Vanessa Quirk

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ABI Bounces Back in May

Following the first negative downturn in ten months (what AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, Phd, is hoping was just a "blip"), May's Architecture Billing Index (ABI) has bounced back from a score of 48.6 to 52.9. Any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings (aka an expansion in demand for architects' services).

Baker notes that "there is [still] a resounding sense of uncertainty in the marketplace from clients to investors and an overall lack of confidence in the general economy – that is continuing to act as a governor on the business development engine for architecture firms.” However, the scores, which revealed the most growth in the Northeast as well as in the multi-family residential and institutional sectors, are good signs for the design and construction industries. 

More results of this month's ABI, after the break...

Law May Render Architects Unnecessary in Spain

As if architects in Spain weren't struggling enough - what with the Crisis closing half the country's studios and putting over 25% of Spanish architects out of work - a new law could now render Spanish architects effectively unnecessary.

A preliminary document reveals that, if passed, The Law of Professional Services (LSP) will modify labor regulations in order to allow engineers, or really any one "competent" in construction, to take on the work of architects:

“Exclusivity is eliminated. Architects or engineers with competency in construction will be able to design and direct projects, including residential, cultural, academic or religious buildings. [...] If a professional is competent enough to execute one building’s construction, it is understood that he/she will also be capable of executing other kinds of buildings, regardless of its intended use.”

Unsurprisingly, Spanish architects have risen up against the law, mobilizing both physical protests as well as social media campaigns. Even Pritzker-Prize winner Rafael Moneo has offered his opinion on the matter...Hear what Moneo has to say, after the break...

Pritzker Rejects Petition for Denise Scott Brown's Retroactive Award

The Pritzker Prize has finally released their official statement in response to the petition Harvard graduate students Arielle Assouline-Lichten and Caroline James wrote, proposing that Denise Scott Brown retroactively receive recognition for the Pritzker Prize that her husband, Robert Venturi, won in 1991.

Lord Palumbo, the Chair of The Pritzker Architecture Prize, has responded that this would be impossible due to the way that Pritzker Juries deliberate: "Pritzker juries, over time, are made up of different individuals, each of whom does his or her best to find the most highly qualified candidate. A later jury cannot re-open, or second guess the work of an earlier jury, and none has ever done so."

The letter goes on to suggest that Ms. Scott Brown is, however, still eligible for a Pritzker of her own; it also thanks Assouline-Lichten and James for "calling directly to our attention a more general problem, namely that of assuring women a fair and equal place within the profession. [...] one particular role that the Pritzker Jury must fulfill, in this respect, is that of keeping in mind the fact that certain recommendations or discussions relating to architectural creation are often a reflection of particular times or places, which may reflect cultural biases that underplay a woman’s role in the creative process. Where this occurs, we must, and we do, take such matters into account."

Read the full letter, after the break...

52 Years Later, A Would-Be Urban Planner Responds to Harvard's Sexist Letter

In 1961, Phyllis Richman, a student at Brandeis University, was considering applying to the Harvard Graduate School of Design's Department of City and Regional Planning. The response from Professor Doebele, which you can read above, was to question the validity/practicality of her desire to enter into higher education, being, as she would surely be, a future wife and mother.

While today it sounds almost quaint in its blatantly sexist assumptions, Ms. Richman's letter remains, unfortunately, all too relevant. In her article for The Washington Post, Richman says: "To the extent, Dr. Doebele, that your letter steered me away from city planning and opened my path to writing [a career Richman later describes as "remarkably well-suited to raising children"], one might consider that a stroke of luck. I’d say, though, that the choice of how to balance family and graduate school should have been mine."

She's absolutely right, of course; the decision was hers and hers alone to make. However, there's no avoiding that Richman eventually found success in a job that allowed her to live flexibly as a professional and parent. How many women, and for that matter men, can claim that of architecture? How many architects are convinced, just like Ms. Richman, to pursue success in other, more flexible careers?

More about Richman's letter, and where Denise Scott Brown comes in, after the break...

A Tribute to Ada Louise Huxtable

“Even though I wished for her attention, I was scared of it.”

VIDEO: Design in 6 Lovely, Digestible Nutshells

(Almost) everything you need to know about 20th century design has been synthesized into 6 brightly-colored, easily-digestible videos (all narrated by the sweet Scottish tones of one Ewan MacGregor).

From the Gothic Revival to Post-Modernism, this series of shorts from The Open University’s OpenLearn website just touches the surface of these design movements; however, they act as a great introduction for the un-design-initiated (indeed, The Open University sees them as an intro to their free course on Design Thinking) or, for design-aficionados, a fun refresher.

