NJIT Spring 2013 Lecture Series
The Spring 2013 Lecture Series at the College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) at NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) began this month with Kathryn Dean’s talk and will conclude on April 18th. This semester, the series, which is free and open to the public, will feature Jonathan Massey, Nataly Gattegno + Jason Johnson, Tony & Margaret Santos, Ken Greenberg, Alan Organschi, and Axel Schmitzberger as keynote speakers. The concluding event is an AIA-endowed lecture by Will Bruder, which is also a part of the annual Design Showcase event. As part of the series, on March 6, CoAD will host a Spring Symposium on “Distributed Intelligence” sponsored by AIANJ. Lectures are Mondays at 5:30pm in Weston Lecture Hall unless otherwise noted. For more information, please visit here.
AIA President Mickey Jacob Urges Congress to Aid Sandy Relief
In response an outrage that broke out amongst Democrats and Republicans, after House Speaker John Boehner failed to vote for Sandy relief before the end of the Congressional session two days ago, the House of Representatives have approved a $9.7 billion relief measure to aid flood victims of Hurricane Sandy. This is good news, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) recently warned that it would soon run out of funding if no measures were taken. Senate approval is likely to come later in the day and a second congressional vote is scheduled to take place on January 15 for a larger $51 billion request.
Understanding the importance of issuing this federal support, AIA President Mickey Jacob has offer Congress three key objects for helping these communities recover.
Read AIA President Jacob’s letter to congress and his three objectives after the break…
NJIT Fall 2012 Lecture Series
The College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) at NJIT will be launching its Fall 2012 Lecture Series on October 15 with Neil Meredith’s talk on a recent project by Gehry Technologies, Burj Khalifa Office Ceiling. Featuring Fred Kent*, Alissia Melka-Teichroew, Ted Krueger, Nataly Gattegno + Jason Johnson, and William Sharples as keynote speakers throughout the series, it concludes with a lecture by Nader Tehrani. All lectures take place on Mondays at 5:30 in Weston Lecture Hall unless otherwise noted, and are free and open to public. For more information please visit here. More information after the break.
‘Performing Architecture’ Symposium
Taking place at Princeton University on October 13th from 10:00am-5:30pm, the ‘Performing Architecture’ symposium will bring together significant theorists and practitioners in the fields of architecture and performance and inviting a broader engagement with the artistic and academic community. In parallel with the art world’s return to performance and a renewed search for architecture’s social and political relevance, this symposium seeks to move beyond disciplinary hegemony in the dissemination of architecture today. Including Liz Diller(DS+R), Pedro Gadanho (MoMA), Vito Acconci, Roselee Goldberg, and many others, they hope to offer lasting provocations to how we think of the body, space, structure, and design in the disciplines of performance and architecture – and somewhere between the two. For more information, please visit here.
AIAS Northeast Fall Quad Conference
With ‘Revitalizing Cities’ as the theme, New Jersey Institute of Technology will be hosting the upcoming semi-annual AIAS Northeast Fall Quad Conference in Newark. As current architecture students, they have an invested interest in what the world will become in 5, 10, even 20 years from now. It is our mission to showcase the potential of urban environments, like Newark, and look forward to a progressive future.
The four day conference, which takes place October 18-21, will focus on what we need to do as designers, planners and architects in order to strengthen the urban fabric in which we thrive. Hundreds of students and professionals alike will gather to discuss current and relevant issues in the profession and to understand how we can make these known to the general public. It will be supported by groups like the Project for Public Spaces who will be sending their president, Fred Kent, to speak on their behalf as our Keynote Speaker. For more information, please visit their website here.
Atlantic City Tourism District Master Plan / The Jerde Partnership
Well known for their visionary architecture that people love to visit and go back to time and again, The Jerde Partnership has set out to attract more people through a realistic framework by transforming Atlantic City into the preferred coastal resort destination of the Northeastern United States. By creating a clean, green, safe city that pays homage to its storied history and takes advantage of its unique island setting, the new Atlantic City Tourism District master plan will offer a wide range of attractions and experiences for all ages. By promoting a strategy for redevelopment, phasing, and district-wide improvements, the master plan will serve as a catalyst for Atlantic City’s economic and social uplift. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Lake Iosco House / RES4
Architects: RES4 – Joseph Tanney, Robert Luntz
Location: Bloomingdale, NJ, USA
Project Architect: Kristen Mason
Manufacturer: Simplex Industries
Project Coordinator: Jason Drouse
Engineer: Lynne Walshaw P.E., Greg Sloditskie
Contractor: D Woodard Builder, LLC
Completion: 2009
Size: 2,100 SF
Photographs: RES4
U.S. Census Bureau reports Los Angeles as the Nation’s Densest Urban Area
Based on 2010 Census results, the nation’s most densely populated urbanized area is Los Angeles/Anaheim/Long Beach, California, with nearly 7,000 people per square mile. Surprised? Not only did the Los Angeles area rank first, but of the ten most densely populated urbanized areas, nine are in the West, with seven of those in California. Continue reading for more.
NJIT College of Architecture and Design 2012 Spring Lecture Series
The spring 2012 lecture series at the College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) at NJIT started on February 13 with Kiel Moe’s “Matter is But Captured Energy.” All lectures take place on Mondays at 5:30 in Weston Lecture Hall unless otherwise noted, and are free and open to public. The series will conclude with a talk by Preston Scott Cohen on April 19th. More information on the lecture series after the break.
