Constructed from non-architectural artifacts, Yevrus 1, Negative Impression is a disposable architecture of literal references that calls into question the contemporary architectural vogue for digital complexity and abstraction. The cast impressions of 1973 Volkswagen Beetles and speedboats unite to form a strong structural whole that serves as a lookout tower in the SCI-Arc Gallery. More information after the break.
CULBURB’s Shaping Cities Symposium + Workshop, which takes place at the Centre for Central European Architecture May 22-23, asks what the nonprofit organizations are today and questions their role in the creation of city space. Are they non-elected groups of interest promoting their own interpretation of public good? Or do they represent a litmus paper of the level of democracy in the society? who can shape the life and form of the city? How and why? a unifying web database of such organizations from whole Europe will take place on the ground of the event. For more information, please visit here.
PointCrowd is a RhinoScripting workshop using the remarkably easy to learn Python programming language that is available in the upcoming release of Rhino 5. This three week mini-course will start with the basics of programming and move into the mathematics of space and Rhino’s representation of geometry. The workshop is designed specifically for architects and designers with little or no programming experience or those interested in learning a new platform for expressing geometrical ideas algorithmically. Anyone with a good working knowledge of Rhino is welcome.
Taking place May 3, the “Consumed” Architecture + Urbanism Symposium, put on my the University of Manchester’s School of Architecture, the event looks to explore the theme of consumption in the urban built environment through a selection of invited speakers from a variety of locations and professions. Current speakers include; Joseph Grima Editor of Domus Magazine, Mario Minale of Mario Minale Designers, Berndt Jespersen and Mette Skobjerg of Kalundborg Symbiosis, and Gavin Elliott of BDP is to Chair. More speakers are to be confirmed in coming weeks. The event is taking place in Manchester, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. For more information, please visit their website here.
Nader Tehrani, a principal and founder of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, inter-disciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry, will be delivering a lecture at the ASA Forum in Bangkok on April 29. He also is a professor and the head of the Department of Architecture at MIT School of Architecture and Planning. As the founding principal of Office dA, Nader Tehrani’s work received many prestigious awards, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, the United States Artists Architecture and Design Award, and thirteen Progressive Architecture Awards. More information on the event can be found here.
The American Institute of Architects, Los Angeles Chapter recently announced their 10th Annual 2×8 Student Exhibition which features a display of 16 of the major architectural school programs in California. Although based in LA, they have extended their invitations to the region and are opening the door to more schools. Taking place at the A+D Museum, each of the participating academic programs selects two projects that exemplify its core vision. The students’ design work will be judged by a noteworthy panel of architects and designers. The panel will then announce the winners at the exhibition opening and convene in a forum to discuss the award-winning projects. The exhibition will be on view from June 5 till June 30. For more information, please visit here. More images of past exhibitions can be viewed after the break.
CIVITAS, the organizer of the Reimagining the Waterfront, has announced the winners of the ideas competition for the design of the East River Esplanade between 60th and 125th in New York City bound by the East River to the East and the FDR Drive to the west. Joseph Wood of New Jersey, USA; Takuma Ono and Darina Zlateva of New York City, USA and Matteo Rossetti of Italy claimed first, second and third prize respectively. The competition aspires to bring to new and fresh ideas to the conversation about this waterfront, which over the years has had many issues of disrepair. Anyone who has attempted to bike down this path can appeal to just how unpleasant it can be – massive potholes that take up the whole path, traffic rushing by just a foot away just beyond a shoulder (which is not provided everywhere) and cobbled paths that create a bumpy ride. The proximity to the East River, and the views of Randall’s Island, Queens, Roosevelt Island and the Queensboro Bridge are its saving grace.
There have already been many talks about the state of the East River Esplanade, particularly that it stops abruptly at East 53rd street at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge and starts up again around East 38th street. Last summer MAS, an organization in NYC that advocates for intelligent urban planning, design and preservation, hosted a day-long charette to design an esplanade along the ConEd piers located between East 38th and East 41st Streets. MAS appealed to the community for ideas for “The Next Great NYC Waterfront” and worked alongside W Architecture and Landscape Architecture to produce a report, which can be found here. With CIVITAS’s competition, the issues are again acknowledged to continue brainstorming the future of the waterfront.
The Architect’s Newspaper reviewed the competition winners in an article by Tom Stoelker, which are imaginative and considered. The proposals of the winners and honorable mentions will be exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York between June 6th and September 2012 which will give the public access to some possibilities for the future of the East River Esplanade.
Join us after the break for more on the proposals.
The free event that has unveiled secret places in the most beautiful cities all over the world is, for the first time ever, in Rome the weekend of May 5-6. An idea both simple and revolutionary, Open House Rome 2012, which is open to the public, features the most interesting and inaccessible places in a city through completely free of charge guided tours including more than 80 sites from a wide variety of historical periods within the city as well as organized outdoor walking and cycling tours in 4 wide districts of Rome. For more information, please visit their official website here.
Founder and principal of Studio Gang Architects, Jeanne Gang, FAIA, LEED AP, will be delivering a lecture at LACMA on May 8th at 7:30pm. Reveal, the first volume on Studio Gang’s projects and processes, was released in 2011 from Princeton Architectural Press. Recent projects include a proposal reimagining the suburb of Cicero, Illinois, as a part of MoMA’sexhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream; Reverse Effect, a book intended to explore and spark a radically greener future for the Chicago River and Great Lakes; Aqua Tower, an Emporis Skyscraper of the Year; and Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo, an educational project demonstrating how nature and city can coexist. The event is presented by LACMA and organized by Francesca Garcia-Marques, with an introduction by Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times architecture critic. For more details and information on the event, please visit here.
