New York: The Latest Architecture and News

Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena will continue with The Architectural League NY lectures today in The Urban Center, at 7:00pm.

Aravena has been in practice since 1994 and since 2006 has also served as Executive Director of ELEMENTAL S.A., a “Do Tank” for the design and implementation of urban projects of social interest and public impact. His work includes the Mathematics Faculty, the Medical Faculty, the computer facility “Siamese Tower,” and the Architecture School at the Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile; House for a Sculptor; House in the Pirehueico Lake; new residence and dining halls for St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas; children’s workshops and training facilities for Vitra in Weil am Rhein, Germany; a Villa in Ordos, Inner Mongolia; and social housing and urban projects for Elemental. In 2009, Aravena was appointed a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury.

He has received several awards, including Silver Lion at the XI Venice Biennale, 1st Prize in the XII and the XV Santiago Biennale, the Erich Schelling Architecture Medal 2006 (Germany), finalist in the Mies van der Rohe Award (2000), top 10 finalist in the Iakhov Chernikhov Prize 2008 (Moscow), and finalist in the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2008 (Paris).

Tickets are required for admission to League programs. Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets online here.

For more information, click here. All the lectures after the break.

What was the proposed population of Superstudio’s Continuous Monument? What would the density of Rem Koolhaas’ Exodus plan for London have been had it ever been realized? How would they compare in scale to Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay project, or to Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse? Which of the three would have contained more green areas? 49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, diagrams, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that they never actually existed, this history of utopian urbanism provides a remarkable insight into our understanding of the contemporary metropolis.

The Goethe-Institut New York celebrates the opening of its downtown events space, in the Lower East Side’s Wyoming Building, with a Spring series of talks and performances by internationally acclaimed artists and architects, starting with OSA this Friday, March 27.

New York-based architects Perkins Eastman sent us their new project, 303 East 33rd Street, the first green development in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan. It’s a 12-story, 165,00 sf building. They worked on the exterior while Studio V Architecture worked on the interior design. They also worked with Archipelago on the landscape of the roof garden.

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

Developed by Toll Brothers, Inc. and The Kibel Companies; 303 East 33rd Street is the first green development in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan. Designed by top ranked green architecture and design firm Perkins Eastman, the LEED Certified development is a fresh interpretation of the full- and half-block residential complexes built during the last century, and reflects the mix of architectural diversity in the area.

A few months ago we interviewed Mark Wigley, Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Parsons The New School for Design presents AFTERTASTE 3: New Agendas for the Interior on Friday, April 3, and Saturday, April 4, at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. This annual international symposium is dedicated to the critical review of the interior, and was developed in conjunction with a new MFA program in Interior Design that Parsons will launch this fall. The groundbreaking program will play a leadership role in addressing the challenges and opportunities of contemporary interior design in the 21st century, and integrate history, theory, design, material experimentation and sustainable practice.

AD Futures is a weekly section showcasing emerging practices from around the world. We are open for submissions.

I got to meet L.E.FT when we interviewed them at their office in New York back in September, 2008. This practice is lead by three partners, Makram el Kadi, Ziad Jamaleddine and Naji Moujaes. They all graduated in Beirut between 1995 and 1997, and then got their masters at Parsons, Harvard and SCI-Arc, respectively. After that, they worked on big practices such as Massimiliano Fuksas and Steven Holl Architects, and then founded L.E.FT in 2001.

They are still related to the academy (UPenn, Yale, Cornell, RPI), a constant on innovative practices. Also, they got invited to the Young Architects Program at P.S.1 2009, an annual competition that invites emerging architects to design a temporary structure.

You can hear their thoughts on several aspects of the architectural practice on the interview we conducted. Now, onto some of their featured works:

We got the chance to sit down with the tree partners at L.E.FT a few months ago, and chatted about their practice, ongoing projects and their thoughts on the state of architectural education, the role of architects in current society and more.

I found their work very interesting, and it was no surprise to see them invited to the P.S.1 competition for 2009 we featured earlier. I also selected them for our section AD Futures, as i think they have a promising future.

You can read more about them on the article AD Futures #2. Some pictures of their office after the break.

UPDATE: I´m currently uploading the video to Blip.tv in better quality

We just got the news that MOS Architects won the competition to build a temporary installation at MoMA´s P.S.1 during this summer.

For this competition the P.S.1 invites each year a group of emerging architects to experiment with new shapes and materials, as Work AC did last year with their PF1 project.

MOS project is entitled Afterparty, a design that Micheal Meredith and Hilary Sample (MOS partners) say is meant  to honor and reflect current economic realities, by using basic materials. The main structure is a lightweight aluminum frame using recyclable parts which require minimal assembly, which will become a landmark for the neigborhood – all this on a USD$70,000 budget.

I spoke with Michael a few minutes ago and he refered to the name of the project: One thing about the “Afterparty,” as we’re calling it, is the need to look for new promiscuities after the party of a sort of high-formalism which has dominated academic discourse, and in our case it’s with the basic structural arch geometries, rough almost singular materiality and the production and interaction of “environment,” (literally cooling down the courtyard through stack effect) looking towards a more primitive state of architecture. – (See afterparty definition on Wikipedia).

The project is still under development, and we´ll keep you posted on further updates. We´ll try to do a good coverage on this as we did last year.

You can see other works from MOS previously featured on AD: Floating House and their ORDOS 100 villa.

More images of Afterparty after the break.

SHoP Architects PC is a New York based practice we meet a few months ago. We knew a little about them, because of the PS1 Competition they won back in 2000, the Porter House condos in NY -a great example of urban renovation- and the East River Waterfront Renovation, currently in progress.

Something that interested me before getting to know them in person, was the fact that they stated “we believe in both ideas and profitability”, as a middle point between academia and service firms – something that some architects escape from.

During our conversation, they told us something very important for current practices: how to manage the growth of your office, how to work in a multidisciplinary environment and how to get the most out of computer aided design technologies, not just in terms of design, but in streamlining the construction process and create new efficiencies and cost-savings.

After the break, the office profile and some selected works from SHoP.

Remember the renderings from the mid-rise residential project by OMA in New York we posted a few days ago?

Well, OMA sent us more renderings that show more on the structural facade and the amazing cantilever of this building. more images after the break.

Yesterday, I was visiting the Skyscraper Museum in New York, and I saw an incredible aerial photo that shows the evolution of downtown Manhattan during the last century, from the water reclamation to the black towers to the new skyline without the twin towers. Undoubtedly, this city changes its shape very often.

And as of now, new residential buildings are bringing new forms to this skyline. First, we have OMA on the 23rd street with its structural facade and cantilevered volume, and now the 56 Leonard Street building by Herzog & de Meuron, which entered the construction phase.

This 57-story residential in the Tribeca area will house 145 residences, each one with its own unique floor plan and private outdoor space. This typology makes the building look like a stack of houses, away from the traditional skyscraper form. I wonder how the concrete structure works on this building, which was done by consultant firm WSP Cantor Seinuk (who also worked on the Freedom Tower).