Studio Gang Architects and Kalamazoo College have announced plans to break ground October 9, at 4PM, on a new campus building to house the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership in southwest Michigan. The 10,000 square foot, wood masonry center will be the world’s first purpose-built structure for social justice leadership development, integrating a study, meeting, and event space where students, faculty, visiting scholars, social justice leaders, and members of the public will come together to engage in conversation and activities aimed at creating a more just world.
Set to be completed in Fall 2013, the Arcus Center is targeting LEED Gold certification. Continue after the break to learn more.
An international jury has selected Capital Cities Planning Group (CCPG), an Anglo-American team including Gillespies, John Thompson & Partners and Buro Happold, as winners for the design and planning of the new Federal District in Moscow.
Earlier this year, the Russian Federal Government announced that it was doubling the territory of Moscow to enable it to grow into a competitive 21st century world capital. In response, Genplan, Moscow’s city planner, earmarked an area of 155km2 to the south-west of the city for a new Federal Government Centre, aiming to relieve inner-city congestion through the relocation of the capital’s major employer. Ten international teams were invited to develop strategies and designs for the region during a six month, three stage competition. Continue reading to learn more.
Deborah Berke, a New York City-based architect known for her design excellence, scholarly achievement and commitment to moving the practice of architecture forward in innovative ways, was selected as the first recipient of the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED) inaugural 2012 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize.
The Berkeley-Rupp Prize will be awarded biannually to a distinguished practitioner or academic who has made a significant contribution to promoting the advancement of women in the field of architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community.
The announcement was made by Jennifer Wolch, William W. Wurster Dean of the College of Environmental Design. Continue reading for the complete press release.
United Airlines Flight 93 was one of the four planes hijacked during the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. It was on this flight that 40 passengers and crew members courageously gave their lives to thwart a planned attack on the Nation’s Capital. Tragically, the plane crashed in Western Pennsylvania with no survivors.
To honor these heroes, Congress passed the Flight 93 National Memorial Act in 2002 and launched a two-stage, international design competition in 2005. A Jury of planners, landscape architects, architects, designers, government representatives, family members and community representatives chose Paul and Milena Murdoch’s proposal, which treated the 2,200 acre former coalmine as a memorialized national park where visitors embark on a sequence of experiences that leads them towards the crash site of Flight 93.
To honor the memory of those who tragically lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New York-based Davis Brody Bond has been commissioned to design the National September 11 Memorial Museum at the heart of the former World Trade Center site in New York. Serving as a complement to the National September 11 Memorial, the museum will tell the story of 9/11 through multimedia displays, archives, narratives and a collection of monumental artifacts, while commemorating the life of every victim of the 2001 and 1993 terrorists attacks.
Today in Lower Manhattan, thousands of visitors are crossing a landscaped plaza of oak trees towards two black granite, sculptural voids, carved deep into the earth, to commemorate the victims of September 11, 2001. Designed by Michael Arad of Handel Architects, the National September 11 Memorial has transformed the last remnants of the former World Trade Center (WTC) towers into a power civic space for contemplation and healing. Here, the painful memory of 9/11 is preserved and honored, while the necessary bustle of everyday life is able to move forward.
Continue after the break for more images and information.
New York based artist and director Jonathan Turner highlights the details of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House (1903-05) in Buffalo, New York. Part of a multi-structure estate, the Martin House serves as a prime example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie House ideal, with strong horizontal lines and planes, deeply overhanging eaves, a central hearth, prominent foundation, and a sheltering, cantilevered roof. Although the complex suffered considerable damage over the decades, the Martine House Restoration Corporation (MHRC) has raised funds for a complete restoration of the complex, which began in 1997 and continues on today.
After a long struggle for independence, Kosovo became a new European country in 2008. Much of it’s urban landscape consists of Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Communist era architecture that has been mostly remained untouched by the war. As wealth returns and the economy slowly grows, a new building spur has ignited, covering the city with a sprawl of store fronts, apartments and office buildings.
The Kosovan Pavilion takes a step back to reflect on the current state of their urban landscape, asking important questions on how architecture will effect the future of Kosovan identity and, more importantly, the emotional state and behaviors of the individuals that inhabit its cities. With the exhibition, The Filigree Maker, visitors and participants world-wide are given the opportunity to help shape the future Kosovo by sharing their emotional response to images of existing architecture. Find out more and learn how you can participate, after the break.
