‘Future of Cities’ Daniel Libeskind Lecture
Taking place this coming Tuesday, April 2nd at 6:30pm, Daniel Libeskind, one of the most celebrated architects working today, will be delivering the ‘Future of Cities’ lecture as part of the Assembly Series at Washington University in St. Louis. His presentation, sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Architecture Student Council, is free and open to the public and will take place in Graham Chapel. Well known for his Jewish Museum in Berlin, the museum’s radical, strikingly asymmetrical design, is a true icon for the city and the country of Germany. He has received numerous awards including the 2001 Hiroshima Art Prize – an award given to an artist whose work promotes international understanding and peace, never before given to an architect. Fore more information, please visit here.
Building Pulitzer Colloquium
Taking place February 8-9, the Building Pulitzer Colloquium, which is free and open to the public, will bring together key participants in the design and construction of this iconic building. The colloquium will provide unique insight into the extraordinary collaboration and dedication required to realize this project. Hosted by the The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and Washington University in St. Louis, the event focuses on how this building, designed by an internationally recognized architect, was completed. Topics will include the working structure between Tadao Ando’s office and the St. Louis-based team, the realization of Ando’s design intent through the translation of American methods of construction, and the creation of a work environment that fostered construction excellence. More information on the event after the break.
Terrace View Cafe / Studio | Durham Architects
Terrace View Café has a special location within downtown St. Louis, Missouri’s newest urban park, Citygarden. Studio | Durham Architects was invited into the Citygarden project to design a café building and a maintenance building on the site. The café by Studio | Durham appears equally as notable and successful as the pieces of art within the sculpture park, but distinguishes itself as a building among art.
HSSU Early Childhood & Parenting Education Center / LuchiniAD
Architect: LuchiniAD
Location: St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: LuchiniAD
The Early Childhood & Parenting Education Center at Harris Stow State University is an architectural anomaly in this area of St. Louis, Missouri. The building, by LuchiniAD, stands out among the brick buildings with its bright white roof and sloping shape. LuchiniAD designed the graceful, contemporary building in response to another condition all too present in St. Louis and other midwestern cities, the vacant lots. More on the building after the break.
Material Landscapes / Liane Hancock
Material Landscapes is an exhibition that recently opened at the Sheldon Art Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri. The show is curated by Liane Hancock, Assistant Professor at Louisiana Tech University. It features materiality in contemporary landscape architecture through projects by a group of national and international landscape architects.
AD Classics: Gateway Arch / Eero Saarinen
Built to commemorate the westward expansion of the United States, the Gateway Arch designed by Eero Saarinen became a futuristic marker that rose above the cityscape of St. Louis. In its design, this monument drew from previous symbolic constructs of similar aspiration, scale and mathematical precision.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History
At a screening of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History in New York City, a man in front of me wondered aloud “Do you think there are more urban planners, or St. Louis people here?” The film’s crowd drew heavily from both and also attracted people with interests in social housing, modernism, racial tensions, architecture, and documentary films. Prior to the screening, the crowd was easily divided into two groups: those with an interest in Pruitt-Igoe as a case study, and those with a personal connection to St. Louis city’s triumphs and struggles. By the end of the show, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth left every viewer knowledgable about the city’s past, as well as invested in St. Louis’ future. More after the break.
Exhibition: “American City: St. Louis Architecture”
The Missouri Botanical Garden presents a photographic exhibition documenting many of St. Louis’s most architecturally impressive structures. View “American City: St. Louis Architecture” on display Friday, June 10 through Sunday, Aug. 21 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily in the Garden’s Ridgway Visitor Center. The exhibit is included with Garden admission.
“American City: St. Louis Architecture” features over 70 large-scale color images by award-winner architectural photographer William Zbaren, including the iconic Linnean House conservatory and Museum Building at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
The images are from the new architectural monograph, “American City: St. Louis Architecture: Three Centuries of Classic Design,” by Zbaren and architectural writer Robert Sharoff. The book – the first new monograph on the city since the 1920s – depicts 50 of the city’s most architecturally significant structures and is available at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Garden Gate Shop.
For more information on the exhibition please click here. And check “Seven Amazing Structures You Kidn’t Know Were In St. Louis” images after the break.
AD Classics: Wainwright Building / Louis Sullivan
Among the first skyscrapers built in the world, the Wainwright Building by Louis Sullivan and partner Dankmar Adler is regarded as an influential prototype of a modern office architecture.
The building aesthetically exemplifies the theories of Sullivan’s tall building, with the tripartite composition of base, shaft and attic, which is based on the structure of the classical column.
Cannon Design Regional Offices / Cannon Design
After standing vacant for nearly 30 years, the St. Louis Municipal Power House building at 1100 Clark Avenue in downtown St. Louis, opened as the new offices of Cannon Design in September 2008. In 2007, the firm purchased the 19,000 sqf building and provided all design, development, and construction management services for its restoration, renovation and adaptive reuse—an investment that represents the firm’s confidence in the future of the city of St. Louis.
