The main objective for the Detroit River Front proposal is to create a new image of the city, an exclusive and unique landmark that glances to a future Detroit involved in its nature that it forgot for a long time. Designed by Architetto Matteo Ascani (AMA), the project for the redevelopment of Hart Plaza is divided in major guide lines: water, nature, history. They provide a new landscape system, where water enters inside the plaza by canals that redesign the cost line, as the river comes closer to the downtown. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Rio de Janeiro-based writer Robert Landon has shared with us his experience exploring Zaha Hadid’s newly completed Eli and Edythe Broad Museum in Michigan.
As you approach Zaha Hadid’s new Eli and Edythe Broad Museum in East Lansing, Michigan, it is the complex, light-catching carapace that first reels in the eye — a fine shock after the brick, neo-Gothic buildings that define the rest of the Michigan State University campus. Draw closer and its undulating fins, opening and closing in rhythmic asymmetries, begin to seduce the mind. In some places scrunched up into sharp angles and in others allowed to breathe for longer stretches across the low-slung facade, the fins seem to be the expression of some higher, grid-bending equation.
In a half-conscious attempt to solve the math, you begin to circle the building. At certain points, the fins spread wide enough for generous glimpses inside, but as you move keep moving, the inner secrets vanish again behind the metal lattice. In the same way, the relentlessly kinetic carapace tantalizes with, but ultimately eludes, any logical or definitive summing up. What is certain, though, is that, by the time you’ve come full circle, you’ll have grown quite curious to see what is going on inside.
Studio Gang Architects and Kalamazoo College have announced plans to break ground October 9, at 4PM, on a new campus building to house the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in southwest Michigan. The 10,000 square foot, wood masonry center will be the world’s first purpose-built structure for social justice leadership development, integrating a study, meeting, and event space where students, faculty, visiting scholars, social justice leaders, and members of the public will come together to engage in conversation and activities aimed at creating a more just world.
Set to be completed in Fall 2013, the Arcus Center is targeting LEED Gold certification. Continue after the break to learn more.
General Manifold is an immersive architectural environment installed in the abandoned Federal Screw Works factory complex in Chelsea, Michigan. This installation was the centerpiece of a collective exhibition organized by the architectural collaborative Spatial Ops and students from their Meta Friche research seminar at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Continue after the break for images and the architect’ project description.
Resonant Chamber, an interior envelope system that deploys the principles of rigid origami, transforms the acoustic environment through dynamic spatial, material and electro-acoustic technologies. The aim of rvtr is to develop a soundsphere able to adjust its properties in response to changing sonic conditions, altering the sound of a space during performance and creating an instrument at the scale of architecture, flexible enough that it might be capable of being played. The project is funded through the 2011 Research through Making Grant, U-M Office of the Vice President for Research, 2011 Small Projects Grant, U-M Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Research Creation Grant. More images and architects’ description after the break.
In 2007, Zaha Hadid won an international design competition for the Broad Art Museum on the campus of Michigan State University. The 4000 m2 building, which is donated by alumnus Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe, will provide ample space for large art installations and galleries dedicated to “international contemporary culture and ideas through art.” The design takes cues from the surrounding topography as the volume seeks to extend and emphasize existing circulatory and visual connections. Manifested in a series of pleats, the building’s abstracted connections create linear perpsective lines that change are the vistor moves past and through the building, “creating great curiosity yet never fully revealing its content,” explained Hadid. Ground breaking began in March of 2010, and now, construction is nearing completion on the project, which is slated to open in April of this year.
Check out more construction photos, along with the competition proposal renderings, after the break.
Thousands of vegetable, soup and other canned goods will be used to create unique works of art built by teams of local architects, designers, engineers, contractors and students. Detroit Canstructionâ will help raise awareness about hunger issues while nourishing families in need. All cans used in the exhibits will be donated to Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan (Gleaners). More information on the event after the break.
Referred to as one of Meier’s best works, the Douglas House hovers over the shores of Lake Michigan placed upon a steep slope over the water almost as if it is floating amongst the trees. The Douglas House was designed for clients Jim and Jean Douglas and was completed in 1973 after a three year construction period (1971-1973). Meier furnished the home with furniture designed by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and himself, and it needed no ornamentation other than the nature it was designed around.
As is typical of Meier buildings, the house is completely white made with reinforced concrete and glass except for two steel pipes that extend from the chimney up to the roof, framing views at the entry level. Taking the natural surroundings into consideration during the construction, the house was positioned to remove as few trees as possible.
Featured in Dwell’s latest edition (out this week!), the full article can be found following the break.
The Terminal Expansion Capacity Program for the Myrtle Beach International Airport demonstrated a need to develop a new terminal for airport operations and additional gates to serve the increased passenger load. inFORM Studio‘s $129 million project, governed by a tight budget and site parameters, includes a new ticketing lobby, baggage claim, baggage handling, TSA screening, a new 5 gate concourse and connector bridge to existing concourse with an additional gate integrated into the bridge to maximize the efficiency of circulation space. More information and images of the Myrtle Beach International Airport after the break.
‘Detroit by Design’, a symposium and exhibition hosted by the AIA Detroit Urban Priorities Committee, will welcome the architecture and design community to study the unique and challenged urban infrastructure of Detroit through three key issues: urban centers, transportation, urban agriculture over the next three months. This month ‘Detroit by Design’ will address the topic of transportation with an exhibit on April 5th and discussions on April 13th. All exhibits and symposiums will be held at the Detroit Public Library and are free and open to public. Further details of ‘Detroit by Design’ following the break.
When Dale Morgan and Norman Silk spotted a “For Sale” sign in front of a contemporary home in the Palmer Woods neighborhood of Detroit it was just what they were looking for, so they snatched it up. Little did they know that they had just stumbled into buying a true Frank Lloyd Wright designed home, known as the Turkel House.
To answer the question you are all asking yourselves, how could they not have known, it turns out that 25 years of disrepair, long periods of vacancy and changing owners hands combined with years of deferred maintenance and overgrown vegetation can hide a FLW design quite well.
