Update: Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building / Preston Scott Cohen
Preston Scott Cohen’s office sent us drawings of his Tel Aviv Museum of Art to add to the images of the recently opened museum we shared earlier in the week. Preston Scott Cohen explained, “Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan, architect). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City.The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete. Achieving a combination of form and material that is unprecedented in the city, the façade translates Tel Aviv’s existing Modernism into a contemporary and progressive architectural language.”
Check out the drawings after the break.
Ordos 20+10 Office Complex / Preston Scott Cohen
Designed for the Ordos 20+10 project, this office complex by Preston Scott Cohen serves to create a whole new office building typology in its stance on site, promenade, and public space.
In Progress: Taiyuan Museum / Preston Scott Cohen
Preston Scott Cohen‘s winning competition proposal for the Taiyuan Museum of Art is currently under construction. A cluster of buildings unified by continuous and discontinuous promenades both inside and outside. The building responds to the urban parkscape in which it is set; visitors are encouraged to pass through the building while not entering into the museum itself. An exterior ramp threading through the building connects the heterogeneous hardscapes, lawns and sculpture gardens. The integration of building and landscape registers multiple scales of territory ranging from the enormity of the adjacent Fen River to the intimacy of the museum’s own particular spatial episodes.
Architects: Preston Scott Cohen
Location: Taiyuan, China
Client: Taiyuan City Government
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen (architectural design); Amit Nemlich (planning); Collin Gardner, Hao Ruan, Joshua Dannenberg (design assistants, modeling, renderings); Yair Keshet(model)
Project Consultants: Architecture Design and Research Institute of South East University
Project Area: 32,500 sqm
Project Year: 2007-2010
AD Interviews: Preston Scott Cohen
I first learned about Preston Scott Cohen’s work when I read about the Goodman House, a simple and elegant operation of a concrete shell housing an ancient Dutch barn frame. But after further investigation, I was surprised to see a constant spatial and formal research of his work, that we have witnessed in the latest three public buildings from his office and featured on ArchDaily.
On one side we have the Nanjing Performing Arts Center, a curved roof related to the surroundings with a tower that anchors the project on the extended landscape. Also in China, the Taiyuan Museum (under construction) continues the geometric explorations with a tessellated surface that wraps a series of different spaces which alternate with courtyards that maintain a relation with the exterior.
When we visited Preston in Boston for this interview we had the chance to see a preview of his latest work, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (also shown during construction at AD), recently completed and now in final preparations to receive the art pieces and finally be open to the public. The exterior geometry of the building has a dynamic look, due to the changing shadows, while the interior features a careful use of natural light in the exhibitions spaces thanks to a lightfall that crosses the building.
Preston is also the Chair of the Department of Architecture of Harvard GSD, a role that allowed us to talk about the challenges of architectural education.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art / Preston Scott Cohen
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, located in the center of the city’s cultural complex and designed by Preston Scott Cohen has completed construction and will open to the public shortly. The program for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building posed an extraordinary architectural challenge: to resolve the tension between the tight, idiosyncratic triangular site and the museum’s need for a series of large, neutral rectangular galleries. The solution: subtly twisting geometric surfaces (hyperbolic parabolas) that connect the disparate angles between the galleries and the context while refracting natural light into the deepest recesses of the half buried building.
Architects: Preston Scott Cohen
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Project Area: 200,000 sqf
Project Year: 2007-2011
Photographs: Courtesy of Preston Scott Cohen
The challenges of architectural education
Our profession is very particular. We react very fast to current issues with our ideas, yet our buildings can take quite some time to be erected. For example, the project of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange building by OMA in China was the physical image of the new Chinese economy back in 2006. Five years later this new economy has taken the world by storm yet the building is still under construction.
Also, the exchange of knowledge in the age of information has made our profession move at an unprecedented speed, and thanks to the Internet the new ideas are not coming from the usual centers (New York, Milan, London) but rather from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
In this new panorama, architectural education has to move faster, and smarter. It’s not about teaching how to use the latest tools, bur rather how to be part of a new world.
When we visited Preston Scott Cohen, Chair of the Architecture Department at Harvard GSD, we asked him about the challenges that architectural education is facing today, such as how our field is expanding to work on areas that were totally out of our scope until a few years ago.
