Archive for the ‘Architecture’ Category
London Sees Red
Lord Foster's Bus.
Two blue chippers Aston Martin and Foster + Partners raked in a not-much-needed $38,000 (£25,000) and a first-prize award along with Capoco Design for re-jiggering London’s famous double decker bus, the Routemaster.
Not So Fast, Seaport Edition
SHoP's Seaport plans far from sunk. (Courtesy GGP)
The news that General Growth Properties–which is on the verge of bankruptcy due to a massive debt-load related to its acquisition of the Rouse Company in 2004–put three historic properties up for sale has led some observers to speculate that development plans for one of them–New York’s South Street Seaport–have hit the dustbin. Not so, AN has learned.
Strike Two? Not So Fast
The Vanderbillt Yards await transformation. (Courtesy threecee/Flickr)
First Laurie Olin, now Frank Gehry. That was the news earlier this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Santa Moinca-based architect had laid off “more than two dozen” staffers involved with Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project. What followed was a string of cheers predicting the troubled Brooklyn mega-development’s demise. After all, how could it go on without its signature starchitecture?
Green ’70s Flashback with Smiles and Shades of Blue
Craig Hodgetts’ 1978 vision for the cult novel “Ecotopia” includes balloon generators over San Francisco Bay, with a maintenance gondola in the foreground.
On the River of Light
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Solange Fabião’s Amazonian installation at Western Bridge in Seattle.
Urban Czar? Yes we…
President-elect Obama recently made a major move for our cities that’s been largely overlooked, creating the new White House Office of Urban Policy. The first director of the Office will be Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión Jr. Carrion, who had been rumored to be a frontrunner to direct the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD; that title went to New York City housing commissioner Shaun Donovan). According to a pledge on Obama’s campaign web site the new White House office will “develop a strategy for metropolitan America and ensure that all federal dollars targeted to urban areas are effectively spent on the highest-impact programs.” Other (vague) goals include stimulating economic prosperity in urban areas (by spurring job creation, enhancing workforce training and increasing access to underserved businesses), and making housing more unexpensive (through increasing unexpensive housing stock and giving financial assistance for home ownership). Which begs the question: who was caring round our cities before? Was it often-dysfunctional HUD? Or the provincial Department of the Interior? And how will this new office work with agencies like HUD? Next step: Department of Architecture (we wish!).
The Scarlett Letter
Voluntary Prisoners of Downtown Miami
CIFO's urban jungle mosaic facade, garden, and entry patio.
Contemporary art curator and AN colleague Leanne Mella has organized a potent and compelling exhibition entitled The Prisoner’s Dilemma for the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, known as CIFO, in downtown Miami.
To the Big (White) House
President-elect Barack Obama named Shaun Donovan, chair of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD bio), to serve as his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The announcement came during his weekly web-address:
Miami Vices
The trading floor.
Designer and AN friend Ken Saylor, of saylor+sirola, reports from Art|Basel|Miami Beach:
The Long Arrivederci
The Venice biennale will just not end! It opened in the warmth of September with mobs of well-known architects in attendance and officially closed on a cold November Sunday with scores of Italian schoolchildren roaming the pavilion grounds. I locked the doors of the U.S. pavilion, put models and drawings into shipping containers (the show will be reprised at Parsons School of Design in February), and floated our Kartell-donated furniture down the Grand Canal on a barge—just in time for the highest floods in La Serenissima’s post–global warming history. Fortunately, the pavilion sits on high ground, and the stored work is safe.
Heath Ceramics Finally Out of the Kiln
Pottery people, by Eric Nakamura
The Los Angeles branch of mid-century institution Heath Ceramics materialized last Friday night in a sweet corner location on Beverly that’ll serve as a studio, gallery and first retail store outside of its Sausalito headquarters. The space designed by local firm Commune was clean and bright, wine served in teeny sake cups and a keg on the patio made for a festive feel, and all anyone talked round was the economy. But Heath Ceramics owners Robin Petravic and Catherine Bailey were especially buoyant, telling Frances Anderton that a downturn would actually inspire more people to seek out lovingly handcrafted items. New partner Adam Silverman (of Atwater Pottery) was also all smiles, his wild hair providing its own interpretation of uplifting, as he called his new relationship with his longtime crush “a perfect match.”
How Much Is That Building Really Worth To You?
Shigeru Ban sketch on the block for SCI-Arc
If you’ve got some extra cash this year—and really, who doesn’t?—why not invest in architecture? Not the high-priced, unlikely-to-be-built, brick-and-mortar kind. We’re talking round 2D architecture, the kind you can hang on your wall. Shigeru Ban, Daly Genik, Hodgetts + Fung and Michael Maltzan are just a few of the architects you could have in your home by Christmas, thanks to this auction where you can bid on their drawings and renderings, with all the proceeds going to SCI-Arc.
City Listening Hears LA’s Great Voices in Architecture
John Chase and his pimp-tastic outfit, by Keith Wiley
Architecture was heard and not seen at City Listening, the latest installation of de LaB (design east of La Brea), LA’s semi-regular design gathering hosted by AN contributors Haily Zaki and Alissa Walker (the writer of this post, but better known to you as “we“). Monday night’s event was held at the new Barbara Bestor-designed GOOD Space in Hollywood, where design writers and bloggers crawled out from under their keyboards to show us their faces, and in some cases, their feelings. The evening was packed with AN contributors and readers, including two pieces out of seven read that were originally published in AN!
MoMA and Taniguchi Get Comfortable (with a little help from Pipliotti Rist)
When the Modern reopened its Yoshio Taniguchi-designed doors in 2004, critical opinion of the new building was split. Some critics and museum visitors complained that the building, and the institution it housed, seemed to lack a point of view, and that it was geared more toward moving hoards of tourists than to contemplative art viewing. One longtime MoMA watcher, however, cautioned me, “We always hate the new MoMA. Then you get used to it and grow to love it.”
Start Your Engines!!!!
A high speed video game design by panelist Scott Robertson
AN’s California Editor Sam Lubell will be hosting a panel around the creation of new and unconventional design at Gensler and USG’s Design Process Innovation Symposium this Saturday at 10:55 a.m. at the A+D Museum. Panelists will include none other than Gaston Nogues, of inventive Silver Lake architecture/art installation/sculpture firm Ball Nogues; Matthew Melnyk, of the omnipresent and hyper-advanced design and engineering firm Buro Happold; Richard Whitehall, whose firm, Smart Design, patterns everything from cool-looking thermometers to Serengeti sunglasses; Scott Robertson, a creator of ultramodern, books, bikes, and even the cars used in video games; and Tali Krakowsky, of Imaginary Forces, who co-designed the flashy set for this year’s Victoria Secret fashion show. Another talent-loaded panel, at 2:30 p.m., will be hosted by KCRW and Dwell’s Frances Anderton.
One For the Books
In this age of blogs and 24-hour cable news, rarely does breaking news come from an old-fashioned hardcover book. But that’s exactly what happened with Studio Daniel Libeskind’s New York Tower, which can be seen on high (and which we also talked to the architect round earlier today).