A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.
Joan Didion
Community pressure has swayed the owners of Richard Neutra‘s Kronish House to postpone plans for demolition, and has also prompted the city of Beverly Hills to draft legislation to preserve its architectural history. The house been spared until at least October 10 in order to give community activists time to devise a plan for its restoration. In a related, ground-breaking action the Beverly Hills City Council has asked the city’s Planning Commission to enact a first-ever historic-preservation ordinance.
The city of Long Beach, California recently asked firmsWE-designs and XP& Architecture to design a landmark project to revitalize its downtown area using a low budget. The initial ideas are represented here as a series of re-configured old shipping containers, truncated and placed upright. The futuristic cluster of low rise buildings, called (RE) Configured-Ecologies, may eventually become multi-use space with an open playground feel. It will comprise of an education center, a café, retail space and 13 work/live loft spaces as well as an open roof terrace. Through proposing three types of innovatively reconstructed modular shipping containers, the overall construct leads to open courtyards, interlocking units, and playfully generated programs that introduce a new innovative topological creation that regenerates and reconnects the community.
The American Institute of Architects, San Francisco chapter (AIA San Francisco) and Center for Architecture + Design present the eighth annual Architecture and the City festival, the nation’s largest architectural festival showcasing tours, films, exhibitions, lectures, family programs and more. Taking place every September 1-30, the month-long celebration offers individuals an unparalleled opportunity to engage with the local architectural community, explore the crossroads of planning and contemporary culture, and experience design in a myraid of ways throughout the city. More information about select events after the jump.
The ARTCUBE exhibition contains a novel interactive sculpture comprising photographs of the artistic processes and techniques captured by Brandon Shigeta. Stacked into random arrays forming a single cubic massing, the sculpture includes hidden signed cards and custom artwork on the surface of the postcards by artists. Perhaps qualifying the exhibit as the heaviest photographic exhibit ever, the sculpture consists of approximately 65,000 postcards of approximately 80 various images to be removed by visitors as souvenirs. More images and description of the exhibition after the break.
The San Diego Architectural Foundation (SDAF) wants to know what you think makes San Diego’s architecture and design blossom – or stink, and is again soliciting public nominations through August 31 for projects to be considered for this year’s Orchids & Onions Awards. All San Diegans are encouraged to take a few moments to have their say about what they view as the good, the bad and the ugly in categories including Architecture, Historic Preservation, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Sustainable Design, and Miscellaneous; which covers just about everything in-between. By uploading a few photos on the SDAF’s Orchids and Onions website, along with your rationalization, you can be part of cultivating a more thoughtfully designed San Diego. More competition description after the break.
The award winning sustainable German architecture firm, Ingenhoven Architects, has been hired by Google Inc to design their new headquarters in Mountain View, California. Expected to begin construction in 2012, Ingenhoven approached the design with the idea that ‘the architecture should be an expression of the corporate culture and at the same time a model for sustainable architecture in the broadest sense surpassing the LEED-Platinum-Standards with its holistic concept’. Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman shared about Ingenhoven, “we’ve asked them to build the most green, sustainable building possible.”
Google’s offices in Milan, previously featured on ArchDaily can be viewed here. More about this exciting news from the architects following the break.
Los Angeles is the personification of our suburban nation, and this archetype is both celebrated and condemned for how it has shaped our society. It is now 55 years after the Federal Highway Act changed our national landscape, and 50 years after the dismantling of Pacific Electric Railway changed our metropolis. Once deemed the city of the future, LA is on the precipice of a new epoch. A sea change in demographics, cultural allegiances, and lifestyles are beginning to shift our collective decisions in terms of the way we will live, work, play and travel. Like our predecessors, what grand decisions can we make right now to construct our shared future?
Join A+D Museum and Moore Rubble Yudell Architects and Planners for a children’s workshop exploring the world of staircases. Children will work alongside professional architects to plan, design and build a staircase. Whether their models are sweeping and grand or sky-high and wild, ARkidECTs will gain hands-on experience in the world of a professional architect… stepping up to the design of their imaginations. Parents are welcome to join the fun!
Each fall High Desert Test Sites invites artists to create experimental projects adjacent to California’s Joshua Tree National Park. This year HDTS invited Ball Nogues Studio to create a structure in a remote region of the Mojave Desert. This presents a unique opportunity to draw upon an unfettered landscape at a grand scale. Expanding on theories developed by earthwork artists Yucca Crater will re-imagine these concepts through new methods of production linked to their cross-disciplinary artistic, architectural, design and fabrication practice.