With more than 120 architecture schools in the US, there are several perspectives about this. It would be great if you could tell us your opinion about this important matter.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building / Preston Scott Cohen
Located in the center of the city’s cultural complex, the program for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building posed an extraordinary architectural challenge: to resolve the tension between the tight, idiosyncratic triangular site and the museum’s need for a series of large, neutral rectangular galleries. The solution: subtly twisting geometric surfaces (hyperbolic parabolas) that connect the disparate angles between the galleries and the context while refracting natural light into the deepest recesses of the half buried building.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building was the First Prize Winner in the Herta and Paul Amir International Competition. The program includes Galleries of Israeli Art, Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Temporary Exhibitions; Photography Study Center and Archives; Multidisciplinary Auditorium; Seminar and Conference Rooms; Art Library; Restaurant; Administrative Offices; Loading, Unpacking and Storage. Following the break are drawings and construction photographs of this recently completed building.
Architects: Preston Scott Cohen, Inc.
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Design: Preston Scott Cohen
Project Architect: Amit Nemlich
Project Assistants: Tobias Nolte, Steven Christensen, Guy Nahum, Gjergj Bakallbashi, Bohsung Kong
Competition Project Team: Scott Cohen, Cameron Wu, Andrew Saunders, Janny Baek
Competition Consultants: Ove Arup and Partners, Caroline Fitzgerald, Tom Dawes, Mark Walsh-Cooke
Cost Estimator: Hanscomb Faithful and Gould
Project Management: CPM Construction Management Ltd.
Structural Engineers: YSS Consulting Engineers Ltd.
HVAC: M. Doron-I. Shahar and Co., Consulting Eng. Ltd.
Lighting: Tillotson Design Associates
Accessibility: Michael Roitman
Acoustics: M.G. Acoustical Consultants Ltd.
General Contractor: Hezkelevitch Engineering
Models: Jonathan Lott, Isamu Kanda
Renderings: Chris Hoxie, Agito Design Studios
Client: Motti Omer, Director and Chief Curator
Project Area: 18, 500 sqm
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Courtesy of Preston Scott Cohen
Taiyuan Museum / Preston Scott Cohen
We recently featured Preston Scott Cohen‘s Nanjing Performing Arts Center and, now, we share his winning competition proposal for the Taiyuan Museum of Art. Currently under construction, the building’s strong dynamic form is a geometric spin on the agricultural landscapes native to the Shanxi Province. The tessellated surfaces respond to contemporary technologies for controlling natural and artificial light, in addition to producing unexpected spatial conditions as the user circulates through and around the building.
More images and more about the project after the break.
Update: High res version of the drawings have been added.
Nanjing Performing Arts Center / Preston Scott Cohen
Architects: Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. (Design Architect); Institute of Architectural Design and Planning with Atelier Zhang Lei (Chinese architect of record)
Location: Nanjing, China
Client: Nanjing University
Project Area: 16,000 sqm
Budget: RMB 3,000/sqm
Design Year: 2007
Construction Year: 2008-2009
Photographs: Iwan Baan
ORDOS 100 #36: Preston Scott Cohen
This villa is located in plot #47 of the ORDOS project.
Architects: Preston Scott Cohen
Location: Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China
Project Team: Preston Scott Cohen (Design); Hao RUAN, David Shanks(Project Assistants); Yair Keshet(Model)
Design year: 2008
Construction year: 2009-2010
Curator: Ai Weiwei, Beijing, China
Client: Jiang Yuan Water Engineering Ltd, Inner Mongolia, China
Constructed Area: 1,000 sqm aprox
Goodman House / Preston Scott Cohen
Architects: Preston Scott Cohen
Location: Pine Plains, NY, USA
Structural Engineers: Don Montgomery, Bill Bishop
Lighting: Light This, Inc.,Daina Yurkus
Contractor: EEE, Inc., Eric Wolf
Client: Arnold and Elise Goodman
Program: Administrative building
Design year: 2001-2002
Construction year: 2003-2004
Constructed Area: 418 sqm
Photographs: Preston Scott Cohen
