Before airplanes, it took mail carriers on horseback months to transport letters across the country. Before washing machines, it took a full day of physical exercise to wash and dry a family’s laundry. And before cranes, it took decades—sometimes centuries—to build large structures such as castles and cathedrals.
The point being: Whatever you do, technology probably gives you a better way to do it.
The School of Continuing Studies will frame an architectural gateway at the South edge of the Campus. Image Courtesy of Perkins + Will
Perkins+Will’s triangulated facade scheme has won an international competition for the design of the new School of Continuing Studies at York University’s Keele campus outside of Toronto, Canada.
Beating out proposals from top firms, including finalists HOK andGow Hastings Architects with Henning Larsen, Perkins+Will’s design twists as it rises, both reacting to solar optimization studies and opening up the building to create a new gateway at the campus’ southeast entrance.
In recent years, many ambitious proposals have been brought forward to revitalize and improve the area around the Los Angeles River. The Lower Los Angeles River Revitalization Plan (LLARP), proposed by Perkins + Will Architects in conjunction with various community groups and public institutions, aims to connect residents to the river and improve the environment surrounding it.
Perkins+Will's Shanghai Natural History Museum and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects' Malmö Live. Images by James and Connor Steinkamp; Adam Mørk
In one of the largest mergers ever to occur in the architecture world, world renowned Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has joined Perkins+Will in a strategic global partnership aimed at extending the firms’ international reach and reinforcing a commitment to sustainability and design excellence.
Founded in 1986, Schmidt Hammer Lassen has grown to become one of Scandinavia's most prominent and reputable practices, completing projects such as the Dokk1 Library and ARoS Museum of Art in Aarhus, Denmark; the Halifax Central Library in Nova Scotia, Canada; and The Black Diamond, the extension to the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The firm had a particularly successful 2017, winning competitions for projects in locations as wide ranging as Shanghai, Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Detroit.
Perkins+Will is creating a whole new world 62 miles northwest of Shanghai for the Suzhou Science & Technology Museum. Inspired by shan sui, the Chinese phrase for "mountain-water,” the complex lies at the foot of Lion Mountain and adjacent to Shishan Lake. The 600,000 square foot museum will be the focal point of a new cultural neighborhood in Shishan Park.
Architect Magazine has unveiled the 2017 edition of the “Architect 50,” their list of the 50 best architecture firms in the United States. The 2017 rankings are based on scores from three categories: business, design and sustainability. This year saw more entrants than ever before, with several first-time entrants making notable impressions, including the number 1 ranked design firm, WORKac. Topping the overall list was Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), who also ranked in the top 10 in both design and sustainability.
See the top 10 from each category after the break.
Overall & Display Winner: Fabricwood; Singapore / PRODUCE Workshop. Image Courtesy of World Architecture Festival
PRODUCE Workshop's flexible plywood "Shop-in-Shop" interior for Herman Miller at the XTRA flagship store in Singapore has been named the world's best interior of 2017 at the INSIDE World Festival of Interiors, which took place alongside the 2017 World Architecture Festival in Berlin. The overall winner was selected from a list of 9 nine category winners announced over the first two days of the event, which themselves were selected from a shortlist of 78 projects.
Dubbed "Fabricwood" by its designers, the winning space comprises a 20-meter arched structure constructed of plywood panels modeled to give the appearance of fabric. The installation was also the winner of the Display category.
Perkins+Will has launched a newly updated website tool aimed at increasing awareness of hazardous building materials and encouraging designers to select healthier products for their projects.
The firm first established their Precautionary List of hazardous materials in 2008, with a full Transparency website coming in 2011. The new website features improved versions of both tools. Rather than a static list, materials are now organized within a searchable database that can be quickly organized using filters such as project type, product type, and health and environmental impacts.
With somewhere between one and three million cats, Los Angeles is home to one of the United States’ largest populations of homeless felines. For the “Giving Shelter” exhibition in Los Angeles, 12 architects designed and built 13 small, one-of-a-kind shelters for these cats. The shelters, which are being sold through an online auction until 9pm PST tonight, will raise money for FixNation, a non-profit which provides a free service to spay or neuter homeless cats. Read on to see all 13 shelters.
https://www.archdaily.com/882701/12-architects-design-shelters-to-raise-money-for-las-homeless-catsAD Editorial Team
Architectural Record has released the 2017 edition of its annual list of the “Top 300 Architecture Firms” in the United States. Compiled by Record's sister publication Engineering News-Record, the list ranks firms based on architectural revenue from the previous year (2016). This year, the top 4 firms held fast to their spots, led by Gensler with a record-best $1.19 billion in revenue. Moving into the top 5 was HOK, while the designation of biggest mover in the top 25 belongs to Dallas-based Corgan, who jumped from 22nd place in 2016 to 14th this year.