The Hungarian Pavilion for the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale presents a “forest” of white architectural models as a tribute to the common process and existence of this important subject within the profession. With an understanding that the model is where an architectural concept is first realized, the exhibition creates “sacred atmosphere” by placing 500, student fabricated models on top a pedestal.
The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) will host the exhibition Louis Kahn, The Power of Architecture from September 8 to January 6, 2012. Louis Kahn is known to be one of the most influential architects of the 20th century and has inspired generations with his masterful use of space, light and material.
The student led humanitarian initiative ‘Build Our Nation’ has begun a two-week workshop as part of the Biennale Sessions 13th International Architecture Exhibition. Through workshops and events students are collaborating to explore and experiment with ideas, discuss and connect internationally, and build an empathy and awareness for altruistic design issues. Sixty students from four Universities – Robert Gordon University (Scotland), Milano Politecnico (Italy), Universitat Roviravigili Reus (Spain) and ETSAB (Spain) – have made their way to Venice to take part in the 4th Stage of the project. Situated in the Arsenale, between the Italian pavilion and the Chinese Pavilion, the workshop will invite the public to walk through and interact with the students as they work towards the culmination of one and a half years collaboration. Focusing on the research areas of non-verbal communication, social characteristics of a participatory project and the technical aspects of a self-build project for women.
As a contribution to the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, Noero Architectsshowcase two powerful works of art in their exhibition Common Ground / Different Worlds to reveal that architects, and artists alike, work to reinterpret, reinvent and transform preexisting ideas and forms. However, Jo Noero, Principle of Noero Architects, believes that the “difference between good and bad work lies in an understanding of that which is shared and common and the ability to transform these ideas into forms and spaces which are both useful and satisfying within the community in which the work is located.”
Noero spent six months hand drawing a 1:100 plan of the historic shack settlement in Port Elizabeth, known as the Red Location District, as a protest against contemporary architecture’s abandonment of the plan, which Noero describes as the common ground for all architects. Featured alongside the 9m-long drawing is the artwork Keiskamma Guernica, a tapestry made by fifty women from the Hamburg Women’s Co-operative from the Eastern Cape that reinterprets Picasso’s Guernica to illustrate their anger towards AIDS/HIV’s impact on South Africa. The featured film above, titled “Red Location Precinct”, supplements the exhibition by revealing the surrounding context of the district and taking viewers inside the Museum of Struggle, the digital library, an archive and an art gallery that are all part of a complex, designed by Noero Architects, that honors the settlement’s turbulent past and provides surrounding community with opportunities for education, employment, and artistic expression. Continue after the break to learn more.
The International Jury of the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale has awarded Cino Zucchi Architetti (CZA) a special mention for their installation, Copycat. Empathy and Envy as Form Makers. Their contribution is based on the notion that “we are all a bit copycats”, understanding that cultures are propagated by following “infectious” processes that combine imitation and innovation. CZA presents a collection of “almost-alike” objects and images with the idea that “similarity” rather than “originality” is where people find common ground.
SCI-Arc Trustee Frank Gehry and his wife, Berta, have donated $100,000 to the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). The noteworthy contribution will go towards the establishment of the Gehry Prize, which will be annually awarded to the best thesis projects selected by critics and jurors at the Graduate Thesis Weekend hosted in September. The first Gehry Prize will be awarded at the 2012 graduation ceremony on September 9th.
“Forty years ago the public cause proved a powerful source of inspiration. Given the numbers of architects that chose to serve it, one might even speak of a common ground. In the age of the ‘starchitect’, the idea of suspending the pursuit of a private practice in favor of a shared ideology seems remote and untenable. In the context of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, this exhibition hopes to provide a small contribution towards finding that common ground once more…” – OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf, August 2012
Throughout Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s, large public works departments employed architects to design a multitude of public buildings in an effort to serve the public cause. Reinier de Graaf describes this “heyday of public architecture” as “a short-lived, fragile period of naïve optimism – before the brutal rule of the market economy became the common denominator.”
The battle over Pennsylvania’s mid-century Cyclorama Center is nearing an end. Located in the heart of the Gettysburg National Military Park, the concrete and glass cylindrical drum was designed by modernist architect Richard Neutra and completed in 1962 under the ambitious Mission 66 initiative aimed to improve visitor services at national parks.
Controversy surrounding the building’s fate started in 1999, when the National Park Service first announced plans to demolish it. This sparked a raging battle between 20th century architecture supporters and Civil War purists, ultimately leading to the federal court.
However, despite these relentless efforts, the structures fate appears to be dismal.
