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-based Lavallee 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."
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
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.
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.
Centra Metropark, in Iselin, New Jersy was designed by Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF). Photo: Michael Moran
28 projects have received the AIA's Institute Honor Awards for 2013, recognizing good design in architecture, interior architecture and urban design.
Among the winning projects are those completed as recently as last fall, such as the new Barnes Foundation project, along with somewhat older projects going back to 2009. Many of the older projects, such as the LEED Platinum-certified Vancouver West Convention Center, have previously received other AIA awards at the national and state levels.
OMA designed the Milstein Hall building at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Photo: Courtesy OMA
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.
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
The Absolute World Towers, a two-building residential high-rise project in Mississauga, Ontario, has been completed. These sinuous buildings, designed by Beijing, China-based MAD Architects, have an ovoid plan, with each successive floor rotated a few degrees with respect to the one below, resulting in a visual sense of the buildings twisting or dancing. The effect has earned the buildings the dubios nickname the "Marilyn Monroe" towers.
Tower A is 56 stories, while Tower B is 50. Photo: Iwan Baan
At each floor, the concrete slab cantilevers slightly beyond the building envelope to form a continuous balcony that is slightly deeper at the ends of the floor's longer axis. Between the slabs, a ribbon of floor-to-ceiling glazing encircles each level, forming the weather envelope.
Construction has begun on the South Tower (right) of the Hudson Yards development in New York City. Image: Courtesy visualhouse
Ground has broken on the first tower in the Hudson Yards project, on a 26-acre site near the Javits Convention Center on the western edge of Manhattan. The South Tower, one of two office towers designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) will comprise 47 floors and 1.7 million square feet (158,000 square meters).
Located on the northwest corner of 10th Avenue and 30th Street, the building will house the headquarters of Coach, Inc. and will target LEED Gold certification upon its completion in 2015.
Overview of the eastern half of the Hudson Yards development. Image: Courtesy visualhouse
The South Tower will be joined to its North Tower counterpart by a low-rise retail structure, called the Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards, designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects, that will run along 10th avenue between 30th and 33rd Streets.
After 20 months of construction, a new synagogue, located in the historic center of Ulm, Germany, has been completed. The orthogonal, four-story building measures 24 by 16 meters (78 by 52 feet) and 17 meters (56 feet) high and is clad in courses of regular stone panels with a minimum number of punched openings.
Cologne-based Kister Scheithauer Gross Architects and Urban Planners (KSG) designed the 4.6-million-Euro building, which stands in the middle of the Weinhof, a short distance from the site of the former synagogue, which was destroyed during World War II.
The Weinhof Synagogue's most visually dramatic feature is a two-story stone screen that wraps around one corner at the second and third floors, shading a tall glazed walls behind which the worship space is located. The screen is composed of a regular arrangement of hexagons and triangles that form a repeating Star of David pattern.
Mayne's work, through his firm Morphosis, deliberately seems to eschew the trappings of conventional architectural styles and forms. However, a consistent industrial material palette connects most of his buildings to each other.
Virtually all of Mayne's buildings present angular metal surfaces — often steel, either in the form of cladding or a screen — as their chief public-facing surface. Glass and concrete are also used extensively in Mayne's buildings.
Perforated metal screens shade the western facade of 41 Cooper Square, in New York City. Photo: Iwan Baan
And while his designs are undeniably attention-grabbing spectacles — Christopher Haworth of the Los Angeles Times described one building as "aggressive" — some of Mayne's work has seemed to suffer from technical shortcomings including a spectacularly failed attempt at LEED Platinum certification.
The Parrish Art Museum recently opened on a rural site in Water Mill, New York, a community in the East End area of Long Island. The 34,400-square-foot (3,200-square-meter) barn-like building was designed by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, and is said to take some of its design inspiration from local vernacular architecture.
And indeed, its form is simple and clean, its profile a pair of adjoined gables running along the building's 615-foot (187-meter) length. Narrowly spaced wood rafters support the roof, which rests on cast-in-place exterior concrete walls in most places, and on steel columns and beams everywhere else.
Inside, regular skylight placement near the roof peak admit diffuse daylight between the rafters. Outside, the roof's deep eaves shelter a patio area intended for use by museum patrons. Seating under the eaves takes the form of a concrete bench that is integral with the building's walls.
At one end of the building, the roof extends beyond the weather envelope, covering a larger outdoor event space.
With its regular structural system, honest use of materials, and simple vernacular forms, the quietly expressive Parrish Art Museum seems more likely to be the work of Australian architect Glenn Murcutt than of the radical Swiss duo who brought us the 2008 Beijing National Stadium (with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei), and a host of other avant-garde buildings.
The US Environmental Protection Agency announced seven winners
of its 2012 National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement. As I have noted in the past,
the smart growth awards are given for creative, outstanding initiatives
that protect the health and the environment of our communities while
also strengthening local economies. One of this year’s winners is a
personal favorite, Denver’s Mariposa (South Lincoln) revitalization.