Architect: Cannon Design
Location: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Project Area: 32,000 sqf
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Architectural Imageworks, LLC, Patti Gabriel Photography
Old Post Office Plaza / Baird Sampson Neuert Architects
The winning design of an international competition, Old Post Office Plaza serves as an urban catalyst for revitalization while forming an iconic event space for downtown St. Louis. Inspired by a large public sculpture, “the Torso of Icaro” by noted sculptor Igor Mitoraj and donated for installation in the project, the design creates a three dimensional armature of spaces and program that spiral upward and around the work to explore the deeper structure of ideas that the myth of Daedelus and Ikarus evokes. Not only was Daedalus the key protagonist of one of the great narratives of flight and fall, he was associated with early manifestations of public space and public art in ancient Greece, as an archetypal architect and sculptor.
Architect: Baird Sampson Neuert Architects
Location: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Project Team: Barry Sampson (project director), Jon Neuert (project advisor), Mauro Carreno (project coordinator), Yves Bonardeaux, Winda Lau, Adrian Phiffer
Landscape Architect: ARCTURIS
Structural Engineer: Blackwell Bowick
US Structural Reps: Optimal Engineering Solutions Inc.
Civil and Electrical Engineer: EDM Incorporated
Quantity Surveyor: Vermeulens Cost Consultants
Water Feature: Water Architecture
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Sam Fentress, BSN / Zero Fractal, Debbie Franke
A Wonderful World from Washington University in St. Louis
In the Spring 2010 academic semester, Wiel Arets and Robert McCarter co-taught “A Wonderful World,” an advanced architectural design studio at Washington University in St. Louis. The students were asked to consider the following:
To understand the world we are living in at this moment, we have to redefine the “Map of the World,” a mental construct which at least since 1492 has undergone many reinterpretations. We could read the world anno 2020 as a collective living space for all of us, in which all the continents are in reach within 288 minutes, and the maximum travel distance at each continent will be 72 minutes, the time in which every city on each continent will be able to be reached. During the studio research, the world will be our territory, the continents are our daily living space, and the metropolitan three-dimensional city our home, surrounded by an untouched green/blue environment. The basic question we should put forward is: How will the city develop within our extremely exciting, complex, but “shrinking” world?
Washington University in St. Louis shared with us work from the studio. Follow the break for a description and drawings.
Students Featured: Andrew Buck, Shaun Dodson, Stephen Kim, Meredith Klein, Wai Yu Man, James Morgan, Aaron Plewke
Images: Courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis
We also suggest you look at how students responded to the same questions proposed by Wiel Arets at the Berlage Institute Postgraduate Research Laboratory “A Wonderful World” class.
American City: St. Louis Architecture / Robert Sharoff + William Zbaren
When architectural journalist Robert Sharoff and photographer William Zbaren created the series American City, the intention was to celebrate some of the States’ most architecturally impressive cities. For their St. Louis publication, the team has produced a beautiful large format book highlighting 50 projects scattered across the city. Organized with incredible photographs and insightful text, the book is the first of its kind, since the 1920s, to document the architecture of St. Louis.
More about the publication after the break.
Update: The City+The Arch+The River 2015 / MVVA
In the summer, we introduced the proposals for The City + The Arch + The River competition that challenged designers to revive the urban fabric surrounding St. Louis’ iconic arch. The proposals offered differing views on ways to activate a park system and attract the public. We’re excited to share the news that the proposal by landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and his multidisciplinary team has been selected to move forward!
Check out a cool video of MVVA’s proposal and more about the project after the break.
The City+The Arch+The River 2015
An exciting exhibit opening today in St. Louis, Missouri will display the five finalist teams of The City+The Arch+The River 2015 International Design Competition (check out some previous information about the competition on AD). The competition asked participants to better “frame” the iconic Arch and weave the national park back into the fabric of the city and the region, by rejuvenating connections and re-energizing the area. The construction finish line is set for October 28, 2015 which marks the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Arch.
Check out a brief overview of each project after the break.
Gateway Arch International Design Competition finalists
Back in December we told you about the international design competition to re-invigorate the park and city areas surrounding “one of the world’s most iconic monuments”, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The five finalist teams have been announced, and the winner will be selected on September, 2010. The finalist teams are:
- Behnisch Team
- MVVA Team
- PWP Landscape Architecture, Foster + Partners, Civitas
- SOM, Hargreaves, BIG
- Weiss/Manfredi Team
For more information, go to the competition’s official website.
Gateway Arch International Design Competition
The National Park Service and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay announced a new international design competition to re-invigorate the park and city areas surrounding “one of the world’s most iconic monuments”, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The competition, “Framing a Modern Masterpiece: The City + The Arch + The River 2015,” is called for in the National Park Service’s new General Management Plan, which was created through extensive public input over an 18-month period and approved on November 23, 2009.
According to the Gateway Arch Design competition site, “the Gateway Arch instantly became an international destination and won immediate recognition as one of the world’s premier works of public art. The grounds immediately surrounding it, designed by the late Dan Kiley, are also widely recognized as a landscape masterpiece. However, those grounds, and the city streetscape, highways, and the Mississippi riverfront which they abut, lack the ‘buzz’ of constant activity associated with a vibrant urban park – one of the issues the competition is meant to address.”
Seen at The Dirt. For more information, go to the competition’s official website.
