2013.0109 • People and Places

ArchitectureWeek Issue No. 573 - 2013.0109

AIA New Hampshire Design Awards

Hillsborough County Superior Court North, in Manchester, New Hampshire, designed by Lavallee Brensinger Architects. Photo: Joseph St. Pierre

The two recipients of honor awards from the AIA New Hampshire chapter are a city public works building and a county superior-court building, both designed by Manchester, New Hampshire-basedLavallee Brensinger Architects. Five additional buildings received merit awards, while an additional three projects were awarded commendations. A mix of project types are represented in this group, including single-family and multifamily housing, higher education, and a suite of new beach facility buildings for the city of Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.

Honor Awards

Photo: Joseph St. Pierre


City of Manchester Department of Public Works Administration Building
Designer: Lavallee Brensinger Architects, Manchester, New Hampshire
Construction Manager: Harvey Construction Corporation

Jury Comments: "This building is a wonderful addition to a previously disenfranchised urban district. The architects successfully transformed a utilitarian building type into an elegant civic statement using a high level industrial aesthetic. The building placement creates a strong street edge and expresses the transformational potential of design in the public domain. The jury universally applauded the quality of the interior spaces and the simple, but effective, use of natural light. Quite simply, this building elevates the functional to the extraordinary." 

Read more »

Richard Meier & Partners in Hamburg, Germany

The 15-story competition-winning design, by Richard Meier & Partners Architects, for a new Engel & Völkers headquarters in Hamburg, Germany (northwest view). Image: Richard Meier and Partners Architects

New York City-based Richard Meier & Partners Architects has won an international design competition to design a new headquarters building in Hamburg, Germany for the international luxury real estate company, Engel & Völkers.

The firm's winning proposal for the mixed-use project depicts a two-part building. The building's central organizing element is an atrium. This space is enclosed on three sides by a seven-story low-rise office building that extends to the edges of the building site, while its northwest corner is marked by a 15-story tower.

The building is organized around a central atrium. Photo: Richard Meier and Partners Architects

Read more »

Balthazar Korab - 1926 to 2013

Yale Hockey Rink, designed by Eero Saarinen, photographed by Balthazar Korab.

According to the Detroit Free Press and other news outlets, noted architectural photographer Balthazar Korab has died. A posting by the Balthazar Korab Photography user on Facebook indicated that his death came "after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease."

A long-time resident of Troy, Michigan, Korab was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1926. He fled the country under cover of darkness in 1948 with his brother Antoní, and good friend László Kollár. Following their escape, Korab and Kollár both went on to major in architecture and would, years later, collaborate on a well-regarded project submission for the Sydney Opera House design competition.

Photo: Balthazar Korab, Ltd.

Upon completion of his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Korab immigrated to the United States and in 195 hired as a designer by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. It was in Saarinen's office that Korab's photographic career got its start. Although he began work as a designer, over time he became the in-house architectural photographer for the firm, and continued to photograph much of Saarinen's work after he founded his own photographic studio.

Read more »

Foster + Partners in New York City

The proposed modification of the New York Public Library building would create a multistory atrium  and reading room along its western facade. Image: dbox/ Foster + Partners

London-based Foster + Partners has released renderings and a proposal for a major modification of the  New York Public Library building (1911), designed by Carrère & Hastings, also known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The project will integrate the NYPL's circulating library into the Beaux Arts building for the first time in several decades.

This will be achieved by removing the existing Rose Reading Room, which extends along much of the building's western facade, overlooking Bryant Park, and by exposing seven floors of space beneath the room that has been previously closed to the public. The books currently stored in this area will be moved to an existing climate-controlled storage facility located beneath Bryant Park.

View from entrance of the proposed circulation library. Image: dbox/ Foster + Partners

The firm's design for this modification will replace the existing structural system with what is being described as a "stone and steel cradle", pulling the interior floor plates back from the existing exterior wall and forming a multistory atrium and reading room in the void that is created. The atrium will serve as a focal point for the new circulating library and balconies in the book stacks will overlook it.

Read more »

Ratcliff in Cupertino, California

The two-story De Anza College Media and Learning Centre, in Cupertino, California, designed by Ratcliff. Photo: David Wakely

Ratcliff, an architecture firm in Emeryville, California, designed the recently completed Media and Learning Center at De Anza College, in Cupertino, California. The 14-classroom, 67,000-square-foot (6,200-square-meter) project opened for classes in September, accommodating classes in anthropology and general education.

The 80-foot-long (24-meter-long) atrium of the Media and Learning Center. Photo: David Wakely

The building is expected to earn a LEED Platinum certification and sports a number of sustainable features, including a 6,000-square-foot (560-square-meter) photovoltaic array mounted adjacent to the fritted-glass skylight over a central atrium space. The atrium's clerestory glazing, along with considerable glazing along the building's facades, helps to provide daylight access to many of the spaces.

Section diagram showing air circulation patterns. Image: Ratcliff

The atrium also plays a central role as the exhaust point of the center's passive-downdraft ventilation system. Cooling towers located along either side of the building serve as the system's air supply. And rooftop vacuum-tube thermal solar array also provides heat for the HVAC system.

Read more »

8 Spruce Street Wins Skyscraper Award

8 Spruce Street, by Frank Gehry, has received the 2011 Emporis Skyscraper Award. The building is located just a few blocks from the Woolworth Building (shown in backdrop) and the western end of theBrooklyn Bridge. Photo: Roberto Ventre

The 76-story luxury residential tower at 8 Spruce Street in New York City is the recipient of the 2011 Emporis Skyscraper Award. The first skyscraper designed by architect Frank Gehry, the 870-foot-tall (265-meter-tall) building's surface is clad in over 10,000 rippling stainless steel panels.

The slender T-plan tower, originally known as The Beekman, now being vigorously promoted by its owners as "New York by Gehry"or "New York by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street" stands atop an unremarkable, new-built five-story orange-brick base that occupies the full site footprint, with a generally indifferent street-level presence.

ArchitectureWeek contributing editor Michael Crosbie described 8 Spruce Street as "an arresting cliff of contorted stainless steel," and called the anomalous south facade "as smooth and somber as a parson's face on Sunday morning."  Photo: Michael J. Crosbie

Read more »

MAD