Our US job of the week on the new and improved Dezeen Jobs website is for an architect/designer at Commune Design, which transformed a Mid-Century Modern office building into a boutique hotel (pictured). Visit the ad for full details or browse other architecture and design opportunities on Dezeen Jobs.
Pershing Square Renew has revealed the plans of four finalists for an overhaul to the oldest park in Los Angeles, Pershing Square. Opened in 1866, with subsequent name changes and redesigns – the most recent, by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta and landscape architect Laurie Olin, opened in 1994 – the park’s next identity could be crafted by wHY + Civitas, James Corner Field Operations with Frederick Fisher & Partners, Agence TER and Team, or SWA | Morphosis. The finalists were selected from a semi-finalist round of ten proposals last December, and now the Pershing Square Renew jury will deliberate before announcing a winner on May 12.
Pershing Square is a five-acre park bounded by 5th Street to the north, 6th Street to the south, Hill Street to the east, and Olive Street to the west, in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles. The redevelopment has been led by Councilmember José Huizar, the Department of Recreation and Parks, MacFarlane Partners (provider of start-up funding for Pershing Square Renew), and other leaders, including Gensler and the law offices of Loeb and Loeb.
Culver City relative newcomers wHY partnered with Denver’s well-known Civitas Landscape Architecture group.
“Los Angeles thrives on the synergy, overlap and intersection of many cultures and identities,” said wHY’s Kulapat Yantrasast and Civitas’s Mark Johnson. “Pershing Green will host and heighten these ideas as the hub of food, arts, nature and culture. The Green will be that living heart enabling Angelenos’ courage and free spirit.”
New York’s James Corner is responsible for Manhattan’s High Line as well as Santa Monica’s Tongva Park. Los Angeles’s Frederick Fisher is known for his connection to art and community institutions, such as Santa Monica’s restored Annenberg Community Beach House and exhibitions at LACMA.
“Our vision for Pershing Square aims to bring greenery, cafes, promenades, social life, flexible space and a meaningful center back into the heart of a burgeoning Downtown LA,” said James Corner, founder and director of James Corner Field Operations. “We envision a park that is both formal and informal, civic yet casual – a ‘garden theater’ providing a varied assortment of spaces for everyday use, special event programming, cultural exchange and innovation.”
Paris-based Agence TER’s landscapes dot Europe and have reached the Middle East and French Guyana.
“By flattening the lifted surface and removing all of the walls, Pershing Square will reach out to the neighborhood again, establishing a real dialogue with the city,” said Henri Bava, found and director of Agence TER. “Reintroducing flexible uses as well as nature will bring a strong identity for Downtown Los Angeles; the new park will aim to install an urban ecosystem, with a generous canopy providing shade, an inviting lawn and Californian gardens. It will become a green, sustainable and active destination for the metropolis and will be timeless and elegant through its welcoming simplicity.”
Both of these firms are based in Downtown LA and well represented throughout Southern California, as well as nationally and internationally.
“Our proposal reasserts Pershing Square as a dynamic living platform that animates the urban center and advances the long- term vision of the city of Los Angeles as a vibrant cultural capital and global leader in sustainability,” said Gerdo Aquino, CEO of SWA and Thom Mayne, Design Director of Morphosis. “As a meeting ground, event venue, playground, and peaceful refuge, a downtown park is the ultimate stage upon which urban life unfolds. It is also the city’s platform for projecting the values and substantive actions that promote a vision for its direction and future.
Downtown LA’s renaissance as a premiere location for retail, offices, dining, entertainment, and residences calls for a central square that enhances the district’s emerging position within a greater social, political, environmental and economic context. Our proposal creates a park that is active throughout the day and evening, anchored by dining, concessions, and green-tech educational facilities. An aural garden and children’s playscape accompany a vast, lush lawn, which is maintained by a sustainable wetland water feature.
Distinct Southern California ecologies lie at the base of a solar-powered hydroponic urban farming tower. The park provides the vital park elements that everyone enjoys, while advancing a future of economic and ecological sustainability.”
The Pershing Square Renew Jury:
Descriptions of the Projects are from Pershing Square Renew. For more about the proposals, visit the organization’s website here.
AD Classics: Pershing Square / Ricardo Legorreta + Laurie Olin
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Milan 2016: Italian lighting manufacturer Ghidini has unveiled its debut range of brass furniture and products, designed by Studio Job, the Campana brothers and Richard Hutten and more. (more…)
British designer Jasper Morrison has revealed Lepic, his first industrially produced kitchen (+ slideshow). (more…)
From the architect. This project is located in the historic South End of Halifax, Nova Scotia, near the cities largest municipal park. The project was a complete redesign and transformation of a dated house in a traditional neighborhood into a contemporary residence. The design intent was to pay homage to the historical neighborhood by maintaining the original form of the structure while modernizing the aesthetic and detailing. We endeavored to create a home that suited the client’s contemporary taste and lifestyle while remaining perceptive to the surroundings.