Video: Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream / MOS
Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith present the proposal by MOS. The project questions the idea of homeownership and re-imagines public housing in The Oranges, New Jersey. MOS is one of five interdisciplinary teams participating in “MoMA’s Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream.” Each team is challenged to re-imagine struggling American cities and suburbs, seeing the current economic crisis as an opportunity to evolve.
The video is provided by The Museum of Modern Art and was filmed by J6 Media Works.
Princeton University Carl A. Fields Center / Ann Beha Architects
Ann Beha Architects’ award-winning design transforms and expands an exclusive men’s club— an 1890’s Italianate structure— into a University-wide Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. The project restores the historic building, repurposes and expands it, and sets it in a new campus landscape. The original Center, dedicated in the 1970’s, first established a common ground for dialogue on Afro-American issues in a modest former athletic building. This new location creates spaces for research, administration, teaching and community; musical, academic, and social programs. The Center is a hub of activity for groups of all ages and backgrounds and welcomes both on-campus and community groups.
Architect: Ann Beha Architects
Location: Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Project Area: 5,100 sqf New Construction, 13,700 sqf Renovation
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: David Lamb Photography
Campbell’s Employee Center / KlingStubbins
Architects: KlingStubbins
Location: Campbell, New Jersey, USA
Project area: 85,000 sqf
Project year: 2010
Photographs: Eduard Hueber/Arch Photo, Jeffrey Totaro Photographer
Team New Jersey eNJoy House / NJIT + Rutgers University
In 2002, the United States Department of Energy initiated the Solar Decathlon – an intense competition challenging collegiate teams to create residences that fuse the most sustainable technologies with functionality, comfort, and of course, aesthetics. Over the course of the past decade, interest in the Decathlon has grown dramatically [be sure to read our previous Solar Decathlon coverage] as the competition has piqued the interest of students from top universities, as well as millions of public followers learning the advantages of energy-efficient, cost-effective housing.
Team New Jersey, a collaborative effort between the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, has designed a handicap accessible net-zero energy prototype featuring low-maintenance concrete construction and the latest green technologies, complete with a striking beach-inspired aesthetic.
More about the residence, including a great video, after the break.
Atlantic Health Jets Training Facility / Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
SOM’s principal design objectives were to create a focused learning and working environment that would give the New York Jets a competitive edge by constantly reminding the players and business staff that football is their business, and creating a campus that would prioritize work, education and health.
More photographs of the Atlantic Health Jets Training Facility and drawings following the break.
Architects: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP/ New York
Location: Florham Park, New Jersey, USA
Design Partner in Charge: Roger Duffy
Project Manager: Christopher McCready
Project Architect: Darrell Puffer
Project Area: 133,275 sqf Campus Building 84,286 sqf Field House
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Florian Holzherr
Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial / Hung-Yin Yen, DESA, and Ching-Yi Chen
The existing 40’ x 60’ footprint of the pavilion on the Atlantic City Boardwalk has been re-envisioned by Hung-Yin Yen, DESA, and Ching-Yi Chen in an attempt to maximize the usage of the space as a Holocaust Memorial and activate it as a gathering point on the boardwalk.
More information and images after the break.
The Harrow / WORD
Our friends from WORD [Warren Office for Research and Design] shared their proposal for the Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial. The competition, which attracted over 700 submissions, asked participants to use the existing seaside pavilion at Atlantic City, New Jersey to create a kind of public space that commemorates the Holocaust and continues to bring awareness to the horrific happenings. “Its purpose is to fix our collective memory, to bear witness, to embrace the ineffable sense of loss,” explained the competition brief. For the Harrow, WORD creates two drastically different environments offering a strong visual to understand the happenings of the Holocaust and a place to calmly reflect.
More images and more about the proposal after the break.
Parking Garage Adaptive Re-use / KSS Architects
When the Trenton Parking Authority proposed a design challenge to improve the area, KSS Architects responded with an adaptive re-use strategy that transforms an existing structure to activate the site’s surroundings. Currently, the site is occupied by an old brutalist parking garage dating back to the 1970′s and lacks any recognition of its important history – just south of the project site is Mill Hill Park, where American and British soldiers fought the first and second battles of Trenton during the Revolutionary War. The architects’ proposal acknowledges the site’s rich history while adding a sense of vitality to the prominent edge of the downtown area.
More images and more about the proposal after the break.
RMJM design Vista Center, LEED Platinum Office Building
Daniel R. Brenna Jr. of Capital Real Estate Group and architects RMJM unveiled the design for Vista Center, a new LEED Platinum office tower in Trenton, which will be the city’s largest commercial development in decades.
Vista Center is a 25-story, 700,000-square-foot Class A office building planned directly adjacent to the Trenton Transit Center, the second busiest train station on New Jersey’s Northeast Corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington. The transit-oriented development will include 12,000 square feet of ground-level retail, a parking garage for more than 1,140 cars and two public art components – a plaza with a signature sculpture and lobby with a video art installation.
The project is targeting a LEED Platinum certification by the U.S. Green Building Council – the highest sustainability rating offered – which would make it the first Platinum office tower located directly at a Northeast Corridor Hub.
Images after the break.
