Swiss architect Jacques Herzog has declared his support for plans by the Chinese government to curb the number of flamboyant and “weird” buildings in the country. (more…)
I understand why China is banning “weird” architecture, says Jacques Herzog
Architecture
Tesla auto-pilot feature successfully brings driver to emergency room
A Tesla Model X has safely driven its owner to a hospital, after he activated the car’s auto-pilot function following a potentially fatal blood clot. (more…)
Modern Barn House / Rios Clementi Hale Studios
© John Ellis
- Architects: Rios Clementi Hale Studios
- Location: United States, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Project Year: 2014
- Photographs: John Ellis
- Interior Designer: Waldo’s Designs
© John Ellis
From the architect. Rios Clementi Hale Studios renovated and expanded an eclectic, 1980s manor house into a contemporary “farmhouse” retreat for a film and television producer. Since the original house was already well situated in its orientation to canyon views, the architects kept the building footprint in place and preserved the height and steep pitch of the roof to create a loft feeling inside. They extensively remodeled and expanded the interiors to open the rooms, simplify the circulation, better capture views, and blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors. The architects maximized the existing “bones” of the house and then focused on letting the landscape flow through.
© John Ellis
Complementary slate roof tiles and tongue-and-groove siding of gray-painted cedar replace the original exterior materials. New expanses of glass are screened from direct sunlight by a rhythmic pattern of vertical, aluminum fins forming a continuous, two-story brise soleil (that also deters nosy onlookers). Large, cantilevered windows rimmed in steel project from gabled additions on the north and south sides of the house to engage the landscape. Original masonry chimneys were rebuilt to current seismic standards and internal gutters hidden from view to maintain the home’s taut profile. The resulting design reinterprets the traditional barn vernacular through modern simplicity and transparency.
1st Floor Plan
The house is organized into a T-shape with rooms on each level accessed from the longer, horizontal bar, essentially a central, east-west circulation spine that extends the entire length of the house. Staircases and less-used spaces—including guest rooms, home gym, garages, and screening room—occupy the perpendicular wing at the front of the property. To highlight the owner’s extensive art collection, the architects designed the interiors as clean-lined, flowing spaces open to views through floor-to-ceiling windows. New skylights funnel daylight into living spaces and bedrooms. Banks of glass doors open the ground floor rooms to the outdoors. Steel-framed windows on the second floor project into the landscape to create the feeling of being suspended in midair. Connections to the outdoors are reinforced through floors of gray limestone extending from the entrance through the foyer, living area, and family porch to cover the rear patio.
© John Ellis
A staircase featuring full-height, gunmetal-finished metal railings at the center of the house leads to the middle of the spine, where a mezzanine office/den overlooks the living room on the west end, and bedroom suites sit at the east. The original master suite was moved from the southwest corner of the house to the northeast side overlooking the pool view. The master bedroom was enlarged and new his-and-her bathrooms added to the suite.
2nd Floor Plan
The interior furnishings selections—by Waldo’s Designs, which is known for its high-profile Hollywood clientele—complement the architecture in their soft contemporary style. Natural textures, including dark-stained oak, rough-hewn stone, and high-grained woods, are balanced against the hard-edged, metal surfaces, glass walls, and stone floors throughout.
© John Ellis
An important component of the design is the estate’s park-like landscape that was refreshed and refined by the architects. Old-growth trees, including redwoods, cedars, and palms, are preserved and surrounded by manicured lawns and hedges. The lawn appears as an extension of the golf course below the property to reinforce the vistas from the estate. Separating building from landscape is a strip of gravel encircling the base of the house to set off its modern architecture. A new reflecting pool and illuminated bridge create a dramatic entrance to the front door, particularly at night when the glass-faced house glows like a lantern.
© John Ellis
RIBA Elects Ben Derbyshire as Next President
Courtesy of RIBA
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has elected Ben Derbyshire, chair of HTA Design, to become their next president. Beating out other candidates Alan Jones and Andrew Salter, Derbyshire will take over from current president Jane Duncan for a two-year term beginning on September 1, 2017.
Derbyshire has been a partner at HTA since 1987, where he has penned several essays including a recommendation on solutions to London’s Tall Building Boom, and has played an active role in RIBA activities for a number of years, including calling for an overhaul of the RIBA election process in 2014. He has held a number of Board positions throughout his career, including at RIBA Enterprises, and Design for Homes, and is a trustee of The London Society.
