The Storefront for Art and Architecture at 97 Kenmare Street in NYC will be exhibiting two new projects from Lan Tuazon, an artist living and working in New York City. Ingredients of Reality: the Dismantling of New York City will present sculptures, drawings and prints that assess the physical environment and all that it represents in terms of history, law and class structures. The works on display will include Architectures of Defense and New York City Bar Graph. The opening reception for this exhibit is will be today, February 28 at 7pm. The exhibit will run through April 7th, 2012.
To read more about Lan Tuazon’s work, follow us after the break.
The Research and Technology Innovation Park, designed by Brooks + Scarpa, will be Mexico’s first new construction LEED Platinum building. The site is located in Monterrey near the airport and adjoins a natural habitat. The program includes labs, offices, testing facilities, and warehouse spaces and will be constructed in two phases. More on the project after the break.
Architects: Brooks + Scarpa Location of Project: Monterrey, Mexico Total Area: Phase I_ +/- 500 sqm of Offices, +/-1000 sqm of Warehouse, Phase II_ +/-500 sqm of Offices, +/-3000 sqm of Warehouse
Cities are ever-evolving and ever-transforming, constantly being regenerated – demolished and salvaged to start anew. Houston, Texas’s first reservoir, built in 1927 near Buffalo Bayou Park, is no exception. This is another one of those exceptional neglected spaces within a developed city that holds the potential to be transformed into “landscape infrastructure”, as referred to by Kevin Shanley, CEO of SWA Group, the Landscape Architecture firm working on the park’s current 2.3-mile upgrade from Shepherd-to-Sabine, an extension to the Sabine-to-Bagby stretch.
The story of the relationship between the re-discovered reservoir and Buffalo Bayou Park’s development is very exciting and promising. Lisa Gray of Chron writes about the state of the reservoir today and the possibilities for its future. Continue reading for more.
By now you’ve probably already heard and read about James Ramsey and Dan Barasch’s radical proposal to bring an underground park to the Lower East Side via Essex Street Trolley Terminal below Delancey Street. What you may not know is that the LowLine, as it has become known, has just launched a KickStarter Campaign with a goal of raising $100,000 by April 6th. Here you can pledge money and receive prizes for your donations if funding succeeds. The masterminds behind the projects are not slowing down. Conversations about this project and its possibilities are spreading. Just last week, the Tenement Museum invited Ramsey and Barasch, along with historian Stuart Blumin to discuss the project and some of its social and political consequences.
In this interview, between Australian Architect Glenn Murcutt and Peter Thompson for ABC TV’s Talking Heads program, Murcutt reveals his three rules in life: simplicity, simplicity, and “of course, simplicity”. He speaks openly about his upbringing and childhood, about his inspirations and how he has grown and developed his passions as an architect. He has recieved the 2002 Pritzker Prize and 2009 AIA Gold Medal.
Follow us after the break for the rest of the interview.
Construction on soma‘s “One Ocean” thematic pavilion is currently well underway and scheduled for completion in May 2012. Selected as the first prize winner of an open international competition in Yeosu, South Korea, the thematic pavilion was designed to embody the Expo’s theme “The Living Ocean and Coast” and transform it into a three-dimensional “multi-layered” architectural experience. The goal of the Expo is to portray the responsible use of natural materials, which has been embedded into the sustainable climate design and the biomimetic aspects of the facade of “One Ocean”.
ArchDaily previously ran an article about the Manufacturers Trust Company Bank Branch at 510 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and interior designer Eleanor H. Le Maire, a building designated as protected under the Landmarks Preservation Commission with first the exterior in 1997 and later the interior in early 2011. But as recently as October 2011, the building was already listed under the 2012 World Monuments Fund in the 2012 World Monuments Watch as the current owners, Vornado Realty Trust, began compromising the landmarked conditions of the interior of the building as it was being adapted for reuse. With preservationists in an uproar, support for the protection of the building was enough to bring Vornado Realty Trust to New York State Supreme Court where a settlement was reached.
Read on for more details on the settlement and continuing efforts to protect endangered monuments.
In an article originally published on Plataforma Arquitectura, Guillermo Hevia Garcia describes his experience when visiting the Unité d’ Habitation in Marseille, France, also known as Cité Radieuse. On February 9th, the building was overcome by a large fire that was said to have been started due to a heating problem. The blaze took hundreds of firefighters nearly a day and a half to put it out. Eight residential units and four hotel rooms were destroyed, and approximately 35 other units were severely damaged by smoke or action relief. Most residents have returned home to the Unité d’ Habitation, Le Corbusier‘s thesis on domestic life, as they continue to live the communal life that the renowned architect dreamt up.
Opening on February 24th at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Lina & Gio: The Last Humanistswill explore for the first time the relationship between two seminal figures in twentieth-century design: Lina Bo Bardi (1914-1992) and Gio Ponti (1891-1979). More details after the break.