Earlier this year, BDOnline released the 2017 edition of the WA 100, their annual survey of the world's largest practices. Ranking the firms by the number of architects they employ, the full report also investigates these firms' financial records and industry trends. The top spots show only slight changes from last year's rankings, with Japan's Nikken Sekkei taking second place from AECOM being perhaps the most notable change. However, the big story behind this year's WA 100 is the rapid growth of #1 firm Gensler, with the firm increasing their lead from last year. The firm now employs almost 800 more architects than any other firm in the world.
"Gensler’s total domination of the rankings continues as it achieves the seemingly impossible task of growing still more after last year’s huge leap in size," says BDOnline, noting that the company's total of 2,570 employed architects represents an increase of almost 1,000 in under 2 years. Gensler's co-chief executive Diane Hoskins explains this growth as the result of expanding overseas while continuing to expand in the US. "It’s not an either/or," she explained to BDOnline.
Read on to see the top 20, or go see the full list of 100 top practices at BDOnlinehere (for subscribers only).
https://www.archdaily.com/870842/the-worlds-20-largest-architecture-firmsAD Editorial Team
In #donotsettle’s latest escapade, architect Kris Provoost scrutinizes Perkins+Will’s Shanghai Natural History Museum. The boyishly charming and ever-inquisitive vlogger presents a unique POV tour of the unusual building situated in the middle of the Jing'an Sculpture Park.
Over a soundtrack of slick house music, Provoost offers up tidbits that cannot be gleaned from a photo. As he approaches the structure, he points out topographical aspects, the relationship of the structure to its context, and various construction details. The rapid-fire architectural observations are often punctuated by brief cross-sectional sketches that augment the experiential commentary.
Initial renderings for the Roosevelt Branch, designed by SOM. Image Courtesy of The Chicago Housing Authority
The City of Chicago and the Chicago Housing Authority have announced the selection of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Perkins + Will and John Ronan Architects to lead in the design of three new “co-located” affordable housing and library developments in the Chicago neighborhoods of Little Italy, West Ridge, and Irving Park.
Selected from a shortlist of nine firms, the three Chicago-based teams were chosen for their “innovative ideas that will ensure that each community will have a design that best reflects its needs.” The practices will work intimately with their respective communities to develop their designs.
Go to any medieval European city and you will see what streets looked like before the advent of the car: lovely, small narrow lanes, intimate, and undisputedly human-scale. We have very few cities in the US where you can find streets like this. For the most part what you see is streets that have been designed with the car in mind—at a large scale for a fast speed. In my native San Francisco, we are making the streets safer for walking and biking by widening sidewalks, turning car lanes into bike lanes, and slowing down the cars. We are working with the streets we have; a typical San Francisco street is anywhere from 60 to 80 feet (18 to 24 meters) wide, as compared with a medieval, pre-car street which is more like 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) wide.
As an urban designer, I work on lots of projects where we take large parcels of land and subdivide them into blocks by introducing new streets. These new streets are a rare opportunity to take a fresh look at the kinds of car-oriented roads that we are used to, and instead try to design streets that prioritize the safety and comfort of pedestrians. These projects give us a chance to design streets that are just for people. Imagine that we made these people-only streets into narrow, medieval-style lanes that are intimate and human-scaled. But even as we try to design streets that might not ever see a single car, we find that the modern street design has become so much more than just places for walking or driving. There are therefore a number of things for socially-minded designers to consider, beyond the commonly talked about pedestrian-car dichotomy.
https://www.archdaily.com/867390/4-important-things-to-consider-when-designing-streets-for-people-not-just-carsKristen Hall
Perkins+Will and the Healthy Building Network (HBN) have released their latest material health and performance white paper, Healthy Environments: Understanding Antimicrobial Ingredients in Building Materials.
According to the paper, antimicrobial building products “marketed as healthy or beneficial to human health contain ingredients that may have adverse environmental or human health impacts, and alternative products should be considered whenever possible.” Citing a lack of evidence that antimicrobial products prevent the spread of communicable diseases, the report highlights potential impacts like “super bugs,” contamination of aquatic ecosystems, and carcinogens.
Ten top highlights from the paper, concerning antimicrobial products, are:
The AEC industry is notoriously slow to adopt new technologies. Cumbersome organizational structures and high financial stakes make it difficult for AEC professionals to experiment. Due to the limited role of architects in the project development process, innovative design solutions and experimentation with new manufacturing techniques are still confined to academic circles and research institutions.
However, some architecture firms are utilizing their high profiles, international success and the influx of talented, young designers to establish in-house research divisions and incubators that support the development of new ideas in the AEC industry. The following five companies are consistent in pushing the envelope and helping architecture adopt some of the latest technologies:
https://www.archdaily.com/798252/these-are-the-worlds-most-innovative-architecture-firmsLidija Grozdanic for Archipreneur.com
The winners of the 2016 LEAF Awards have been announced. Founded in 2001, the awards ceremony honors innovative architecture projects in 14 different categories dedicated to various aspects of building, including best façade design and engineering, best future building, and public building of the year. The winning projects are recognized as “setting the benchmark for the best in the industry.”
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