architecture

Microsoft and its new Windows logo apparently aren’t the only things receiving negative heat this chilly month. With his Eisenhower Memorial in DC on very shaky ground and his Abu Dhabi Guggenheim going through a series of on-and-off again hurdles, along with a series of other issues at hand, architect Frank Gehry looks to be returning to those days from a couple of years ago when he seemed a little bummed out. In speaking to the Guardian this week, the architect unloaded a bit, speaking very frankly (puns!) about the world occasionally turning against him and his work, as well as “starchitecture” as a whole. The whole piece is somewhat friendly to his plight, but no matter your opinion on his work, or buildings by celebrity architects in general, it’s an interesting read regardless, as Gehry rarely censors himself on telling it like how he thinks it is. Here’s the money quote:

“There is a backlash,” says Gehry, now aged 82, “against me and everyone who has done buildings that have movement and feeling”, that is “self-righteous” and “annoying… The notion is that it is counterproductive to social responsibility and sustainability. Therefore, curving the wall or doing something so-called willful is wrong and so there is a tendency back to bland.

Create a clear, strategic approach to the way you use Facebook to market your business in our new Facebook Marketing Boot Camp. The online conference and workshop starts April 24. Learn more.

There are many ways to while away the hours between screenings at the Sundance Film Festival: skiing, shopping for ponchos, stalking Robert Redford, donning the aforementioned poncho (four-ply cashmere, vaguely Navajo-inspired) to crash the nearest “celebrity gifting suite.” But this year’s festival offered a new pastime: inspecting models and designs of the buildings proposed for Park City’s Kimball Art Center. Festivalgoers (and anyone visiting the non-profit arts center last month) were invited to weigh in on the five finalists in the design competition for its renovation and expansion project: submissions by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, Brooks + Scarpa Architects, Sparano + Mooney Architecture, Will Bruder + Partners Ltd., and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

No word as to whether the jury was swayed by the results of the feedback it solicited, but the winner is BIG. The New York- and Copenhagen-based firm proposed “what is in essence a highly evolved log cabin.” BIG envisions a new Kimball Art Center made of massive stacked timber elements (reclaimed from train track piles from the Great Salt Lake) that enclose a spiral staircase, exhibition spaces, and a restaurant, all topped by a terrace. For the historic Kimball Art Center building, located directly adjacent to the new one, BIG proposed that it be renovated into an educational hub with a rooftop sculpture garden. Inspired by the “raw charm of Park City and the Kimball Art Center,” Ingels says that he sought to continue the town’s tradition of repurposing old industrial buildings for cultural purposes. His firm’s winning proposal looks to the construction technique of the old mines and salavaged railroad trestles “to create a raw spacious framework for the art and artists of Park City—a traditional material and technique deployed to produce a highly contemporary expression.” The project is expected to begin in mid-2013 and be completed in mid-2015.

Before planning your next trip, be sure to review the newly crowned winners of the Travel + Leisure Design Awards, which will be featured in the magazine’s March issue (on newsstands next Friday). The 2012 winners range from the Zaha Hadid-designed Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi to the ultimate in travel-friendly apparel (the 1964 by Scott James blazer and Issey Miyake‘s eminently packable origami folding clothing). Many of this year’s favorites will come as no surprise, including the city-friendly Fiat 500 (best car) and Leica’s drool-worthy D-Lux 5 Titanium Set (best camera). Preston Scott Cohen‘s smart and sculptural Herta and Paul Amir Building at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art got the nod for best museum (edging out the Brad Cloepfil-designed Clyfford Still Museum, alas), and two NYC destinations—Jane’s Carousel Pavilion in Brooklyn and the Freitag Store—won for best public space and best retail space, respectively. Meanwhile, 2012 T+L Design Champion H.E. Mubarak Hamad Al Muhairi, the driving force behind Abu Dhabi’s transformation and evolution as a cultural and design capital, joins past honorees such as ubercollector Micky Wolfson, André Balazs, and Amanda Burden. Tasked with choosing “the best new examples of design” in 20 categories was a jury moderated by Chee Pearlman that included architect Billie Tsien, fashion designer Derek Lam, High Line pioneer Robert Hammond, and artist Michele Oka Doner. Keep reading for the full list of winners.
Read more