Organized by Graz University of Technology, the ‘Advanced Building Skins’ Conference will take place June 14-15 where creative, innovative professionals and researchers at the forefront of skin design will discuss tasks and issues in research, design and manufacturing of high-performance façades and building envelopes. Participants will gain new perspectives on, and an enhanced insight into, developments and research in design and engineering for tomorrow’s advanced building skins. uilding skins have rarely been as fascinating and challenging as they are today. They are the most interesting field in contemporary architecture. Façades and building envelopes are determining the visual identity, character and expression of architecture. The design of buildings’ skins shapes the urban environment. For more information, please visit here.
Sponsored by Cannon Design, the ‘(un) Made in China’ Exhibition will be taking place April 20 – June 20 at the ide@s gallery in Shanghai, China.Thirty years of unprecedented growth have transformed China’s built environment and given it the reputation as a land of opportunity for architects today. While much attention – and some criticism – has been focused on major completed works, little is known of those projects that disappear, fizzle out, or sit abandoned in spite of the rich tradition within architecture of both celebrating and criticizing unbuilt work. “(un) Made in China” seeks to bring light to these could-have-been-transformative projects and the experiences they produced. At its heart is a series of interviews conducted with 12 international architecture practices, which generate a wealth of interesting, insightful, and often humorous accounts and accompanying these are architectural models and images of the unrealized projects. For more information, please visit here.
Taking place at the Center for Architecture in New York April 16 from 6-8pm, the ‘Documenting Your Work in a Digital Age: An Interactive Discussion’ will be an informal panel discussion put on by AIA New York focused on the range of digital tools currently in use to describe and define architecture. The discussion will range from architectural photography to other forms of digital communication, 3D display, and user experience design. Presenters, including Peter Aaron, Sam Travis Ewen, and Matthew Bannister, will integrate ideas about how to optimize digital content so that it can be easily found and viewed online by target audiences. To register and for more information, please visit here.
Coinciding with the exhibition Alturas de Macchu Picchu: Martín Chambi – Álvaro Siza at work on view at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) for an extended run until 29 April 2012, Pritzker prize-winning architect Álvaro Siza will give a not-to-be-missed lecture on Thursday 26 April 2012 at 7 pm at the CCA. The event is a rare opportunity to hear the preeminent architect speak in person. Siza’s lecture discusses his design development of the Iberê Camargo Museum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, completed in 2008 and noted for its sculptural volumes and tight integration with a coastal escarpment. As with all of Siza’s projects, hand sketches play a key role in the design process, from massing studies to fine-tuning details. For more information, please visit here.
Breaking Ground: Chinese American Architects in Los Angeles (1945-1980) at the Chinese American Museum (CAM) is an exhibition that focuses on four Chinese American architects that have transformed parts of Los Angeles with iconic buildings and distinct design styles. The work will be on display until June 3rd 2012 and feature architects such as Eugene Choy,Gilbert Leong, Helen Liu Fong andGin Wong.
Breaking Ground is part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration created by Getty in which sixty cultural institutions will tell the story of the birth of LA art scene over the course of six months beginning October 2011. Breaking Ground at CAM LA tells the story of the skyline and the changing built environment through the perspective the four prominent Chinese American Architects.
Pedro E. Guerrero: Photographs of Modern Life at Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery (WUHO) is on view through April 25. The show is the first extensive exhibition on the West Coast of Guerrero’s career as an architectural photographer. Curated by Anthony Fontenot and Emily Bills, JSI director, Pedro E. Guerrero: Photographs of Modern Life will highlight the diversity of Guerrero’s subjects taken over seven decades. During that time, he captured the architecture of Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Edward Durell Stone and Eero Saarinen. His wide ranging work included portraits of architects as well as commercial work for House & Garden, Vogue, the New York Times Magazine and Architectural Record. He is perhaps best known for his close relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright. The exhibition will feature Guerrero’s illuminating portraits of Wright, including twelve photographs of the architect’s hands demonstrating the difference between organic and conventional architecture at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Continue reading for more.
Organized by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Chair of Architectural Theory, the “Brutalism. Architecture of Everyday Culture, Poetry and Theory” symposium will be taking place in Berlin May 10-11. Their position on this topic is that Brutalism’s critical review of classical modernism and post-war modernism gave rise to a unique laboratory situation, in which modern architectural trends still of relevance today were developed and tested for the very first time. More information on the event after the break.
15:15 Raincatcher by YS Groundwork is the result of a competition entry for the contemporary design of one of Hong Kong’s oldest urban traditions: the Hawker Stall – Dai Pai Dong. A Hawker Stall is a kitchen, a dining room and a living room – a space for passersby to enjoy public space, interact with strangers, and grab a bite to eat on their way to their next destination. Initially exhibited at the 2009 Hong Kong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, YSGroundwork has won the opportunity to realize their design and prove that their twist on tradition will add vitality and innovation to the Hong Kong’s streetlife.
The 12th International Alvar Aalto Symposium will be held in JyväskyläFinland from August 10-12, 2012. With the theme of ‘Crafted’ – The Ingredients of Architecture’, the question arises: How does architecture rise above the ordinary? Organised by the Alvar Aalto Academy, the international Alvar Aalto Symposium aims to address the complex relationship between material, craft and culture, not simply as a matter of professional practice but also as a sociological and pedagogical imperative. More information on the event after the break.