Courtesy of RIBA
“Once again we find ourselves in turbulent times. In winning this election I am conscious of a great sense of responsibility owed to architects everywhere, in all corners of the UK and overseas,” said Derbyshire following the announcement. “Jane Duncan has laid the foundations for change at the RIBA that I look forward to driving forward, when I take up the role of President. My primary goal is to champion architects so that they, our sister professions and clients, can advance architecture as the cornerstone of the well-designed and more sustainable built environment society desperately needs. All architects, wherever and however we practice, need an RIBA that works for us.”
“Congratulations to Ben Derbyshire on his successful election and to Alan Jones and Andrew Salter for putting themselves forward for this fantastic role,” said current RIBA President Jane Duncan. “During the next year of my Presidency, I will be playing my part in implementing the RIBA’s new five-year strategy which distilled the collective views of our membership. I look forward to passing this important baton on to Ben Derbyshire and ensuring that our profession has a strong voice and all our members, wherever they are, have the skills and support they need to thrive.”
Turnout for the election was 15.2%; Ben Derbyshire was elected with 53.8% of the votes after the exclusion and re-allocation of 1st preference votes. For the year leading up to his inauguration, Derbyshire will become the official RIBA President-Elect.
The position of RIBA President was established in 1835 and has been held by notable architects including Sir George Gilbert Scott, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, Alfred Waterhouse and Sir Basil Spence.
News via RIBA.
World’s largest aircraft prepares for first flight
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HTA Design architect Ben Derbyshire elected as next RIBA president
Architect Ben Derbyshire has been elected to become the next president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. (more…)
Stanton Williams & Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands Selected to Design UCL’s Olympic Park Campus
Initial study for internal street. Image Courtesy of Stanton Williams
University College London (UCL) has selected Stanton Williams and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands to design buildings for two sites as part of the first phase of the new UCL East campus. The campus will be constructed at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, adjacent to the London Olympics Stadium, Zaha Hadid’s London Aquatics Center and the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower by Anish Kapoor, and is anticipated to contain facilities for a major new school of design.
Courtesy of Stanton Williams
Stanton Williams will design “Marshgate”, a 33,500 square meter academic facility south of the ArcelorMittal Orbit, while Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands will realize a 16,500 square meter mixed-use facility containing university residential and academic space on Pool Street, just south of the Aquatics Center.
“This is a unique opportunity to create a distinctive place: a new kind of university quarter that captures the excitement and vitality that draws people to live, work and study in contemporary London,” said Gavin Henderson, Director, Stanton Williams. “Drawing on the energy of its East London setting, the Lee Valley’s legacy of industriousness and creativity, and the exceptional cultural and landscape setting of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, this will be a place for curiosity, learning and collaboration engaged with the culture of the surrounding city. We feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with UCL and LLDC to deliver the vision for UCL East.”
Courtesy of Stanton Williams
Courtesy of Stanton Williams
“This is a fascinating project for a building that combines many uses – residential as well as academic.” said Alex Lifschutz about the Pool Street project. “We very much wish it also to become a place that local people visit and enjoy, to make contact with UCL and to engage in many inspiring conversations. We hope that this building together with its neighbour on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are as much of a catalyst for this new campus as the Wilkins Building on Gower Street was for this most prestigious university in 1825.”
Study model: building form and cast of social spaces. Image Courtesy of Stanton Williams
The complete East campus plan will accommodate 3,000 students and 625 staff members, including academics and researchers, and will cost an estimated £270 million. The scheme will also incorporate the Stratford Waterfront, which will include a new museum for the V&A, a theater for Sadler’s Wells, a new campus for the UAL’s London College of Fashion and a residential complex. The development is part of a larger £1.2 billion initiative to upgrade and expand university facilities, including at the school’s historic Bloomsbury campus, home to the acclaimed Bartlett School of Architecture.
News via Stanton Williams.
How London’s Olympic Stadium Finally Transitioned to Legacy Mode
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Stanley Tigerman on Learning from Mies, The Younger Generation and “Designing Bridges to Burn”
Instant City project model, 1966. Image Courtesy of Tigerman McCurry Architects
This article was originally published on Autodesk’s Line//Shape//Space publication as “Inside My Design Mind: Salt-of-the-Earth Lessons From Architect Stanley Tigerman.”
