeles, the IPAC rests on one side of the site, with the empty space forming a “new green quad at the heart of campus”.
More about the IPAC after the break.
The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the downtown Los Angeles-based architecture school known for its progressive thinking and innovative design, is pleased to announce the fall 2009 schedule for lectures, talks and exhibitions. SCI-Arc hosts renowned architects and other practitioners in the fields of Architecture and Design from around the globe to discuss current theory and practice.
Guests include architects Toshiko Mori, Preston Scott Cohen, and Alejandro Zaera-Polo, landscape architect Laurie Olin, graphic designer April Greiman, and writer and theorist Eugene Thacker, among other notable figures. Exhibitions include deegan day design: Blow x Blow, investigating cinematic projection and architecture as installation, and Jean-Pierre Hébert: Drawings as Thoughts, conceptual digital drawings based on computer-driven language.
See the complete list of lectures and exhibitions, after the break. read more »
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. read more »
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. read more »
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.
Architect: Standard
Location: West Hollywood, Los Angeles, USA
Architect in charge: Jeffrey Allsbrook
Constructed Area: 223 sqm
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Benny Chan
L.A. based practice Standard sent us this 167 sqm concrete and wood passive solar house on the top of a hillside in Los Angeles.
A few weeks ago we had the chance to visit L.O.H.A. and interview Lorcan O’Herlihy in Los Angeles.
We visited Lorcan because we were very interested on his recent housing projects, which offer rich public spaces bringing back the “neighborhood” to central areas of Los Angeles, away from the suburbs.
It was interesting to hear his answer on the role of architects on contemporary society, and see a new contemporary lifestyle is materialized, addressing location, densities, materials, green strategies and community concepts, an architects response to current society issues.
You can see more on this on the residential projects by LOHA we featured earlier: Formosa 1140 and Habitat 825.
The glass tower by Eric Owen Moss Architects is encouraging the re-development of South Central Los Angeles with this project. The building has been in planning since the nineties but was stalled for some years until it was re-designed in 2006 as a single tower.
A rail line installed nearby spurred the redesign. The structure is part of the redevelopment of South Central LA, an area plagued with poverty and violence for many years. The project was originally conceived of with a structural strategy, consisting of curvilinear ribbons wrapping two main volumes.
The new design remains very similar with the same ribbon theme, but as a single volume. as the area’s only high-rise, office tenants will enjoy wide, open views of the city. a train stop sits directly outside the building, but car parking was also a main concern for the architects. The aforementioned ribbon scheme provides the building’s structure, making each floor completely open. The ribbons are made from steel tubes filled with concrete. Each floor was the same flexible plan but comes in three distinct heights of 13, 16 and 24 feet, to offer further flexibility.
Seen at designboom. More images after the break. read more »
Los Angeles is often portrayed as the example of the car-friendly city. The traditional image of the town is an endless pattern of single family dwellings, interconnected by traffic-clogged freeways, where transit is undeveloped and the air is choked with smog.
However, Los Angeles is changing. The city’s Transport Authority has planned in the last years a series of measures aiming to improve quality of life through improving transit and walking and providing alternative to car commuting.
What’s Your HistoricLA? Do you know a special story about a local building or the neighborhood you live in? Come join like-minded amateur historians and Los Angeles aficionados for the public kickoff of SurveyLA, Los Angeles’ first-ever citywide survey of its historic resources. A full day of activities will include opportunities to share your knowledge on L.A.‘s hidden gems, screenings of the SurveyLA video, and a panel discussion moderated by Larry Mantle, host of KPCC’s Air Talk.
Tomorrow! April 4, 11am at Los Angeles Central Library, Mark Taper Auditorium.
Seen at Bustler. For more information, click here.
Postopolis! has already started in Los Angeles, with 5 days of intense architectural discussion, debate, live interviews, networking and fun. Here, you can see live streaming every day from 5-11 Pacific time. Now, there’s no excuse for not being there!
TODAY GUESTS
TUESDAY 31
05:00 : Fritz Haeg Artist and Writer
05:40 : Patrick Keller Architect and Principal, Fabric
06:20 : Yo-Ichiro Hakomori Architect and Principal, wHY Architecture
07:00 : BREAK
07:20 : Dwayne Oyler Architect and Principal, Oyler Wu Collaborative
08:00 : ong>Michael Dear Professor of Geography, USC
08:40 : Jeffrey Inaba Architect and Principal, Inaba Projects
09:20 : BREAK
The evening will end with brief back-to-back presentations by the organizers and host blogs:
09:40 : Joseph Grima Storefront for Art and Architecture / Bettina Korek ForYourArt
10:00 : Geoff Manaugh BLDGBLOG / David Assael, David Basulto Plataforma Arquitectura, ArchDaily/ Bryan Finoki Subtopia
10:20 : Jace Clayton mudd up!/ Dan Hill City of Sound / Regine Debatty we make money not art
10:40 : OPEN QUESTIONS
More info here.
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.
And now I´m happy to announce that for the 2nd version, Postpolis! is moving to Los Angeles and ArchDaily got invited!!!!
We will be collaboratively organizing an event around architecture and all things related (landscape, urbanism, politics, history, and a long list) on the city of case study houses, highways and movie stars.
From Tuesday, March 31, to Saturday, April 4, 2009, lasting from 5pm to 11pm each day we are going to have an architecture blast, with back-to-back discussions, interviews, panels, slideshows, films and parties (what´s an architecture event without a party?) designed to push the architecture and landscape conversation from virtual to reality.
The following blogs are involved:
Every night of Postopolis will be free and open to the public, so you can drop by at any time. The full schedule with all the speakers and topics will be announced soon. In the meanwhile, you can check the Postopolis! LA page over at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, or join the Event page on Facebook (be sure to join our group on FB also!).
I hope all our readers from LA and nearby locations are able to attend, as it will be very nice to get to meet some face to face during the event.
We are going to have more info on this soon, so stay tuned!
Postopolis! LA is sponsored by the Storefront for Art and Architecture and ForYourArt, and it will be part of Los Angeles Art Weekend. The Postopolis! logo was designed by Joe Alterio.
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