Shohei Shigematsu: The Latest Architecture and News

Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery has selected OMA to expand and refurbish the historic museum and its campus. The project team is being lead by OMA New York’s Principal, Shohei Shigematsu, who will spend the next year in partnership with the museum and in consultation with the community on how to renew and revitalize the august institution. Known as AK360, the building will be OMA’s first art museum project in the United States, and the Albright-Knox’s first expansion in more than a half-century. According to the museum, the project’s name is a reflection on this being the institution’s third expansion in its 154-year history, in addition, it establishes an embrace of public feedback and the acknowledges the condition of being encircled by parkland.

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With the conclusion of this year’s Met Gala, on Thursday the public will have their first look at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new spring show, "Manus x Machina". According to the museum, “[the exhibition] will explore [an] ongoing dichotomy, in which hand and machine are presented as discordant tools in the creative process, and question the relationship and distinction between haute couture and ready-to-wear.” Occurring in the museum’s Robert Lehman Wing, a 1975 expansion by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, the exhibition design has been developed by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA New York. Organized by Andrew Bolton, the Curator of The Costume Institute, the exhibition will feature over 100 samples of “haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear, dating from an 1880s Worth gown to a 2015 Chanel suit.” Read on for a small preview of the exhibition, fashion, and spectacle of Manus x Machina, on view from May 5 - August 14.

As part of an initiative to raise money for the Transbay Transit Center, the City of San Francisco has sold a $72 million, city-owned parcel to developer Related of California that will pave the way for a 550-foot, OMA New York-designed residential tower. Located on Folsom Street, between First and Fremont streets, the new tower will be a mix of condominiums and rental apartments, of which 27 percent must be affordable to residents making 60 percent of the area’s median income ($58,250 for a family of four, according to SFGate). We will keep you posted as more details become available.

A few hours ago in Venice, Rem Koolhaas presented his curatorial vision for "Fundamentals" in a live-streamed opening press conference. As we reported last year, "Fundamentals" will focus on architecture rather than architects and history rather than contemporaneity. Koolhaas will not just curate an exhibition of his own, but will be coordinating the "collective effort of all national pavilions."

This year's exhibition features the participation of 65 countries--including 11 first-time participants (Azerbaijan, Côte d'Ivoire, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, New Zealand and Turkey). See the complete list of national participants--which includes collaborations with Jacques Tati, Hans Ulrich Obrist, FAT, Iñaki Ábalos and others--after the break.

Click here to see all of ArchDaily's previous coverage of the 2014 Venice Biennale. And stay tuned... we'll be bringing you on-the-ground reports from Venice when the Biennale launches in the first week of June!

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Miami Beach city commissioners have unanimously agreed to abandon the $1 billion redevelopment of its 52-acre convention center district, which aimed to radically reinvent the area. This decision comes just six months after the city awarded developer South Beach ACE and OMA the bid after an international, highly-publicized competition that pitted OMA against BIG.

“For the purposes of getting this project done fast, on time, on budget, it’s unfortunate that we’ll have to make a very tough, challenging decision,” said Miami Beach Mayer Philip Levine, “To some people, it’s a little disheartening. To other people, it’s a very fresh start.”

As reported by the Miami Herald, the city plans to reinstate a bid for the renovation of the city-owned convention center as well as another for the development of a nearby hotel. Under the new bid, the city will no longer be required to attain 60 percent of voter approval to build. By doing this, Levine believes the renovation will be expedited.

Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) recently held a lecture featuring performance artist Marina Abromović alongside OMA principle Shohei Shigematsu in the anticipation of the Marina Abromović Institute for the Preservation of Performing Art (MAI) 2014 opening. In the lecture, Shigematsu speaks about the process in which they transformed a former theater in Hudson, New York, into a structure that's capable of assisting the institute's mission to develop new kinds of performance, while functioning as a space for preserving and hosting historic performance pieces. Shigematsu references OMA’s history of designing spaces that combine architecture and art, such as the Quebec National Museum and a recent collaboration with Kanye West.

More on this discussion after the break...