This was accomplished through the removal of a number of interior walls and vaulting the ceiling in the great room to create a large open central gathering space. The window openings were also increased in size; these larger windows flood the new spaces with ample natural light and provide views of the foliage in the back garden.
The inoperable garage was converted into a covered entrance with ample storage for bikes and recreational equipment. This space was topped with a semi private balcony off of one of the three bedrooms that provides an area to relax in the sun during the summer months and offers views over the quiet neighborhood street.
The result is a carefully considered interior space that supports family interaction, reflects the clean lines of modern aesthetic and displays thoughtful detailing. The exterior, on the other hand, continues to participate in the traditional language of the neighbourhood through its form and materials, but distinctively hints at what awaits inside.
As a design build company we are responsible for all aspects of design and physical construction. We find that this way of working allows us to address the inevitable difficulties that arise throughout a project at both the design and construction level. In this particular project everything from the initial demolition to the custom millwork fabrication and installation was included in our scope and we were able to work through solutions in a way that reflected the overall design intent.
Milan 2016: in our next movie from Nike’s The Nature of Motion exhibition, architect Greg Lynn explains how his body temperature-regulating chair could help athletes significantly improve their performance. (more…)
Opinion: Salone del Mobile may be the official centre of the furniture business during Milan design week, but Fuori Salone is the fair that actually channels investment into the city, says local designer Eleonora Fassina. (more…)
COFFICE is a multi-layered initiative. The core concept is a smart combination of a laid-back coffee shop, a co-working space and a bar, in the same space. Sounds easy.
Each function happens at a different time of day, while the size and openness of the spaces needed by the users keep on varying and yet they need to represent different moods. Still, with the continuity, it has a certain coziness for the ones who do the studying during daytime and an alternative for the ones having a cocktail at night, for a place to study, work or tho have a coffee during the day. Work, drink, sleep, repeat.
This is all linked together by various elements from the contemporary interior design of offices and bars, industrial solutions with raw materials and airy, light colors, geometric patterns appear at the same time. The layout, the different more ‘open’ and more ‘closed’ spaces and the ability to fine tune the lighting systems all make this an open-minded, easily changeable place, what can adjust perfectly to the ever-changing needs of its users, allowing it to be a likable, cozy place.
Airbnb’s offices in London, Sao Paulo and Singapore include features like an indoor village green, bleacher-style seating and a reception desk modelled on a front porch. (more…)
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has revealed plans to design and redevelop more than 22,000 square meters of brownfield land in Prague, in a 90,000 square meter development adjacent to the city’s Masaryk Railway Station. ZHA was selected by project partner Penta, an investment company active in ten markets across Europe, as the winner of a 2014 competition for the site. Devising a new central business district, the ZHA plan seeks to integrate with existing means of transit, including suburban and domestic rail services, a bus terminal, Line B of the city’s metro, and a future airport rail link to Vaclav Havel International Airport. Approximately one kilometer from Prague’s central square, the design seeks to create a balance between the horizontality of the railway lines and the verticality and publicness of the Old Town.
The plan intersects with Prague Districts 1, 3, and 8, alleviating the disjunction created by the elevated Wilsonova Highway, which bisects them. Within this context, ZHA has designed buildings that vary in scale and composition in order to generate a harmony with the existing urban fabric. This includes the conceiving of new civic spaces, such as plazas at the main entrance to the railway station, midway along Na Florenci Boulevard, at the corner of the Na Florenci/Opletalova axis, and at the bus terminal in District 8. The development comes as a response to the city’s growing demands for Class A office space in the service and IT sectors.
“In collaboration with our partners and the city, we have developed an urbanism for the site which draws inspiration from our analysis of the city and the site’s dynamic circulation networks,” says Craig Kiner, Project Associate at ZHA. “[It creates] an architectural response that is sensitive to context, unifying in aspiration and contributes to the urban fabric of Prague.”
Penta became the part and majority owner of Masaryk Station Development (MDS), which is overseeing the project, in 2011. The company will spend spend CZK 135 million (approx $5.7 million) on reconstruction of the railway station and over CZK 6.5 billion (approx $275 million) on the regeneration project. Phase one of the redevelopment has an anticipated completion of 2020, with all phases being completed by 2022.