We're particular to the video on the Bauhaus (after all, we also tackled the movement in a brilliant infographic) and the Modernist video (after the break) - but you can find all 6 at OpenLearn. Enjoy!

Are Renderings Bad for Architecture?

At the opening of his latest article for The Guardian, Olly Wainwright finds himself observing a slew of thesis projects produced by the best and brightest students of the UK. But Wainwright is most struck - not by the display of technical skill or imagination - but by the sheer lack of connection these projects had with actual, built, imperfect architecture: “Time and again, the projects seemed intent on fleeing the real world of people and places, scale and context; retreating instead into fantasy realms of convoluted forms with no seeming purpose.”

It’s a trap that many Architecture schools have fallen into, in the UK and around the world, but it’s not just a symptom of the misguided nature of architecture education. It’s also symptomatic of Architecture’s obsession with the image of architecture, an image completely detached from reality.

More after the break...

VIDEO: Five Great Buildings in Chicago

A short and sweet animation displaying 5 of Chicago's great buildings - including, the John Hancock Center, by SOM, The Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower), also by SOM, and Marina City by Bertrand Goldberg. Enjoy!

Penn Station, Re-Imagined

This morning, four architectural firms, invited by the Metropolitan Art Society(MAS), displayed how they would transform New York's darkest & dingiest hub - Penn Station - into a space worthy of its site in the heart of the city.

New Yorkers have been up in arms about Penn Station ever since its Beaux-Arts predecessor, designed by McKim, Mead & White, was demolished in 1963. Its replacement is a dark, cramped station that lacks both the operational and security features it needs to sustain the hundreds of thousands of travelers who use it daily. As Michael Kimmelman put it in his inaugural piece as architecture editor for The New York Times: "To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation."

As we reported last month,Madison Square Garden’s (MSG) 50-year permit expires this year, and it will be either renewed without limit, or extended 10-15 years, by The New York City Council in the coming months. The problem, according to MAS, is that "MSG happens to sit on top of the busiest train station in North America [a.k.a, Penn Station] and constrains its ability to serve over half a million people every day. [...] 2013 presents New York City with a truly unique opportunity and together we need to seize this moment."

And so MAS invited Diller, Sofidio, & Renfro; H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture; SHoP; Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, to do just that. See their visions, after the break...

The Constructivist Project / Natalia Melikova

In Russia, hundreds upon hundreds of buildings are endangered. The work of making sure they don't become extinct? That's in the hands of a tireless few.

One of these crusaders is Natalia Melikova, the author of The Constructivist Project, an on-line web site that seeks to preserve the memory - and hopefully inspire the protection of - Russia's avant-garde architecture. Although it began as her thesis project, it's steadily become one of her life passions. In Melikova's words, "By sharing photographs (my own and others), articles, events, exhibitions, and other resources on the topic of the avant-garde, The Constructivist Project unites common interest and appreciation of Russian art and history and makes it accessible to an international English-speaking audience. This is a way to initiate discussion not only of the perilous situation of Russian avant-garde architecture but also of cultural preservation and urban development in general."

See 10 of Melikova's images, snapshots into a part of Russian history quickly being forgotten, with her descriptions, after the break.

The Moscow Affair

Russia has madly, passionately (and not a little blindly) fallen in love. And, as with any love affair worth its salt, this one will have its fair share of consequences when the honeymoon ends. 

The object of Russia’s affection? The good, old-fashioned automobile.

It started fast and has only gotten faster. In 2005, Russia’s auto industry grew 14%; in 2006, 36%; and, in 2007, a whopping 67% - an exponential growth that attracted foreign investors, particularly after 2009, when the country welcomed companies like GM & Ford with open arms. Today, the ninth largest economy in the world is the seventh-largest car market, positioned to surpass Germany as the largest in Europe by 2014.

Nowhere is this love affair more evident, more woven into the city itself, than in Moscow. The city has a reputation (perhaps rivaled only by Beijing’s) for traffic, pollution, and downright hostility to pedestrians. And, ironically, because of its epic congestion, the city continues to expand its highways and parking spaces.

We’ve heard that story before, and we know how it ends - for that matter, so does Moscow. But passion, by nature, is blind - and stopping a love affair in its tracks is far from easy.

Fideicomiso: When Architects Become Developers (And Everybody Wins)

A decade before Kickstarter made "crowdfunding" a buzzword (particularly in architecture circles), a similar concept - going by a far more poetic name - was already alive and well in the streets of Buenos Aires. 