Frank Gehry‘s Guggenheim and Jean Nouvel‘s Louvre, both in Abu Dhabi, haven’t been the only high-profile Middle Eastern projects placed on shaky ground due to the recent turmoil in the region. The Guardian is reporting that internationally-renowned architect Zaha Hadid has seen her firm’s profits cut by more than half because of the Arab Spring. Despite news like her winning the Stirling Prize for the second year in a row, and landing commissions like being included among starchitects who have built a parking garage in Miami, to even her inclusion in the Sunday Times‘ annual “Rich List,” the paper reports that the number of projects that have been put on hold due to the Arab Spring turmoil have taken “a toll on the financial position of her firm.” How bad is it? There have been 76 people laid off and “before tax slumped to £1.8m in the year to 30 April 2011 from £4.1m the year before.” While we’re certain things aren’t teetering on the brink for the celebrated architect, it certainly must be making things a bit more tricky in an already struggling industry.

The Serpentine Gallery, who have learned to master the art of generating buzz about one annual project nearly year round at this point, announcing their pick for who will design the next one just as the one before it is fading from memory, have decided to up the ante even more so this year. They’ve just announced that this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a temporary structure set up in London’s Hyde Park, will be designed by a reunited Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. The two had previously collaborated on Beijing’s celebrated “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium ahead of the last Olympics in 2008. Weiwei’s gradual coming out against the project over labor and human rights issues was, for those not already in the art world, their first encounter with the artist Weiwei, whose outspoken views and clashes with the Chinese government have made him one of the most well-known and powerful artists today. With the Olympics coming to London in just a few months, and Weiwei now forced to work on projects from his virtual house arrest in Beijing, whatever the two parties come up with is sure to generate some nice press and an increased general interest for the Serpentine. Here’s a bit from the press release about what it’s going to look like:

This year’s Pavilion will take visitors beneath the Serpentine’s lawn to explore the hidden history of its previous Pavilions. Eleven columns characterising each past Pavilion and a twelfth column will support a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

“Wendy does not play the typical architecture game of ecological apology,” say the architects of their boundary-pushing pavilion, shown here in a rendering.

Who’s tripping down the streets of the city, smilin’ at everybody she sees? Who’s reachin’ out to neutralize an airborne pollutant? Everyone knows it’s Wendy! That’s right, fans of emerging architectural talent, the spiky and proactive creation of New York-based HWKN (Hollwich Kushner) has been declared the winner of this year’s MOMA PS1 Young Architects Program, besting finalists Ammar Eloueini of AEDS Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio (Paris and New Orleans), Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn of UrbanLab (Chicago), and the solid Cantabrigian (Massachusetts) contingent: Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim of I|K Studio and Cameron Wu.

Now in its thirteenth year, the Young Architects Program program challenges each year’s winners to develop creative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. HWKN’s “Wendy,” which will debut in Long Island City in late June, is composed of nylon fabric treated with a nifty titania nanoparticle spray to neutralize airborne pollutants. This summer, Wendy will clean the air to an equivalent of taking 260 cars off the road. “Wendy crafts an environment—not just a space,” note the architects of their 5,000-square-foot creation. “Spikey arms reach out with micro-programs like blasts of cool air, music, water canons, and mists to create social zones throughout the courtyard.” And speaking of summery social zones, HWKN also was recently tapped to design a new entertainment complex to replace the Fire Island dance club, Pavilion, that burned down last year. The firm is collaborating with Diller Scofidio + Renfro on the project.

