André Balazs, CEO of André Balazs Properties, has been tapped by Port Authority officials to redevelop the historic, Eero Saarinen-designed TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Balazs will transform the terminal into the “Standard, Flight Center” hotel and conference center, equipped with food and beverage space, retail, a spa and fitness center, meeting facilities and a flight museum.
This article originally appeared in uncube magazine as "Saviour or Parasite?"
The post-war city centre of Rotterdam is ruled by commerce. Only five percent of the city's inhabitants live in the centre, which is almost entirely occupied by highstreet fashion chains, fast food restaurants, and offices. After shop closing time, the shutters go down and the streets are deserted. The municipality would like to lure more inhabitants into the centre – but space for new residential buildings is scarce. So in recent years, a 1960s cinema and church had to make way for a huge new housing complex designed by Alsop Architects, and a residential tower by Wiel Arets was speedily attached to Marcel Breuer's department store, De Bijenkorf. It was not until the municipality suggested forcing new housing high-rises into the green courtyards of the Lijnbaanhoven residential complex, designed in 1954 by Hugh Maaskant, that there were protests and the project had to be cancelled. For the time being, that is.
One densification project, however, tried not to destroy or debase the post-war building originally occupying its site. In many respects, the Karel Doorman residential high-rise could even be called the saviour of the old Ter Meulen department store. It might be rather uncommon for a valiant hero to crouch down on the shoulders of the little old lady he intends to rescue – but that's more or less what happened here.
The Wall Street Journal recently detailed the complex history of E-1027, the house which Eileen Gray designed with her lover Jean Badovici in Southern France: from the murals which Le Corbusier painted on the walls (without Gray's permission) to the murder that happened there in 1996 to the restoration that has been going on for over a decade (a supposed "massacre" of the original). You can read the full article here.
New York-based, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramović has successfully secured funding via Kickstarter for phase one of an interdisciplinary performance and education center in Hudson, New York. The project, known as the Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (MAI), aims to be the first crowdfunded cultural institution ever to be built as well as the only international arts center dedicated to presentation and preservation of long-durational work. With the help of Abramović’s “global community of collaborators,” OMA will now move forward with the project’s design development process. More information on the MAI’s design can be found here.
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A collaborative effort by Osamu Tsukihashi + Tsukihashi Laboratory, many professors and architecture students at all over Japan, "Projects Lost Homes" aims at lamenting lost towns and considering the disaster and the damaged areas brought about by Great East Japan Earthquake. Damaged areas were looked at dreadful circumstances, and the original sites were flowed away by Tsunamis, especially lots of areas on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Tohoku. Since 2011, their project has consisted of restoring damaged towns and villages, especially the coastal areas devastated by the following terrible tsunamis, by 1:500 scale models. More images and architects' description after the break.
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