It’s no secret Stanley Tigerman has made a few enemies in his career. Chicago’s pugnacious 85-year-old architecture star and elder statesman, who received a lifetime achievement award from the American Institute of Architects in October, is known perhaps as much for his brand of gloves-off honesty as his buildings. In a 2013 interview with Chicago magazine, he summed up the redesign of the city’s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe–designed IBM tower as “shit.”
But there’s a socially minded, nurturing side of Tigerman—designer of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Pacific Garden Mission—that is sometimes lost in the offhand bravado of his public-facing comments. As a member of the Chicago Seven (which protested the predominance of modernism) and a provocateur who has organized seminal forums about architecture’s future, Tigerman is more than just tough talk.
Here, the architect, educator, and curator reveals a generous and expansive mind, praising the uncompromising will of his role model Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and explaining where he finds and nourishes inspiration. He speaks fondly of architecture’s next generation, to whom he offers this advice: Go slow. Don’t copy. Stand firm. Work hard.
The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Illinois, 2009. Image Courtesy of Tigerman McCurry Architects
Jeff Link: You’re deeply tied to Chicago’s architectural traditions and history. Your practice is in River North, you directed the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, and you even call Chicago the city of modernism. How does that Chicago tradition inspire you?
Stanley Tigerman: I was born in Chicago, and being an architect here is like being a Muslim in Mecca—you are right at the source of the flame. Chicago is the most modern city on the planet, acknowledged to be after it burned down in 1871. It’s challenging to go up against all those great names, my predecessors.
But Chicago is in good hands. The youngest generation practicing architecture has so much talent, including theoretical understanding. And it continues to be challenging and exciting to me. I live in one of Mies’ buildings [910 Lake Shore Drive], and that was done very consciously by me because I wanted to live in response to that excellence, the level to which one needs to aspire.
JL: Did Mies have a strong influence on your work?
ST: No. There’s very little physical bearing on what Mies did and what I did. What there is, is the challenge of his thinking, his way of working. When he was forced to leave Germany in 1938, he had a library of 3,000 books. The SS only allowed him to take 30. The 30 he took are all in the rare books library at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and they are incredible to look at: the writings of Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas. He was a serious reader.
Mies didn’t say anything casually. He meant what he said, and he said very little. I knew him very well; he was very impressive. It’s a challenge because he wasn’t loose with his comments—about life, about work and architecture. He took things very slowly; very deliberately; and never in any way, shape, or form off the cuff. That, to me, has always instilled a kind of role model and paradigm. It’s not my nature. I make a lot of mistakes, but I always go back and try to correct them. Like how a building turns a corner: Sometimes I think about it in a very slipshod way; I think about it, and I can’t do this or that, so I redesign it again and again and again. Architecture is like editing is for a writer: honing it, getting it a little better and a little better.
Illinois Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, 1982. Image Courtesy of Tigerman McCurry Architects
JL: Can you point to a specific project that shows the importance of editing in your work?
ST: No. But let me approach it this way: Once, we were working on a project in Mies’ office in Montreal. I was talking to someone, and Mies was nearby at one of the drafting boards. There was a young man asking him questions about how he wanted a certain thing to look. Mies told him he would think about it. Three weeks later, I was in the same office; Mies was there with the same young man, and he showed him how to do it. He saw it through, and that stayed in my mind: that the right decision took him three weeks. That’s important to my way of thinking.
JL: You run your architectural practice, Tigerman McCurry Architects, with your wife and partner, Margaret McCurry. Is that a challenge?
ST: Yes. It’s difficult. We argue all the time. But Margaret is a very good architect. I listen to her. I didn’t always, but I do now. My influence on Margaret has made her a bit quicker. Her influence on me has slowed me down. Margaret has impeccable taste.
JL: Your 2011 autobiography is called Designing Bridges to Burn. Why, as a designer, do you want to burn bridges?
ST: Because an unfortunate part of my M.O. is putting my foot in my mouth more often than necessary. I tend to say things without thinking. That’s why Mies was such a role model to me. He never said boo without thinking it through. The title came from a phrase Margaret used one day after we were having some argument. “When they find you face down in an alley, it will take the police a very long time to find the killer because the list of suspects will be very long,” she said. “You’re at the stage of your life where you’re designing bridges to burn.” I’m not exactly user-friendly, which I feel badly about because that’s not the way I see myself.
Stanley Tigerman’s conceptual 1978 image of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s <a href='http://ift.tt/2aD3wKf;. Image Courtesy of Tigerman McCurry Architects
JL: In an interview with Chicago magazine, you said you prefer to begin “with a blank slate every time, rather than returning to a particular style.” Where do your ideas originate?