Here are two things we didn’t know up until just a second ago: 1) that musician and longtime New Yorker, Moby, is now living in Los Angeles (apparently we must’ve missed this NY Times profile on the castle he bought in the Hollywood Hills), and 2) that, as of last week, he’s recently started a new architecture blog, the perhaps over-aptly named Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog. Thus far, it isn’t the sort of site that you’ll glean a lot of factual information from, not even such info as who the architect was who built the building he’s profiling on that day. Instead, his very well-made photos are accompanied by leisurely thoughts on Los Angeles’ architecture (all residential thus far) and where that building-of-the-day seems to fit within the city. It’s certainly an interesting, somewhat meditative departure from our usual architectural reads, but we’ve already bookmarked it and are already awaiting more. Here’s a bit of the description of his new site from his first post:

a daily (or weekly) collection of some of the random and strange and banal and beautiful architecture i see in l.a. most cities have beautiful architecture. but most cities have beautiful architecture that is prominently displayed and relatively easy to find (think: chrysler building, sacre couer, st peters, sydney opera house, etc). one of the very odd things about l.a is that the most beautiful architecture in l.a is hidden on tiny streets that very few people will ever see. and the architecture in l.a is, generally, of a very domestic and modest scale (probably facilitating it’s strangeness).

Philip Johnson‘s Glass House will soon have a new leader manning the transparent and modern ship. Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced that Henry Urbach will be taking over as director of the historic architectural landmark in New Canaan, Connecticut. Urbach most recently served as curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA, having taken leave from the position last spring to work independently, which included research work at the Glass House itself. Previously, he’d also run a popular gallery in New York for nearly a decade, the eponymous Henry Urbach Architecture. It is currently planned that he will take on the roll at the Glass House on April 2, replacing its current interim director, Rena Zurofsky, who had this to say about his selection:

I met Henry last spring and was struck by his energy and enthusiasm for the site. He seems to me ideal to lead the dedicated Glass House team into even more innovative and exciting programmatic terrain, and to push restoration programs on track. I congratulate Henry, and also Estevan Rael-Galvez, Vice President of Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on his astute choice.

We’re not entirely sure how it’s played, and at least just a few days ago you’d have to travel to Amsterdam to buy a copy (and making sure to call first so they know you’re coming), but now that we know about it, we’re in desperate lust for NEXT Architects‘ “The Modern Architecture Game.” Launched earlier this month, it’s the second edition of the board game, first developed in 1999 between the partners at the firm and the Delft University of Technology. The most recent update includes a translation into English and spreads its questions more internationally, ranging “right across the breadth of modern world history.” For now it’s available from NEXT themselves, but only if you do that calling ahead first (they write that they’re not able to ship one off in the mail). We’ve also found it at Architectura & Natura Booksellers in the Netherlands, and it can be purchased here. Granted, it isn’t cheap, particularly with the dollar-to-euro difference, but how often do you get to play a board game with pieces like Koolhaus’ CCTV Tower, or Foster’s Gherkin? Here’s a short trailer.

Which states have the most LEED-certified building square footage per capita? The U.S. Green Building Council has crunched the numbers, and the results are in, with the District of Columbia leading the country in LEED-certified commercial and institutional green buildings (per capita, based on 2010 Census data). In 2011, our nation’s capital boasted more than 31 square feet of LEED-certified space per person, including the Treasury Building (how green can you get?), which happens to be the oldest LEED-certified project in the world. Of course, it helps that the District has a low residential population and all those government buildings: nearly a third of all LEED projects are government-owned or occupied LEED buildings, and the federal government alone owns and operates some 500,000 buildings. “But, hey! D.C. isn’t a state!” You say, with a disenfranchised gleam in your eye. Quite right. The top state is Colorado (2.74 square feet per capita and home to the LEED Platinum Casey Middle School in Boulder), followed closely by Illinois (2.69), Virginia (2.42), and Washington (2.18, did you know that Seattle’s Hard Rock Café is LEED Silver?). The Empire State cracks the top ten at 1.89, barely bested by California’s 1.92. According to the USGBC, there are roughly 44,000 commercial projects participating in LEED, comprising more than 8 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and 120 countries. Admire photos of LEED-certified buildings such as the undulating, Douglas Cardinal-designed National Museum of the American Indian, Discovery Channel HQ, and Denver’s Gold Museum of Contemporary Art on Flickr here.