Recognizing one exceptional artist every two years whose work transverses the boundaries between art and architecture, Andrea Zittel came out as this year’s winner for the prestigious Frederick Kiesler Prize. Accepting the award just this month at the New Museum of New York, one criterion for the award is that the artist be under-recognized. While fun and playful in nature, Zittel’s works are also illuminating studies of how we attribute significance to things, including the structure we live in and what we actually need in order to exist in comfort without being surrounded by accumulated belongings. Her ‘Indy-Island’ and ‘A-Z Wagon Stations’ projects can be seen in the images after the break.
Yesterday's article "Forget the Rankings, the Best US Architecture Schools Are..." argued that students should judge architecture schools for their strength in areas that are relevant to the profession today (not for their rankings). Today, we bring you an Editorial from Architecture Professor at the University of Melbourne, Stanislav Roudavski, who takes that argument one step further - suggesting that architecture students should look for education opportunities that embrace the architectural world of the future.
Those who look to the future understand architecture as a dynamic system of relationships. These relationships blur the distinctions between digital and physical, natural and artificial, simulated and observable in the wild. Such an interpretation calls for broader collaborations and a commitment to explorations outside established “comfort zones.” But the life outside disciplinary comforts can be harsh. With old certainties left behind and new potentials not yet discovered, one can feel overwhelmed by the richness and complexity of available information and practices. In the contemporary condition of constant and accelerating change, what should an architect know and be able to do? From where should this knowledge be acquired and updated, from whom and in which way?
Innovation (and the learning of the new, needed for innovation to occur) can be encouraged through various strategies. [...] Innovation can also be augmented outside existing professional territories via other types of critical, open-ended learning that is deliberately oriented towards uncertain futures. In striving to address unknown demands, such learning is necessarily speculative and risky. What strategies can be adopted to benefit from such risk-taking?
More on the future of Architectural Education, after the break...
If there is one characteristic that defines “architecture” it is innovation. And if by innovative, you think responsive, then Domus Academy certainly qualifies. It was started by Maria Grazia Mazzocchi, daughter of Domus Magazine founder, Gianni Mazzocchi after people kept writing letters asking her to start a design school. And in 1983, she did just that.
For the basics, the school is very clear. Your accreditation comes from an affiliation with the University of Wales, in Cardiff, UK, which is awarded upon completing 180 Master’s level credits. And you also receive a Diploma Supplement from them which proves that you have a degree that is equivalent to major universities across the globe. And it’s sited in Milan, which if one is interested in Italian design, is an ideal locale. It’s a one year program, so it doesn’t require the extensive 2- and 3-year commitments that many programs across the world demand. It will cost a similar amount, however, at €23,790 Euro. But the best aspect of that admittedly large tuition fee is that it is for a single year—11 months to be exact. That means one can immediately begin searching for a job to pay off what is, after all is said and done, a relatively small student loan compared to average ones that are three times that size. There are also unrestricted scholarships available that defray costs from between 20%-50%. And in case you’re wondering, classes are taught in English.
Designed by J. Mayer H. Architects, the new, modern college seminar building for FOM Hochschule für Oekonomie & Management University of Applied Sciences gGmbH will include approximately 1,400 student seats, office units, underground parking and a spacious, green campus. The innovative building also features an extraordinary exterior façade with curved cantilevered balconies. More images and architects’ description after the break.
As an update to the article we posted several months ago regarding the disputed ‘hot spot’ in Dallas between Renzo Piano‘s Nasher Sculpture Center and the adjacent residential tower, the controversy is still a hot issue. The reflection caused by the sculpture center is still something they have not been able to solve. Any solution will be costly and difficult. The Nasher people have recommended louvers covering the tower’s south face. The tower people say that this will require a computer-generated engine for every window, about two years to study, even more time to install. And it may not work. More information after the break.
Designed for the market square cover competition, the ‘flying carpet’ proposal by Michael Labory & Bertrand Schippan is a modular and sustainable cover with the goal for the efficient arrangement of the functional facilities. This is attained by putting them along the site border thus maximizing the space to be used for market. They revive the dull facade of the neighboring building by bringing the volume of the facilities into the shape of its skyline. Among all other things, it contributes to the increase in urban density as windowless facade becomes a part of lively market place. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located where two rivers come together, the Confederación Hidrográfica Miño and Sil office building will be protected by the official use the building serves. Designed by VAUMM + Taperstudio, their compact and geometrically absolute design aims to turn the new equipment into a reference able to articulate that piece of city. Its pyramidal shape is due to programmatic, functional and corporation itself requirements. More images and architects’ description after the break.
One of the centers of cultural and civic life, the 1111 Lincoln Road project by Herzog & de Meuron is featured in the video above, made by Elizabeth Priore. This project was chosen as it has changed people’s perception about what a utilitarian structure can be; and has ignited conversations worldwide about its design and use. This garage has reshaped the urban fabric of the city and people are going there to get married, relax, and enjoy a cocktail. The video is a Semifinalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition and is in the running to become the $100,000 Grand Prize Winner. More information after the break.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, aims at creating a welcoming world which associates lights and shadows as well as shimmers and calm places in a serene atmosphere. Its objective is to belong to its country, to its history, to its geography, avoiding being either a dull translation of this reality or a pleonasm meaning boredom and convention. It also aims at emphasizing the fascination generated by rare encounters. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Lafayette Park, an affordable middle-class residential area in downtown Detroit, is home to the largest collection of buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the world. Today, it is one of Detroit’s most racially integrated and economically stable neighborhoods, although it is surrounded by evidence of a city in financial distress. Through interviews with and essays by residents; reproductions of archival material; and new photographs by Karin Jobst, Vasco Roma, and Corine Vermeulen, and previously unpublished photographs by documentary filmmaker Janine Debanné, Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies examines the way that Lafayette Park residents confront and interact with this unique modernist environment.