Network_LA Transit is a conceptual design response by GenslerLos Angeles to an open invitation by Sci-Arc, The Architect’s Newspaper and LA Metro to shift people from their cars to public transit.
More after the break.
https://www.archdaily.com/146802/video-network_la-transitChristopher Henry
The Academy of Art University, the nation’s largest private accredited art and design university, continues to grow their Landscape Architecture program. Earlier this year the University announced the addition of the School of Landscape Architecture with an accredited Associate’s (AA) and Bachelor’s (BFA) degree programs as well as continuing art education courses. Now the Academy of Art will additionally launch both a 3-year and 4-year MFA degree program. For more information about the new MFA program click here.
Last week the Internet and architecture blogs went crazy after Steve Jobs presented the new Apple Campus to the city of Cupertino, California.
Rumors about Foster + Partners (an office with a high expertise on work environments) working with Apple on this new campus appeared on December last year on a Spanish newspaper, but there was never an official confirmation (or denial). But given that the actual project fits with the information we received from an anonymous tipster last December, it seems it could be right:
“I recently got a tour of Norman Foster’s office in London and saw some images of the Apple Campus design. I believe the main building will be a large donut shaped building with all the offices and labs surrounding a large garden. It was a very pure form which connects to some of the recent Apple stores, but I was surprised that it didn’t really scream Apple to me. Of course it could have been a very preliminary design that wasn’t fully resolved yet. Anyway, I just thought I would pass on some info.”
During Steve Job’s presentation to the city of Cupertino we could see this round building, and Jobs outlined several facts on how this new campus for 12,000 people will improve the 98-acre site, such as taking parking underground to reduce the footprint, increasing landscaping from 20% to 80%, and planting more trees (3,700 now, 6,000 in the future). It even includes its own natural gas based energy generation plant (as seen on the drawings) with the electrical grid as backup.
“It’s a pretty amazing building. It’s a little like a spaceship landed. It’s got this gorgeous courtyard in the middle… It’s a circle. It’s curved all the way around. If you build things, this is not the cheapest way to build something. There is not a straight piece of glass in this building. It’s all curved. We’ve used our experience making retail buildings all over the world now, and we know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use. And, we want to make the glass specifically for this building here. We can make it curve all the way around the building… It’s pretty cool.”
We reached Steve Jobs over the past weekend to get more details about the project and he said that he wasn´t interested in presenting the project on ArchDaily at this time, possibly because the project still needs to be approved by the city. We hope to bring you more details later on, so you can have an informed opinion.
More images from the presentation after the break.
This project is one piece of the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) new headquarters facility, originally awarded through a competition to a team that included the LA office of DMJM/Design (now part of AECOM), Denver-based Roth+Sheppard, Studio 0.10, and John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK).
These two 3-story mixed-use buildings, side-by-side reflecting each other, sit on a narrow thirty-foot lot along Ocean Front walk on world famous Venice Beach. This culturally diverse urban community is a busy commercial pedestrian area, popular with tourists and locals alike.
In 2010, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) held a design competition for a flexible solution to replace portable buildings across the district, and HMC Architects accepted the challenge. The district asked them to ignore their standards and put an emphasis on an ideas-based approach. They wanted creative, progressive responses to their problem, not dressed-up modular buildings. They challenged the traditional box shape of the classroom by looking at how the room is used and how it is currently under utilized. Although their design solution, which they named Flex, did not win the competition, their end product is a portable classroom solution that can be used at any school, with hope that their design can inspire other school districts to think differently when it comes to portable classrooms. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The cocktail is a distinctly American tradition. Once the centerpiece of a thriving “cocktail culture,” it has faded since the 1950s but is now being embraced by a new generation of makers and mixologists who value quality and craft. The Spirits Pavilion, by Min | Day, presents this rejuvenation as part of Slow Food Nation 2008, an event in Fort Mason, San Francisco dedicated to creating a framework for deeper environmental connection to our food aiming to inspire and empower Americans to build a food system that is sustainable, healthy and delicious. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by Team CLS, headed by award winning UK Architect Darren Chan, other members including Emily Lau (Architecture Graduate) and Jonas Sin (Netherlands Architect), their project, Helios Rehab Sanctuary, innovates in the application of sustainable technologies to create a new and exciting typology. More on this project after the break.
