The American Institute of Architects has announced the winners of this year’s Small Projects Awards, which include a tiny floating sauna and a mobile dental surgery in a trailer (+ slideshow). (more…)
Dezeen promotion: designers can engage with social and political problems that are sometimes too big for governments to tackle, says Richard van der Laken, founder of annual social design conference What Design Can Do (+ interview). (more…)
The Obama Foundation has selected Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) with partner Interactive Design Architects (IDEA) to lead the design of the Obama Presidential Center for Chicago‘s South Side. Chosen from a shortlist including Diller Scofidio + Renfro, John Ronan Architects, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, SHoP Architects, Snøhetta and Adjaye Associates, TWBTA stood out for their “commitment to explore the best ways of creating an innovative center for action that inspires communities and individuals to take on our biggest challenges.”
“We are deeply moved by the mission of the Obama Foundation and the role the Center can play in empowering that mission. It is a joy, an honor, and a responsibility to create a place that reflects the optimism and integrity of the President and the First Lady. This has been a transformative presidency and we will work to make a Center that embodies and expands the Obamas’ vision. We look forward to collaborating with our partners, Interactive Design Architects, and to working with the South Side community,” said TWBTA in a statement.
The Obama Foundation anticipates the the building could potentially be finished by 2020.
News via Obama Foundation.
From the architect. SRAM Corporation engaged Perkins+Will to design their new headquarters in the vibrant Fulton Market District of Chicago. Initial visioning uncovered SRAM’s desire for a space that connected their staff by providing them active and fun workplace choices through many collaborative space types.
For example, a 1/8 mile test track winds through the office, stitching the large open floor neighborhoods together. Also integrated into the workplace are commuter and test bikes, serving as screens along the bike track and open office neighborhoods.
The resulting design is punctuated by the SRAM red, a branding mark utilized in a controlled and functional way to tell the story of the company’s product offerings, philanthropy, and rich biking culture.
Graduate shows 2016: Royal College of Art graduate Micaella Pedros has repurposed discarded plastic bottles into joints that can be used to hold wooden furniture together (+ movie). (more…)
The residence belonging to famed Postmodernist architect Michael Graves will be sold to Kean University, home to the new Michael Graves College for architecture and design, after receiving approval from its board of trustees. Following Graves’s death last year, the architect’s will stipulated that the residence, his studio, another property were to be donated to Princeton University, Graves’s neighbor and longtime employer. But Princeton University felt the buildings would be better served in another capacity and rejected the gift, allowing Kean to step in.
“We were grateful to be able to consider the possibility of accepting Michael Graves’s properties, but concluded that we could not meet the terms and conditions associated with the gift,” Princeton said in a statement.
The sale to Kean University, located 30 miles north of Princeton in Union, New Jersey, will be made for just $20. But the terms and conditions outlined by the Graves Estate, including preserving the buildings and renovating them for educational use, will cost an estimated $300,000, along with annual maintenance costs of $30,000 to $40,000.
The will had stated that if rejected by Princeton, the property would be offered to another non-profit institution. Graves’s firm approached Kean earlier this year about acquiring the property under those terms. Kean was already quite familiar with the Grave’s estate, as the architect had spent the final years of his life working with the university to create its new architecture school, which welcomed its inaugural class this past fall.
Kean intends to preserve the function and aesthetic of the residence and studio, known as the Warehouse. Graves had already treated the home like a museum and meeting space, and the Warehouse will continue as a residence and studio. Despite Princeton University passing on the complex, the buildings will be open to students from the nearby campus.
News via the New York Times.
From the architect. Upon retirement after 40 years of teaching Fibre-Arts and Interior Design at Texas State University (formerly Southwest Texas State University), the Lamans desired a gallery and studio to compliment their modest 1970’s era modern home, taken from Heritage Homes plan books originally started by Henry D. Norris AIA. Clad in white stucco, the 1800 sq. ft. residence is characterized by a tripartite plan arrangement of two shed roof’s flanking a central core.
The Lamans expertly sited the house amongst a dense canopy of live oak and cedar elm trees on a 1 acre, hill country lot in San Marcos, Texas. Over the past 30 years, they have carved out a series of outdoor rooms, a secret garden and sculpture courts around their home leaving only one logical area for an addition – the front yard. While in most situations an addition would supplement the operation of an existing structure, this situation presented an opportunity for the addition to supplant the home – completely transforming it’s identity and creating a new entry.
The program called for an exhibition gallery, a painting studio, a library and a new master suite. Taking queues from the parti of the existing home’s massing, the addition is comprised of paired towers (gallery and studio) flanking a foyer and upper level library. The addition is located in a bowl-like depression at the head of a dry creek bed and so must be accessed via a series of bridges which allowing natural water runoff to flow around and between the existing and new structures.