The 2012 award winners are being recognized in four categories, below: Overall Excellence BLVD Transformation Project, Lancaster, California
The redesign of Lancaster Boulevard helped transform downtown Lancaster
into a thriving residential and commercial district through investments
in new streetscape design, public facilities, affordable homes, and
local businesses. Completed after eight months of construction, the
project demonstrates how redesigning a corridor guided by a strategic
vision can spark new life in a community. The project has generated
almost $300 million in economic output and nearly 2,000 jobs. Equitable Development Mariposa District, Denver, Colorado
It’s
hard for me to overstate how much I love this project. In particular,
the redevelopment of Denver’s historic and ethnically diverse South
Lincoln neighborhood is turning an economically challenged area into a
lively and transit-accessible community enthusiastically supported by
current residents. The community’s master plan preserves affordable
housing while adding energy-efficient middle-income and market-rate
homes. Influenced by extensive community engagement, the newly named
Mariposa development will include actions to improve the health of
residents, reduce pollution, and control stormwater runoff.
Atlanta-based Lord, Aeck & Sargent (LAS) recently completed a renovation of Gaillard Hall, a 1950s military barracks building on the campus of North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega, Georgia. The architects worked to preserve as much of the International-style building's character as possible, while meeting the modern needs of a college dormitory.
So, while changes to the exterior were fairly minimal, the concrete-and-brick building's interior underwent extensive remodeling and modernization. One result of the reconfiguration is that the building now includes accommodation for 166, compared with the original bed count of 280.
The firm chose to largely preserve the building's dramatic split-level lobby, which helps to mediate the building's interaction with a significant site slope.
Another preservation decision made by the LAS team was to keep the building's exisiting glazed-terra-cotta hallway walls. This was accomplished in part by converting one in three double-occupancy dorm rooms into a bathroom that serves the two adjoining spaces, along with a separate mechanical room. This allowed the updated configuration to work with the existing doorway placements. Each semi-suite has its own entry and the middle door provide hallway access to the mechanical room.
The University of Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon, has opened a new $65 million, science facility that brings together researchers from a range of different disciplines including Neuroscience, Life Science, Material Science, Physical Science, and Computer Science.
Designed by THA Architecture with HDR, Inc, the Robert and Beverly Lewis Integrative Science Building (LISB) is a 103,000-square-foot (9,570-square-meter) addition to the university's science complex. And although the building is clad in brick, like many older projects in the complex, it is a stylistic departure from its 1990s predecessors, in whose designs the influence of Charles Moore can be seen.
The LISB atrium. Photo: Lara Swimmer
In keeping with a long-standing science-complex tradition, the building is connected to its neighbors. In one case, a glazed atrium connects it with an adjacent building. And in another case, enclosed bridges link it to another structure.
The 44-story luxury apartment building at 50 United Nations Plaza was designed by Foster + Partners. Image: dbox/ Foster+ Partners
Construction has begun on 50 United Nations Plaza, a 44-story residential office tower designed by Foster + Partners. Developed by Zeckendorf Development with Global Holdings, the luxury apartment building occupies a prominent location within United Nations Plaza, with views of the celebrated UN Headquarters building, the East River, and the Manhattan skyline.
According to the firm, "The tower's massing respects the height and scale of its neighbours. Its three slender volumes appear faceted in elevation, visually reducing the building's scale, while emphasising its vertical form."
Each of those three volumes becomes a vertical series of bay windows, which help to increase views and increase the size of living spaces within the building. Stainless steel bands provide horizontal punctuation of the bay windows. The firm indicated that this detailing is particularly meant to recall the iconic Art Deco styling of nearby buildings.
News sources are reporting that Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has won the international competition for the new Tokyo National Stadium, an 80,000-seat stadium planned for a site in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, Japan.
The new 290,000-square-meter (3.12-million-square-foot) stadium will be built on a site, adjacent to Fumihiko Maki'sTokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium (1990), and will replace an existing open-air stadium that was used for the 1964 Summer Olympic Games. A 2019 completion date for the project is anticipated.
Aerial rendering of the new National Stadium, which will dwarf the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. Image: Zaha Hadid Architects
The firm described the building's design with these words:
"The building volume sits gently within the urban landscape and is articulated as an assembly of stadium bowl, structural skeleton, cladding membranes and the museum, together forming an intricate structural composition that is both light and cohesive. The perimeter of the bowl structure becomes a new inhabited bridge, a continuous exhibition space that creates a new type of journey for visitors flowing along the project’s North-South axis."
The AIA has released a series of case studies about five firms in the institute's 2030 Commitment Program. Firms in the program work toward a goal of carbon-neutral building design by 2030.
