Finally! Amidst all the holiday cheer, we are happy to report a positive Architecture Billings Index this month. From August through October, the ABI has had a crazy run with large dips in the index, but November has changed that with a score a 52.0. Up from 49.4 in October, the 52.0 teamed with a new projects inquiry index of 65.0 rounds out a strong November. Interesting to note, the South led the regional averages with 54.4 followed by the Midwest (50.9) and then the Northeast (49.1) and the West (45.6). And, the sector breakdown measured multi-family residential at 55.8 while industrial/commercial tallied 53.9/ “This is a heartening development for the design and construction industry that only a few years ago accounted for nearly ten percent of overall GDP but has fallen to slightly less than six percent,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “Hopefully, this uptick in billings is a sign that a recovery phase is in the works. However, given the volatility that we’ve seen nationally and internationally recently, we’ll need to see several more months of positive readings before we’ll have much confidence that the U.S. construction recession is ending.”
Check out this great video by SO-IL about their spatial facade for the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale. Referencing the 1980 Venice Bienale where 20 architects collaboratively designed a “facade” that challenged the notions of an individual and collective expression, SO-IL has taken a similar approach for their 2011 work. The firm, no doubt, is used to challenging the accepted norms of architects and architecture – case in point, their Pole Dance for MoMA PS1 - and this Biennale proposal marks a distinction between the facade as a flat symbolic representation, and the use of the facade to actually become a spatial and experiential element. “It is high time to revisit this canonical exhibition of post-modernism. 40 years after our predecessors expanded the territory of the architectural discipline into the experience of time, we continue to believe that growth and innovation are limitless if a new territory of spatiality can be defined,” says Jing Liu of SO-IL when reflecting on the intention this installation. With SO-IL’s prismatic paneled “colonnade” of marble tiles backed with mirrors, visitors can experience a changing depth of the installation and discover new spaces while wandering through it.
At first glance, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis’ Contour Crafting (CC) seems both fascinating and unreal – a fabrication machine that has the potential to construct entire structures in a single run. Supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, CC’s combination of conventional robotics and “age-old tools” creates a layered fabrication process where large-scale parts can be fabricated at remarkable speeds. On his blog, Khoshnevis, a professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, explains that the system is a scale-up of the rapid prototyping machines now widely used in industry to “print out” three-dimensional objects designed with CAD/CAM software, usually by building up successive layers of plastic. ”Instead of plastic, Contour Crafting will use concrete,” explained Khoshnevis.
In the beginning of December, we shared the news of Steven Holl‘s 2012 AIA Gold Medal award; a prestigious honor given to those who continually push the field forward with their “humanist approach to formal experimentation.” A few short weeks later, Holl’s Cité de l’Océan et du Surf (translated to Museum of Ocean and Surf) has received a 2011 Annual Design Review Award. This new museum in Biarritz, France is a collaborative effort with Solange Fabião and has attracted international attention for its spatial duality of crafting an atmosphere “under the sky” and “under the sea”.
Tired of scurrying under makeshift unpleasant scaffolding hovering over the streets of Manhattan? Back in 2009, Bloomberg launched an urban design intervention initiative calling for designers to provide a “fresh new sidewalk shed” to replace its dingy predecessors. Entitled urbanSHED, the international design competition challenged participants to develop a sustainable and economic prototype to be used for New York’s 1,000,000+ linear feet of sidewalks. Such a prototype must meet or exceed the City’s current safety requirements and regulations, and improve technical and structural performance. The winning shed was designed by Young-Hwan Choi, a student from the University of Pennsylvania. The shed is the first design to be approved under the City’s Buildings Bulletin 2011 and will be installted in Lower Manhattan soon!
For their latest museum design in Beijing, Ben van Berkel and UNStudio have designed a formal expression which takes ques from Chinese culture to create an architecture that offers dynamically varied spaces for the NAMOC collections. Based on uniting dualities – past and future, day and night, inside and outside, calm and dynamic, large and small, individual and collective – the two volumes reference ancient Chinese ‘stone drums’ and function in a contemporary way as a media facade with illuminated art projections.
This month, UNStudio’s Ponte Parodi, a waterfront design for Genoa, Italy, will be presented at the MAPIC in Cannes as one of the most iconic waterfront developments currently being realized. The harbor project is part of a larger vision to revitalize the entire waterfront area, and merge the local urban and economic fabric to create a point of interest for Genoa’s varied waterfront users. The juxtaposition of varied circulation typologies creates an innovative extension for the city center which not only organizes the position of the program, but also optimizes pedestrian flows within and atop the building.
Our friends from Weiss/Manfredi have shared their Portal to the Point Design Ideas Exploration proposal, a project exploring the connection between city and the environment for Point State Park in the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Currently, Point State Park, which is located at the geographic epicenter of Pittsburgh, does not take advantage of its potential to bridge the city, which is built on industrial accomplishments, with the river banks of the Allegheny and the Monogahela, both of which have granted Pittsburgh a prosperous ecological history. Weiss/Manfredi’s proposal attempts to stitch the city and its river banks together with a new brigde typology, a Mobius Pathway that is “not about the singular act of connecting two disparate parts, but about the comprehensive connectivity of a larger network.”
Just in time for the holidays, the Brooklyn Night Bazaar will return to a Williamsburg warehouse the 15th through 17th of December. The Bazaar will re-imagine the sights, sounds and smells of traditional markets and will be filled with independent vendors selling artwork, accessories, and furniture, along with great music and food. Our friends from Danish firm JDS will be designing the master plan for the Bazaar and different furniture pieces after the firm captured the attention of the Bazaar organizers with their innovative ski jump in Norway.
