In addition to honoring renowned architect Ray Kappe with a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Los Angeles Business Council has awarded thirty-one local projects for their design excellence, sustainability and community impact at the 43rd annual LA Architectural Awards.
The 2013 Los Angeles Architectural Award Winners:
Finnish elevator manufacturer KONE has unveiled a new hoisting technology that will enable elevators to travel twice the distance currently in use. The new development implies that the Burj Khalifa will not remain the tallest building for very long. The Burj, towering at 828 meters, has the longest elevator travel distance at 504 meters. KONE promises to double that.
Join us for more after the break.
In the latest episode of his 99% Invisible podcast, Roman Mars bravely takes on a very sensitive topic: the design of prisons which contain execution chambers or house prisoners in solitary confinement. More specifically, the podcast discusses whether architects have a moral duty to decline these commissions and whether, as a profession, architecture should have a code of ethics which prevents registered architects from participating in such designs.
He compares architecture to the medical profession, where the American Medical Association imposes an ethical code on its members which all but forbids them from taking part in execution by lethal injection, based on medicine's general aim of preservation, rather than destruction of life. The American Institute of Architect's ethical code is both generic and meager in comparison: “Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.”
In response to the mounting criticism of Qatar's ability to host the 2022 World Cup, the "tiny Gulf Arab state" is considering developing floating hotels, luxury villas and a water park off the coast of Doha called Oryx Island to house the influx of visitors that will need accommodation during the games. The island would be developed by Barwa Real Estate Co, a firm partly owned by the government, at a cost of $5.5 million. Finish architecture firm, Global Accommodation Management (GAM) to design the various facilities which includes projects for a hotel and luxury villas that could house up to 25,000 people.
Join us after the break for more on this project.
Today, SANAA (Sejima & Nishizawa and Associates) unveiled plans for a 400,000 square-foot building in Jerusalem that will form a new, interdisciplinary downtown campus for the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. The competition-winning proposal, designed by the 2010 Pritzker laureates in collaboration with Israel’s Nir -Kutz Architects, features an array of stacked horizontal slabs that react to the area’s topography and surrounding context in order to create a series of outdoor terraced viewing platforms and multi-level interior spaces where students and teachers can meet, study and display their work.
More on the new SANAA-design downtown campus after the break...
Seven exemplary projects in architecture, planning, landscape architecture, and urban design have been named winners of the 2013 Great Places Awards and were honored during the 44th annual conference of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) earlier this month. The EDRA Great Places Awards recognizes professional and scholarly excellence in environmental design and pay special attention to the relationship between physical form and human activity or experience.
The winners after the break...
“Even though I wished for her attention, I was scared of it.”
UPDATE: Israeli architect Rafi Segal appears to have abandoned his case to be reinstated as designer of the National Library of Israel. This decision comes after the client announced that it had signed a contract with Pritzker Prize-winning practice Herzog & de Meuron, who was initially chosen in April and triggered Segal’s demand to be reinstated. Now that the Swiss duo has officially signed onto the project, Segal has requested a withdrawal without prejudice. Before the hearing scheduled for September 12, 2013, Segal asked the court to withdraw the case. The court overruled his objections and granted HyperBina a compensation of fees and costs.
Official statement from the National Library Construction Company:
Three graduate architecture students at Columbia University have developed a revolutionary notebook designed specifically for architects. "A:LOG is not just a nifty architect’s notebook," they say. "It is a thoughtful collection of design and architectural standards packaged into a minimal soft-cover notebook with beautiful dotted paper for drawing. It’s an architectural reference guide that you can bring with you on the go, in the office, or at meetings."
Learn more about A:LOG after the break!
"The greatest American architect of all time", Frank Lloyd Wright, was born 146 years ago today. One of the all-time architectural greats, his work has now been inspiring generations of architects for over a century.
The Make It Right organization, Brad Pitt's LEED and Cradle-to-Cradle inspired efforts to bring sustainable homes to communities in need, is probably best none for its much publicized work in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in the post-Hurrican Katrina climate. But the breadth of this organization's work stretches beyond this community rebuilding project. Make It Right has worked within several disadvantaged communities in an effort to build sustainable and supportive homes and neighborhoods through the development of residences, community centers and infrastructural elements, and by providing training and counseling.
MIR is working in Newark, New Jersey bringing residences to disabled veterans; in Kansas city, Montana the organization is rebuilding a blighted community within the neighborhood of Manheim Park; and most recently is partnering with Sioux and Assiniboine Native American tribe members to build sustainable homes on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana.
More on Make It Right's new work on the Fort Peck Reservation after the break.
The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts just announced its 2013 Grants to Individuals with over $500,000 being awarded to 60 projects. The grantees, who represent a diverse national and international community of architects, scholars, writers, artists, designers, curators, and others, were selected after a highly competitive application process from a pool of over 600 submissions. The awards, up to $15,000 each, will support publications, exhibitions, films, new media initiatives, public programs, and research that explore innovative and bold ideas in architecture and design. More information on the grantees after the break.
This Thursday, the official opening of the Serpentine Pavilion, by Sou Fujimoto, took place in Hyde Park, London. It was the first time the public could interact with the structure.
The pavilion, which has already gotten its "cloud" nickname because of its shape and lightness, is generated through a three-dimensional steel grid of about 40 centimetre modules which morphs on each side. The structure is broken to allow people access as well as to generate different uses around, below and upon it.
More pictures and the architect's statement after the break.