The AIA's plan for a deep energy retrofit of its headquarters building (1973), in Washington, D.C., originally scheduled for completion in 2012, has reportedly been delayed because of funding issues. Photo: Kevin Matthews/ Artifice Images
The AIA's announcement reads:
"In order to examine the benefits and lessons learned from firms participating in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) 2030 Commitment Program, five participating firms were interviewed and case studies documenting their experiences were developed. The program began in 2009 and is a voluntary initiative for AIA member firms and other entities in the built environment that asks these organizations to make a pledge, develop multi-year action plans, and implement steps that can advance AIA’s goal of carbon neutral buildings by the year 2030.
John Portman & Associates has won the design competition for the Tianlong Fortune center. Image: Courtesy Portman
John Portman & Associates (Portman) has been selected to design Tianlong Fortune Center, a 108-story skyscraper in Nanning, China. The architectural design competition was led by developer Guangxi Wei Zhuang Real Estate Co., Ltd., and the Nanning Planning Bureau. As a finance and trade center, the building will be home to banks and financial consultants.
As the image provided shows, the building should look great from a helicopter.
The upper portion of the 1,312-foot-tall (400-meter-tall) tower includes a five-star hotel, while floors immediately above the hotel provide an exclusive executive club and destination restaurant. The level below the hotel lobby will feature a hotel's fitness center, pool, restaurant, business center and other amenities. The remainder of the tower is office space.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan, opened on Saturday, November 10. The 46,000-square-foot (-square-meter) project was designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and features a facade of pleated stainless steel and glass.
Dedicated to exploring global contemporary culture and ideas through art, the Broad Art Museum at MSU will serve as both an educational resource for the campus community and a cultural hub for the Mid-Michigan region. The museum will present contemporary works within a historical context through access to a study collection of more than 7,500 objects, ranging from the Greek and Roman periods to modern art.
A gallery space of the Broad Museum. Photo: Paul Warchol
The two-story building features galleries for special exhibitions, modern and contemporary art, new media, photography, and works on paper. The facility also includes an education wing, a works-on-paper study center, a gift shop, and a café. Adjacent to the museum is an outdoor sculpture garden and a large pedestrian plaza.
Broad Museum site plan drawing. Image: Zaha Hadid Architects
Glasgow, Scotland's new Maggie's Centre Gartnavel – like its sister projects – sets out to provide space where people can feel welcome, at home and cared for: a haven. The architects – the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) – has sited the building on a slight rise, but cut it into the slope so that on two sides it looks at banked landscape.
The building received the 2012 Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award, given by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS).
Overview of Maggie's Centre Gartnavel. Photo: Charlie Koolhaas
DesignGroup designed the Franklin County Common Pleas Courthouse, Columbus, Ohio. Photo: Brad Feinknopf
An aquatics center on a wetlands site, and a university student services building received top marks from the AIA Columbus 2012 design awards program. Other winning projects include a new-built courthouse, vetrenary office, and two adaptive reuse arts buildings – a city arts facility in a former school building and a design school in a renovated auto dealership.
Highlands Park Family Aquatic Center, Westerville, Ohio
Photo: Matt Carbone
Instead of following a traditional municipal pool design approach, the design team sought to blend the project with the surrounding wetlands. In order to minimize the project's impact on the existing natural habitat, a rainwater collection system was installed using green roofs, rain gardens, retention ponds, bioswales, and pervious concrete.
The pierresvives building, in Montpellier, France, is the new home of three institutions for the department de l'Herault: the archive, the library, and the sports office. Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the four-story building is clad in concrete and glass, with horizontal gold-colored fins highlighting portions of the glazing.
The 35,000-square-meter (376,000-square-foot) building is clearly perceived from a distance as a single structure, and from close up, three parts can be discerned in the facade. Dynamic ribbons of glazing, detailed with Hadid's iconic branching-lines motif, serve to separate portions of the facade, which is predominantly finished in concrete. This glazing is expressive of major circulation elements, including corridors and atriums, and plays some role in suggesting boundaries between the three major pieces.
An upper-floor lobby inside the pierresvives building, near the auditorium volume. Photo: Iwan Baan
Hadid uses the metaphor of a tree laying on its side to describe how the facade expresses the building's programmatic disposition, and this is where the branching lines in the glazing help to reinforce the comparison.
Safdie Architects has designed the new home of the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music in Melbourne, Australia. Image: Courtesy Safdie Architects
Safdie Architects has revealed its design for a new Music Conservatorium building at Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia. The four-story building, home to the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, will include a 500-seat recital hall, a multipurpose hall, amphitheater, a recording studio, 40 individual practice rooms, a jazz club with cafe and restaurant services, and music department offices and support spaces.
Composed of glass, precast concrete, and stainless steel, Moshe Safdie's design for the building is composed of two major building elements. The Conservatorium's more staid, rectangular portion, with a skylit central atrium, contains the building's office and classroom spaces. The second component is a large performance wing that contains the recital hall. This wing splits, culminating in two performance spaces whose end walls are a series of stepped, curved-shell light scoops that will wash diffuse daylight into the rooms.
Two-minute virtual walkthrough of the Music Conservatorium. Video: Courtesy Monash University
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