But despite our laser-focus on the rankings, the report is actually much more. It is also a survey of hundreds of design educators and professionals, an invaluable insight into the current state of architecture and architecture education today.
So with this in mind, and with the rankings aside, which universities are really producing students best equipped (and most marketable, in this competitive market) for the architecture profession today? When you look at the data, only two Universities stand out from the pack.
Read more to find out which two Universities are best preparing students in 2013, after the break...
Peter VonDeLinde, Marc Ofsthun, and Christian Korab, an architectural film studio team based out of Minneapolis, recently created an amazing short film on Frank Gehry‘s newly expanded Weisman Art Museum. Gehry’s 11,000 sq.ft. expansion showcases his sculptural talent featuring its stainless steel facade curving out from the entrance. This video was produced in conjunction with the Weisman featured in the January/February 2012 issue of Architecture Minnesota magazine.
Chika Kijima Architect’s Office + O.F.D.A. transformed a cluster of three existing homes into this work/live haven for a pair of musicians. The naturally lit interiors of the single-story Overlapped House features a studio, kitchen, hall, ample amounts of storage and a well-buffered sleeping quarters.
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.
The proposal for an urban itinerary, designed by Comac Architects, presents an urban path to extend “Marseilles 2013″ European Capital of Culture throughout the entire city. A total of 13 key-districts will be connected by the path and interspersed with urban pavilions, each focused on a famous artist from Marseilles. Each unit will offer a certain perspective of Marseilles, and will offer tourists a new way to discover our city and its emblematic districts. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects shared with us their design for the streetscape masterplan for Hudson Square in Manhattan, New York. Designed to transform the district’s public realm into a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable neighborhood, the project will serve area workers and, eventually, residents. The masterplan creates a pedestrian-focused district accessible from all directions and adjacent neighborhoods—including SoHo, TriBeCa, and Greenwich Village—that coordinates the needs of the Holland Tunnel, a regional transportation facility, with those of the re-imagined neighborhood. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Expected to be completed in September 2013, the Durham College Centre for Food will distinguish itself in the highly competitive field of culinary education by taking advantage of its rural setting on a large suburban campus in Whitby Ontario to narrate a story about the process of making a meal from “field to fork”. Designed by Gow Hastings Architects, students and visitors will journey through the inner workings of the school, showcasing food distribution rooms, a 150-seat lecture theatre, change rooms, faculty offices, classrooms and an array of hospitality and culinary labs that will circle a central atrium. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Located in the heart of Gorssel, in the east of the Netherlands, the new Museum for Realistic Art for Hans Melchers by Hans van Heeswijk Architects will be housed in the former town hall of Gorssel. The museum will be a pavilion-like building of two floors with strategic vistas to the park-like environment in which it is located. Besides exhibiting the permanent collection, the building will also house temporary exhibitions. Construction will start in the spring of 2013 and the museum is expected to open in the spring of 2015. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Glass House just concluded their second annual Conversations in Context, which presents visitors with the opportunity to join in a weekly evening tour and intimate conversation with industry leaders, including Robert A.M. Stern, Michael Graves, and more.
Since the 1940s, The Glass House has served as a place of inspiration, education and conversation across creative disciplines. Its 49-acre landscape, 14 architectural structures and world-class art collection continue to draw members of an international creative community to participate in its rich story. Conversations in Context continues Philip Johnson’s legacy of using the Glass House as a place to conduct ongoing seminars with architecture students and present emerging and established architects the opportunity to discuss the current state of the industry.
The video above features Architect, critic, and historian Kenneth Frampton, along with Dean Mark Wigley from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Follow us after the break for a few of our favorite conversations from this year’s series.
Designed by Jackson Architecture, their proposal for the Japan National Stadium is a new stadium in a park, where nature is apparent and can be integrated. Car parking, buses, community and service facilities exist below the park: neighborhood recreation and health areas contribute to the excitement and atmosphere, inhabited every day. The first impression is of a large park, within which a large “ellipsoidal object is placed. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Designed by PMG Architects, their second prize winning proposal for the sustainable market square competition in Casablanca lets itself be admired, but only reveals itself partially and gradually in using a variety of different architectural elements. Beneath the immense arched galleries, as airy as they are luminous, the architects try to grasp the thousands of riches of this place, so many vibrant fragrances and unknown colors, enticing flavors, and colorful spices. From one arc to another, from one vendor to his counterpart, from one ambiance to its contrary. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The Bukit Panjang Hawker Center proposal by Materium, which was announced as one of the finalists in the international competition, manifests and promotes the food culture of Singapore. Composed of a unique program, the project is a humble social and communal space despite the cosmopolitan nature of the society. Its unassuming nature allows people from all walks of life to enjoy their meal in their most relaxed and comfortable state. Simple, casual and informal: being relaxed allows one to be social. More images and architects’ description after the break.
On display until February 3rd at the HangarBicocca in Milan, the ‘On Space Time Foam’ suspended art exhibit by Studio Tomas Saraceno is composed of a transparent surface accessible to visitors, hanging at a height of 20 metres and covering 400 square metres on three layers, for a total of 1,200 square metres. Known for his surprising structures that draw the public into extraordinary spatial and emotional experiences, the large soft and floating film welcomes visitors who will thus find themselves moving mid-air between the floor and the ceiling, earth and sky, and it compels them to lose their spatial coordinates. More images and architects’ description after the break.