ST: They originate in the idiosyncrasies because they are all different—different aspirations, ambitions, and conceits. And where my own head is at, at the particular moment. From the particular to the general, from a site to the work and back again. People say, “What’s your favorite project?” The next one, of course.
JL: What happens when you get architect’s block?
ST: We’re working on a number of things right now. I just sat down on a detail on a garden in Michigan, working out how to turn a corner. I told the client what I was thinking, and it helped with another project. Writer’s block, or architect’s block, is not a big deal. You just go and do something else, and it will come back to you. You need to leave the mind.
Snøhetta’s Terraced, Geometric Tower Wins Competition for Bank Headquarters in Beirut
© MIR/Snøhetta
Snøhetta has won a competition to design the new headquarters for Banque Libano Francaise (BLF) in Beirut, Lebanon. The building will feature a geometric facade and several large outdoor terraces carved from the built volume to create a vibrant workplace community. The project marks Snøhetta’s first ever commission in Lebanon.
© MIR/Snøhetta
To create a building emblematic of the evolving strategies of the corporate world, Snøhetta approached the design with an architectural language that is “both generic and conceptual at the same time.” The result is an aesthetic that speaks both to the future of the bank and its surrounding city and community.
The BLF Headquarters will contain both public and private areas. Public spaces are found at the building base, where the building’s permeable facade encourages a connection to the street and the larger neighborhood. Workspaces are designed to encircle the shared terraces, carved from different sides of the volume as it rises. The terraces will serve as the nexus of the work environment, acting as social hubs which form the primary organization for the entire office.
© MIR/Snøhetta
© MIR/Snøhetta
Another key quality of the building will be its sustainability, organized by Snøhetta into three categories: “Economic Sustainability – the project must be fundamentally economically viable; Social Sustainability – the project must give back to the city and complement the existing urban context; and Environmental Sustainability – the project must respond to the environment both in regard to energy consumed and with regard the embodied energy of the structure.”
“We are delighted to enter into this creative partnership with the BLF. In a time of profound change and transformation, the BLF is an ideal partner for Snøhetta with our shared ideals of sustainability, community, and dialogue.”, says Snøhetta founding partner Kjetil T. Thorsen.
© MIR/Snøhetta
Snøhetta will continue working to finalize the design. A timetable for construction has not yet been released.
© MIR/Snøhetta
Estúdio Pretto / Arquitetura Nacional
© Marcelo Donadussi
- Architects: Arquitetura Nacional
- Location: Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
- Authors: Eduardo Maurmann, Elen Balvedi Maurmann, Paula Otto, Luiza Otto and Arquitetura Nacional Team
- Mep Projects: Elétrons
- Area: 550.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Marcelo Donadussi
© Marcelo Donadussi
Estúdio Pretto specializes in Functional training and Sports Conditioning. They hired Arquitetura Nacional to design their new – and much larger- space. Located in the same neighborhood – Moinhos de Vento – the studio now occupies an entire floor of a newly built commercial space, featuring original concrete slab that was kept intact and aparent.
© Marcelo Donadussi
The proposal sought maximum visual integration of spaces – as the training requires constant communication between teachers and students. However, compartmentalization of the respective areas was necessary: the reception and lounge area, the locker rooms, warm-up area and training – achieved through changes in the floors designs. The lounge and reception area received a stronger marking: floors, walls and ceiling were painted yellow. The idea was to create a living space – previously non-existent in the old space – an area where the students can rest and, more importantly, socialize out of training hours.
© Marcelo Donadussi
Plan
© Marcelo Donadussi
The training area divides in shades of gray and black. The goal is that a student can intuitively understand the spaces the moment he enters the training zone, preparing the mood. The specific floors for each type of practice alternate in space, respecting circulation flows. Ropes in 5 different colors run throughout the ceiling – starting all together and following the paths of the concrete beams until each one follows it’s own course.
© Marcelo Donadussi
Diagram
© Marcelo Donadussi
Main partitions are made of iron frames, with checkerboard shape, remembering old industrial buildings. The use of small tiles and neon lights also bring a vintage mood for the studio. The idea is that it is a timeless space with elements that refer to good things from the past, but with a simple and contemporary language. In this sense, the choice of furniture also had the same objective: the studio can grow healthily, with a strong character that lasts over the many years of future success.
© Marcelo Donadussi