When we spotted the news on ArchRecordof a major delay for the Elbe Philharmonic, our hearts sank a little. We’ve been covering the building extensively during its construction period and have anxiously been awaiting its completion (a date that was pushed from 2010 to 2012, and, now, is uncertain). Yet, technical difficulties pertaining to the saddle roof structure are creating a tangle between the German contractor Hochtief and the Elbe Philharmonic, leading Hochtief to stop work on the glass facade, the steel roof support structure, the 82m-long escalator and the building services.
More about the halted construction after the break.
It seems that the billings index has bounced back a bit from its sharp drop in September. A month ago, the ABI measured 46.9 – a score nearly 5 points lower than August – yet, this month, the AIA has reported the October ABI at 49.4 While the score shows a positive leap forward since September, any billings index below 50 still reflects a negative showing. However, the new projects inquiry index seems to be this month’s silver lining as it jumped to 57.3 for October.
For their joint BOFFO expression, SOFTLab has designed an awesome kaleidoscope to highlight the collection of The Lake & Stars. The collaborative fashion + architecture installation marks the fourth of five temporary exhibitions (be sure to view our coverage of the previous three) and began its two week run this past Friday. Nikki Dekker and Maayan Zilberman’s ultra feminine collection embodies a broader view of lingerie as a fashion expression, and, when teamed with Michael Szivos’ edgy display, the line offers a sophisticated and contemporary aesthetic.
More images and more about the designers after the break.
Preston Scott Cohen’s office sent us drawings of his Tel Aviv Museum of Art to add to the images of the recently opened museum we shared earlier in the week. Preston Scott Cohen explained, “Conceptually, the Amir Building is related to the Museum’s Brutalist main building (completed 1971; Dan Eytan, architect). At the same time, it also relates to the larger tradition of Modern architecture in Tel Aviv, as seen in the multiple vocabularies of Mendelsohn, the Bauhaus and the White City.The gleaming white parabolas of the façade are composed of 465 differently shaped flat panels made of pre-cast reinforced concrete. Achieving a combination of form and material that is unprecedented in the city, the façade translates Tel Aviv’s existing Modernism into a contemporary and progressive architectural language.”
Over the past year, we’ve been following the development and early construction of Preston Scott Cohen’s Tel Aviv Museum of Art Amir Building. The 195,000 square ft building has recently been completed and now, the museum is open to the public. The $55 million Herta and Paul Amir Building will provide the space needed to permanently display one of the world’s largest collections of Israeli art. From its earlier beginning in 2002, Preston Scott Cohen’s proposal has been further developed and refined, culminating in the strong geometric aesthetic typical of Cohen’s design ideas. Paul Amir, a philanthropist who, with his wife Herta, has provided the naming gift for the building, stated, “We feel privileged to have been able to advance the work of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, an institution that is truly at the heart of Israel’s creative community. With this exceptional building by Preston Scott Cohen, and with the ability to showcase the work of Israel’s artists as never before, the Museum now has the potential to step up to a prominent new role on the international scene, to the benefit of everyone.”
Check out more photos and learn more about the opening after the break.
James Cramer and the Greenway Group have just released the 13th edition of DesignIntelligence, a compilation of different rankings for accredited architecture schools in the United States. The report attempts to create a level playing ground upon which to rank the universities by polling thousands of students, talking to deans and administrators, interviewing successful designers in private practices, and visiting each university campus. While the findings may raise some debate, overall, the report creates a dialogue as to how, and to what extent, higher education responds to the changing demands of our profession. We will be focusing on key aspects of the report throughout the following weeks such as regional rankings for accredited universities, an interesting deans’ survey, a selection of top educators, and even charts featuring award-wining firms and their graduate affiliations. And, to begin, let’s introduce the top 10 undergraduate and graduate Architecture Programs of 2012.
Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art ‘New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia’ with Achva Stein on its opening day. Stein, a principal of an ASLA award-winning landscape architecture and design firm Benzinberg Stein Associates and the founding Director of the Graduate program in Landscape Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, was asked to join the MET’s endeavors after her noted publication, Morocco: Courtyards and Gardens, showcased her passion for and understanding of the country’s varied garden types found in regions such as Marrakech and Fez. For the new wing, Stein has created a fantastic 14th century Maghrebi-Andalusian-style courtyard that goes beyond a mere representation, and truly infuses the spirit and essence of a Moroccan court into a small interior space of the MET.
Nicolas Dorval-Bory & Raphaël Bétillon have recently been awarded second prize for their design of a hotel in Jurmala, Latvia. The duo may sound familiar, as last year, we featured their artificial landscape of clouds which created an experiential journey along the banks of the Garonne in Toulouse. For their latest project, Dorval-Bory and Bétillon have studied the relationship between the city and music and sound, to experiment with a gradation from the most structured musical composition to nature’s acoustic chaos by way of an architectural point of view.
In the summer of 2009, we shared Foster + Partners and URS Corporation spaceport project in New Mexico. The structure, which is the first spaceport in history, will host commercial operations by private space travel companies, such as Virgin Galactic. Today, we are sharing an update of the project as the Spaceport enjoyed its dedication ceremony a few days ago. Designed to meet LEED certification, The 110,000-plus square foot facility will feature energy-efficient techniques such as earth-tubes that will pre-condition the air to reduce HVAC costs by 50-70%. The architects explained, “The sinuous shape of the building in the landscape and its interior spaces seek to capture the drama and mystery of space flight itself, articulating the thrill of space travel for the first space tourists.”
