Dingbat 2.0 Competition Winners
The winning and honorable mention entries from the Dingbat 2.0 Competition were announced at the LA Forum’s Dingbat 2.0 Exhibition opening on Saturday, June 19th, at LA Forum Events at Woodbury Hollywood. There were eight professional winners and five student winners selected from over 80 entries from 18 countries (number of ‘winners’ includes honorable mentions in both categories). The work of the thirteen winners is being exhibited at the Dingbat 2.0 Exhibition through July 24th.
All the winners and honorable mentions after the break. For complete descriptions of each project, click here.
Earl’s Gourmet Grub / FreelandBuck
Architects: FreelandBuck
Location: Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, USA
Client: Yvonne McDonald and Dean Harada
Contractor: Vandermeer Contractors
Proyect Year: 2010
Photography: Lawrence Anderson/Esto
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects wins AIA l LA 2010 Firm of the Year Award
We are thrilled to announce that Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) will be receiving the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter’s (AIA|LA), Firm of the Year Award for 2010. The formal announcement is expected to be released in July. The AIA|LA Firm of the Year Award is given annually and recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture.
Over the years, LOHA projects have won a combined 18 national and local AIA awards, including the most recent AIA National Housing Award for Formosa 1140. You can see all the projects we’ve featured by LOHA here, including our interview with Lorcan O’Herlihy.
de LaB’s City Listening II
de LaB is proud to announce their first-ever fundraiser, City Listening II! On Saturday, June 26, de LaB and a fantastic roster of collaborators and sponsors will present an evening of stories about Los Angeles read by your favorite design, architecture and art writers from both sides of La Brea!
To buy tickets and find more about the event, click here.
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County renovation / CO Architects
CO Architects continues its restoration, renovation, and modernization of the venerable Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) with an innovative expansion and re-imagination of the institution’s North Campus, which dates back to the 1920s. The $30-million project’s elements include a redesigned front façade with entry bridge, pedestrian-friendly terraces and communal areas, a new two-level car park, and a major landscape program encompassing 3.5-acres of recovered green spaces with programmed gardens and outdoor learning environments. The outdoor garden spaces are created in collaboration with landscape design firm Mia Lehrer + Associates. Currently under construction, the North Campus is set to open 2011/2012, and is overseen by project manager Cordell Corporation.
More images and full press release after the break.
railLA Call for Ideas/Venues
railLA, a joint effort between the Los Angeles Chapters of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and American Planning Association (APA), has launched a Call for Ideas/Venues about High-Speed Rail and its transformative impact on society and the built environment.
Entrants are encouraged to submit new and existing ideas, concepts, designs, plans, papers, videos, models, and other studies. The Call is intended to create a wealth of information about High-Speed Rail from around the world to be exhibited at selected venues through a separate Call for Venues.
A select group of submissions will be showcased at an opening exhibit in Downtown Los Angeles, the railLA website, and in various publications. A $2500 prize purse for the top five submissions will be announced at the opening exhibit.
More information on the competition’s official website. Seen at Death by Architecture.
Broad Museum / Koolhaas v. DS + R
Eli Broad, an American philanthropist, is getting ready to design the newest home for his extensive art collection. For his latest museum project, on the corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street in Los Angeles, Broad invited six of the professions’ leading minds to compete. Resting across the street from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s 1986 Museum of Contemporary Art, Broad’s museum with include approximately 40,000 square feet of top-floor exhibition space, along with offices for the Broad Art Foundation.
Facade Renovation / Martin Fenlon Architecture
Martin Fenlon‘s rusted steel canopy was recently constructed in LA. The canopy was a facade renovation that took the existing building and added a ‘tube frieze’ in place of typical canopy signage, where a band of undulating stainless steel tubes evoke the surface of the nearby ocean. The approach provides a textured effect and adds to the industrial character of the area.
More images and more about the facade after the break.
Dingbat 2.0 Competition
The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design proposes DINGBAT 2.0, an open, single-stage, international design competition, reconsidering Los Angeles’ ubiquitous dingbat apartment building for the 21st century. All designers, architects, artists, engineers, students, and other interested parties are fully eligible for participation in this competition.
The competition calls for the consideration of two design issues regarding the Dingbat and it’s impact on the urban fabric of Los Angeles. Two boards (digital-only submittal) will be required for the competition. One board will address the typology of the Dingbat at the scale of the individual building (are they to be retrofitted? replaced?), and the second board will consider the larger urban scale of an entire city block within a ‘Dingbat neighborhood’. Three separate sites in three distinct Los Angeles neighborhoods will be considered for the competition.
Seen at Death by Architecture. For complete information, visit the competition’s official website.
Migratory Anagrams / INABA
INABA, with Darien Williams, has developed a hypothetical proposal for the migratory distribution of the Hollywood sign across Los Angeles, titled “HLYWD”. The project will be on display as part of SUPERFRONT LA‘s upcoming show, UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale.
The proposal will be on display until July 2. More images and architect’s description after the break.
Los Angeles NFL Stadium / Aedas Sport
Designed by Aedas Sport, the innovative 75,000-seat stadium will be the first LEED-certified building in the NFL and will capture the luxury and drama of the world’s entertainment capital. The project anticipates completion for the 2013 season. Both the NFL and the client, Majestic Realty, are committed to making a progressive statement with this building and are exploring a number of initiatives that will make this the most environmentally progressive stadium in the U.S. Aedas Sport has employed the unique topography of the site to build the stadium into a hillside, reducing the steel structure by 40% and allowing at least two-thirds of the seating bowl to be built on grade.
More images and full architect’s description after the break.
Caverhill Residence / SPF Architects
Architects: Studio Pali Fekete architects
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Project Team: Zoltan Pali, FAIA, Judit Fekete, Siddhartha Majumdar, Brian Di Maggio, Mark Meyer, Matt Lunn, Yvonne Wong, Gregory Fischer, Richard McNamara
Structural Engineer: John Labib and Associates
Landscape Architect: Korn Randloph Landscape Architects
Contractor: William Kent Development Inc.
Project Area: 418 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: John E. Linden
Art Bridge / wHY Architecture
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:
Treehouse / RPA
Architects: RPA
Location: Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Project Area: 16 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Eric Staudenmaier
Lofts @ Cherokee Studios / Pugh + Scarpa
Architects: Pugh + Scarpa
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Client: REthink Development Corp.
MEP Engineers: Cobalt Engineering
Structural Engineers: BPA Group
Builders: JT Builders
Landscape: FormLA Landscape
Project Area: 1,905 sqm
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Tara Wujcik
Evans House / bittonidesignstudio
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
AD Interviews: Alexis Rocha, I/O Platform
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:
Donghia Designer-In Residence Lecture: Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis
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.
IPAC / Sander Architects
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.
SCI-Arc Announces Fall 2009 Public Lectures and Exhibitions
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.
Sapphire Gallery / XTEN Architecture
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.