After four years of high-brow debate, the demise of the controversial Hirshhorn ‘Bubble’ has been confirmed. The decision, made by Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough and Undersecretary Richard Kurin, comes shortly after the Hirshhorn board’s split vote resulted in the resignation of director Richard Koshalek - the man behind the ‘Bubble’.
Zaha Hadid Architects have been selected to work alongside AECOM for the design and construction the Al Wakrah Stadium and Precinct of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar. The 45,000-seat stadium will be nestled within a rich cultural fabric of traditional Islamic architecture, historical buildings, distinctive mosques and archeological sites that belongs to one of the oldest inhabited areas of Qatar, just south of Doha. As noted by the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, embracing the identify of this cultural heritage will be a crucial part to the success of the stadium.
"Our research integrates computational form-finding strategies with biologically inspired fabrication", claims the 'about' page of MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter Group. Though this may sound like run-of-the-mill architectural boasting, you are unlikely to find any more exemplary combination of scientific research, digital design and biomimetic construction than their recently completed Silk Pavilion.
SOM has come up with a structural system for skyscrapers that uses mass timber as the main structural material and minimizes the embodied carbon footprint of the building. The firm believes that their proposal is technically feasible from the standpoint of structural engineering, architecture, interior layouts, and building services and would revolutionize the traditional skyscraper as we know it.
Read on to learn more about The Timber Tower Research Project.
The saga of the Southbank Centre redevelopment in London heated up recently, after the scheme for the new 'Festival Wing' was formally submitted to Lambeth's planning department. The scheme, which has been well received by some of the architecture community, including the centre's original architects Norman Engleback and Dennis Crompton, has run afoul of the skateboarding community, which opposes the plan to infill the undercroft that has been their home for almost 40 years.
After a petition to save the skatepark garnered over 40,000 signatures, the skating community has mobilized once again to object to the planning application en masse. The campaign to save the skatepark has even garnered the attention of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, who wrote to the Southbank Centre's director of partnership and policy Mike McCart to explain that:
“It’s truly an historic feature of London street culture, and is as well known to skateboarders around the world as Big Ben or Buckingham Palace. Honestly.”
London-based DOS Architects were just announced as the winners of the Renzo Piano Foundation Prize, awarded to the best young Italian Architectural practice. Founded by the Italian-Spanish partnership of Lorenzo Grifantini and Tavis Wright in 2006, the award-winning firm has a wide range of domestic and commercial projects across West Africa, the Middle East and the UK. Featured in the gallery of images is their Duncan Terrace, a residential project completed in 2011 in the UK. DOS Architects truly exemplify a dedication to developing quality architectural work. More images after the break.
The design for BIG’s highly anticipated LEGO® “experience center” - a.k.a. The LEGO® House - has been released! Located in the heart of The Lego Group’s birthplace and home town of Billund, Denmark, the 7,600 square-meter building resembles “gigantic LEGO® bricks” that are “combined and stacked in a creative way to create an imaginative experience both outside and inside.”
True to form, the 30 meter-tall structure will feature several exterior and multi-level access points that will remain open year-long to its estimated 250,000 annual visitors. Aside from its roof-top gardens and 1,900 square-meter public square, attractions will include a series of exhibition areas showcasing the “past, present and future of the LEGO® idea”, a cafe and an unique LEGO® store.
Take a video tour through the building after the break...
Coming at a crucial time in which Los Angeles is at risk of “losing its reputation as a center for innovative architecture,” museum director Michael Govan and Swiss architect Peter Zumthor have unveiled preliminary plans for what they hope will be the new home of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). If approved, this $650 million proposal - nearly five years in the making - would replace the dated William Pereira-designed campus and its 1986 Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates-designed addition with an organically-shaped, dark-grey concrete and glass Zumthor original.
More information after the break, including Peter Zumthor’s project description...
The impending destruction of the last public park in Istanbul was the straw that broke the camel's back last Tuesday. When a peaceful demonstration to save Taksim Gezi Park was met with violent police retaliation, the situation quickly escalated into a nationwide protest against the increasingly authoritarian Turkish government. At this moment all across the country, thousands are standing up not only for Gezi Park but for the right to shape the place that they call home.
More information on the situation in Turkey after the break.
Topping the list with American statistician, sabermetrician, psephologist and writer Nate Silver, Principal of FiveThirtyEight, Fast Company’s 2013 compilation of business’s 100 most creative people proves the undeniable value of creativity in business today. This year, a New York landscape architect whose floating islands in Manhattan may one day buffer the city from voracious storms made the list’s top ten, followed by one of the most influential artists of our time as well as an architect and concept designer who are both redefining commercial architecture. Find out who, after the break.
Sou Fujimoto's 2013 Serpentine Pavilion, now complete and standing on the front lawn of London’s Serpentine Gallery, has opened to the press and we are now able to see Iwan Baan's photographs of the temporary pavilion. Fujimoto will be lecturing to a sold out crowd this coming Saturday (June 8th) when the pavilion opens to the general public. The semi-transparent, multi-purpose social space will be on view until October 20th.
Fujimoto (age 41) is the youngest architect to accept the Serpentine Gallery’s invitation, joining the ranks of Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Peter Zumthor (2011), Jean Nouvel (2010), SANAA (2009), and more. He described his Serpentine project as "...an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways. Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two."
The Guardian has posted both print and video reviews by Oliver Wainwright.
More images by Iwan Baan after the break. See also In Progress: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion / Sou Fujimoto.
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