The atmosphere in the towers is animated through two distinct lighting strategies. Ambient light is filtered by the North facing translucent walls while carefully placed skylights project pools of light through a series of ceiling baffles throughout the day. Depending upon the location of the sun, the color temperature of the natural light provides a diverse reading to the Lamans’ art.
The library is defined by shelves which cantilever into the voluminous modified-gambrel roof forms of the towers – linking the spaces through section. Perched atop the entry, views to the surrounding canopy of trees create an intimate gathering space for conversation and contemplation for the Lamans and their guests.
The Lamans’ appreciation for outdoor living is realized with the addition of a new sculpture garden and bocce court off of the gallery, ideal for large showings or family gatherings. While in a more intimate setting, the master bedroom and bathroom open directly into a private Zen garden.
The master suite was reconfigured through a sensitive addition of a bathing and dressing room while shifting the existing bedroom out, forming a linear gallery hall which bisects the existing house and new addition. Movement along this corridor not only makes the user aware of old and new but has framed views to the new outdoor rooms as well.
London Festival of Architecture 2016: architects Tomaso Boano and Jonas Prišmontas have created a small pop-up studio to raise awareness of how London‘s unaffordable rents and education is crippling its creative industries (+ slideshow). (more…)
The 2016 Venice Biennale has highlighted that dealing with natural disasters may become one of the main preoccupations of architecture in the future. But nature has its destructive ways, and volcanic eruptions are among the most extreme case in point. On the Island of Fogo (Cape Verde), the Natural Park Venue designed by OTO – and elected Best Building of the Year 2015 by Archdaily readers – was destroyed by molten lava flow only one year after its opening in 2013. The building, which combined a cultural center and administrative activities, helped to activate the economy in the island’s most remote area. Following the disaster, Adrian Kasperski, a student at Krakow University, devoted his master’s thesis to the redevelopment of this area, by proposing the expansion of the existing roads and hiking trails and designing facilities to improve alternative tourism offerings.
Kasperski first noticed that the northern part of the island lacked road access. Extending the existing road to the north would contribute to the island’s economic development and help reduce the traffic in the south. The project also suggests improved access to the caldera via hiking trails. Whereas OTO’s project lay in the caldera next to a village, Kasperski decided to relocate activities on the edge of the volcano to protect it from eruptions. In his proposal, the cultural center and former village are placed north of the caldera, and an extra hotel and winery are proposed on the south part of the road.
The cultural center is perhaps the most interesting part of the project. As with the former OTO design, the facility was developed by taking advantage of the local topography. Placed at the border of two very different landscapes, “the building seems invisible from a distance,” explains Kasperski, “only when one approaches closer, a slight cut in the caldera starts to emerge.” Just as in Dominique Perrault’s Ewha Womans University, the building features a public plaza, staircases and seating area at its center. The glass facades along the plaza bring natural light into the building that lies mostly underground. Moreover, the elongated plaza frames a view of the volcano, which is complemented by the use of slotted roofs.
For his winery and hotel, Kasperski also placed local topography at the core of his design. This time, the structure was not entirely underground. The building features a low rise structure – which is, as OTO already proved, very suitable to the existing landscape. The form raises slightly above the ground to form a horizontal block on one side, and the shape follows the slope of the rocky Caldera on the other.
On the northern side of the volcano, the village aims to relocate the people that lived in the caldera before the eruption. The village is placed in the island’s most remote area to preserve a sense of community. The project includes public facilities – a school, a market and a church, as well as a network of alleys, irrigation canals and theme pavilions. Kasperski uses topography lines to define the streets, and serial housing accordingly raises along the hillside.
The emphasis on the ground and analysis of topography lines follow a recurrent theme in contemporary architecture, as initiated by parametricist architect Zaha Hadid. With his cultural center, Kasperski illustrates what historian Andrea Ruby calls “inflated ground.” “Instead of depositing the program as an object on the ground,” Ruby explains, “it is injected like a liquid,” and “raises the surface of the ground to the ceiling, in the process creating an artificial topography.”[1]
But, one might wonder whether the necessary materials and construction techniques would be available on the island. For their Natural Park Venue, OTO used black masonry block made of cement and ashes of the volcano. Ashes also covered the roofs, thus blending the building with its surrounding. Indeed, in such a poor region it seems obvious that using available resources is a necessity. Instead, Kasperski doesn’t specify any use of local materials. The cultural center with its artificial topography, and the winery and hotel with its unconventional form would both rely on high-technology techniques. The village’s public infrastructure and housing seem similarly far from the island’s economic reality. Proposals to strengthen the island’s economy and recover from natural disaster are welcome; however, while Kasperski offers an interesting narrative that can make us dream his vision, and any similar ideas for Fogo Island, will likely remain hypothetical for the time being.
[1] Ilka & Andreas Ruby, Groundscapes: The rediscovery of the ground in contemporary architecture (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2006), pp. 22-24.