Placing second, behind Sou Fujimoto Architects’ winning proposal, the Austrian practice soma proposed a new tower typology, titled Fibrous Tower of Multiple Natures, for the Taiwan Tower International Competition in Taichung, Taiwan. The conceptual drive for this tower comes from the desire to create a cultural landmark whose associations are multiple and dynamic, adapting with changing ideas about the nature of a skyscraper in an urban environment. Soma writes, “the tower should not state a fixed message, but trigger people to invent their own interpretations of the tower’s meaning”. How does soma accomplish this? Read on to find out.
According to Derek Thompson’s article for The Atlantic, the Brookings Institute recently published a ranking of the world’s 200 largest metropolitan economies. The Global MetroMonitor division of the Brookings Institute, published the report on January 2012. In this brief synopsis, he reveals the “10 Fastest-Growing (and Fastest-Declining) Cities in the World”. Among the fastest growing is Santiago, Chile, the only Latin American country in the top 10. The top 10 is primarily populated by Asian countries – China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all have multiple cities in on the list. Conversly, the tail end of the list is dominated by Western European countries most affected by the economic downturn, with just two cities from the US – Sacramento, California and Richmond, Virginia.
The survey primarily focuses on their economic development comparing income and job growth, to say nothing of the cultural, societal, and political circumstances which may or may not be contributing the dynamism of each city’s economy. Thompson points out, two of the fastest growing cities in the world, Izmir, Turkey and Santiago, Chile are also among the poorest. Developing countries have the most to gain as they join the global economy but it may still be sometime before the economic growth balances a comfortable standard of living. Watch the interview with Alan Berube from MetroMonitor.
With all of that in mind, follow us after the break for a look at the list.
Starting today, through July 30, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will be running an exhibit featuring the proposals of five interdisciplinary studios that were asked to re-think and re-invent the future of housing in the midst of the foreclosure crisis that remains a threat to many Americans and their homes. Over the Summer of 2011, WORKac, MOS Architects, Visible Weather, Zago Architecture and Studio Gang Architects selected five “megaregions” across the country on which to speculate the form that housing could take: physically, socially and economically. Late this summer, ArchDaily has provided coverage while the work was in progress. Opening today, the results of those speculative efforts will be presented at the MoMA as part of an exhibit called Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream. The Open Studios exercise was organized by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, with Reinhold Martin, Director of Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
Read on for more on the proposals and details about the exhibit.
“A Thousand Traps to Escape” is a temporary installation designed by 13 students from Laval University under Olivier Bourgeois in the Magdalen Islands in Quebec, Canada. The project builds on the collaboration of themes of architecture, art, landscape and installation in the creation of space based on simple materials, the landscape and “the basic rules of construction”. The “local material” chosen for this construction is the ubiquitous lobster trap made of wood and fishnet. Its formal simplicity allowed for an basic stacking technique that produced relatively complex visual results of transparencies and opacities.
Read on for more information on the development of this project.
In material safety article for the New York Times, Fred A. Bernstein conducts an interview with architect Peter Syrett and interior designer Chris Youseff of Perkins + Will that highlights their endeavor to create a database of common building materials and the potential dangers associated with their composition. The database, simply and appropriately referred to as Transparency Lists, is a resource of precautionary measures which breaks down into four categories: Precautionary List, Asthma Triggers + Asthmagens, Flame Retardants, and News, Media + Additional Research.
Architect: JSª Location: Av. Insurgentes 301-303, Mexico City, Mexico Total Area: 132,504 sq ft Date of the project: 2011,In progress Photographer: Romeilia Hernandez
This unique landscape and future landmark for the city of Qingdao, China is a first place project, submitted by the Los Angeles office of HKS Architects, for the design of the Conservatory by the Office of 2014 Qingdao World Horticultural Expo Executive Committee. The winning proposal was selected from an international selection of projects and was shared with us by HKS. Read on for more after the break.
Diana Lowenstein Gallery is pleased to present “archiTECTONICS” a solo exhibition of new work by Miami artist, Julie Davidow. The work will be on view from February 11 – April 8, 2012 in the front gallery. Using cues from architecture, design and construction, Davidow’s paintings – with their minimal and precise qualities – create a two-dimensional world derived from the space that we inhabit.
The competition for re-imagining Chicago’s historic Navy Pier has produced some ambitious examples of design ingenuity and innovation. Feeding off of Daniel Burnham’s memorable quote “make no little plans”, this proposal comes from a design team led by!melkprinciple Jerry Van Eyck, UrbanLaband HOK- a series of “dramatic ideas to reconceptualize Chicago’s preeminent exclamation point extending from the Great Lakes to the world”. The intention behind this proposal is to provide a dynamic place in a historic area that provides a cultural landmark as well as a world-wide attraction that stems from the geological history of the site itself.
Follow us after the break for a more in-depth look at this project.