Fideicomiso is a system of development which gained popularity in Argentina after the financial crisis of 2001; banks crashed, the public grew wary of developers, and a more democratic system of development gained prevalence. Under fideicomiso, the architect himself takes on the risk of development; residents collect their assets and provide them to the architect, who buys the land, funds the project and oversees the design/construction.

Now, Elias Redstone, a researcher who took part in Venice Takeaway (Britain's Pavilion at last year's Venice Biennale) and spent time investigating this model in Argentina, has returned to his home country - and is anxious to see if this system could be applied in Recession-struck Britain.

Read more about this revolutionary model of development, after the break...

Designers React to Folk Art Museum's Imminent Demolition

As we reported yesterday, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has announced their plans to demolish the 12-year old American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams & Bille Tsien. The MoMA, which has planned a new expansion on either side of Williams & Tsien’s building, claims that the building will prevent the floors from lining up and thus must be demolished. Moreover, officials claim that the building's opaque facade isn’t in keeping with the MOMA’s glass aesthetic.

Designers and architects, outraged by the MoMA's decision to destroy such a young and architecturally important part of New York's urban fabric, are now challenging the validity of the MoMA's claim. Not only has a petition been started to prevent the demolition, but many are pleading with MoMa to consider how the Folk Art Museum could be integrated into the new expansion. In fact, a Tumblr - crowdsourcing ideas for potential re-designs - has even been set-up.

See more designers' reactions & suggestions on how to save the American Folk Art Museum, after the break...

Is the Price of Software A Barrier of Entry to Architecture?

According to writer Ana Lui, architecture is an "unlevel playing field." From unpaid internships to the C-suite, the profession has made itself awfully difficult to break into - unless you come from privilege, of course. However, there is one factor contributing to the profession's inaccessibility that you may not have considered: the prohibitive costs of design software for young, budding architects.

Critics React to Folk Art Museum’s Imminent Demolition

Just as designers have reacted to the death sentence of Ted Williams and Billie Tsien's American Folk Art Museum building, forming petitions and a tumblr (crowdsourcing designs that integrate the building with the MoMA's existing facilities), architecture critics have also been wielding their weapon - words - and entering the fray.

Most critics have responded with outrage (it's "nothing less than cultural vandalism" says Martin Filler), denouncing MoMA's prioritization of corporate needs over cultural value. However, a few are actually defending MoMA's decision, saying the building was never ideal for displaying art anyway. See a round-up of all the opinions - from Davidson to Goldberger - after the break...

The Indicator: Ipso Facto

It is a building, a building in New York City, a building erected in the dust of 9/11, a building that upon completion signaled hope for larger reconstructions, a building that presents itself to the world through the intricate patina and pocking of white bronze. White bronze. This alone conjures something alchemic, ancient, timeless. 

But buildings are not timeless. They have their time. As architects we memorialize each one that resonates with the thoughtfulness of capital “A” architecture—in part because we understand what it takes to realize them. 

Despite this, the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed American Folk Art Museum may ultimately be doomed to the brutal translations of administrative efficiency, cruel syllogisms, that as Barry Bergdoll, chief curator of MoMA's architecture and design department notes, are “painful.”

Make Your Summer Count with Global Architecture Brigades

Make Your Summer Count with Global Architecture Brigades  - Featured Image
UT Austin GAB chapter's winning proposal for the El Canton Health Center project in Honduras.

While other architecture students spend their summers strolling the streets, seeing the sights, and contently sketching, you could be getting your hands dirty, turning your designs into reality, and making a difference in a community that needs you.

Every summer, Global Architecture Brigades (GAB) activates student volunteers to work with a community in Honduras, helping them alleviate needs in health and education. The program isn’t a lesson in a charity; it’s a hands-on experience of the community-entrenched work of a designer of the 21st century.

Read more about Global Architecture Brigade’s work in Honduras, and how you can get involved, after the break...  

Barry Bergdoll Breaks Silence About American Folk Art Museum

Among the many ironies of the MoMA's decision to demolish Ted Williams and Billie Tsien's 12-year old building for the American Folk Art Museum, is the most obvious: as a cultural institution, the MoMA is meant to value and protect, not demolish, architecture.

Critics such as Justin Davidson and Martin Filler have pointed out that the irony is particularly acute considering the MoMA's "distinguished" and "revivified" department of architecture and design, curated by Barry Bergdoll. They note that Bergdoll, who they both praise highly as "visionary", has remained conspicuously silent on the decision. Davidson even claims that the MoMA can only appreciate such innovative "individuality [such as Bergdoll's] under glass."

However, a week after the decision first went public, Bergdoll has finally broken his silence to Architect's Newspaper. See what he has to say about the MoMA's decision, after the break...