The International House on University of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus

My immediate reaction to this was WOW because it seems to pop off the page, but upon closer review it initial luster was scummed by it massing.  It sort of resembles a Zamboni and I can’t get that image out of my head.  Not good.

Via DailyDose

The International House on University of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus by Make Architects, 2008. For the first phase of the campus expansion project, Make realized two other buildings, the Amenities Building and the Sir Colin Campbell Building.

DailyDose Blog

Sunset Cabin in Canada by Taylor Smyth Architects

Like I said yesterday…The residential projects featured on the design and architecture blogs are fantastic and abundant.  Take a look at this cabin designed by Ontario, Canada firm Taylor Smith Architects.  And when your done visit their website for more interesting projects.

The client has a house on the shores of Lake Simcoe in Southern Ontario.  TSA was hired to build a second smaller structure down the hill from the main house to accommodate a more peaceful alternative to the main house as well as another vista for the sunsets.  The 275 square feet one room cabin features a green roof, wood-burning stove, and horizontal cedar slats with openings that let in light.

Awesome cabin right.  I like to envision myself living in the houses (I’m sure you do too) – it motivates me to search for new ones.

Photos via Design Milk

For more projects visit Taylor Smith Architects website.

SkyCottage Residence by archimania located in Memphis, TN

Just when I think I’ve seen the coolest house on the planet something upstages it.  I found this project today designed by archimania on the Karmatrendz Blog.  Here’s a taste.

From Karmatrendz Blog

SkyCottage is a progressive home whose design is informed by the view of the Mississippi River, embraces the challenges of a tight site, and enhances the community fabric of one of the earliest examples of New Urbanism.

Concept
This three-story residence occupies a tiny, pie-shaped corner lot with a view of the Mississippi River. The parti demonstrates an interest in abiding by the rules set forth in the neighborhood, yet also bending them as a response to the River. The result is the composition of two architectural volumes. A white-brick cube aligns itself with the established streetscape of rowhouses, and an elevated alloy-coated steel box resists this grid by transversing the cube in both directions, responding directly to the River view.

For much more via Karmatrendz Blog

BIG to Design Shenzhen International Energy Mansion

Amid the real estate and construction doldrums here in the US, it’s nice to see that exciting buildings are still being planned in other countries.

From RADDblog:

Copenhagen-based BIG, in collaboration with ARUP and Transsolar, was awarded the first prize in the international competition to design Shenzhen International Energy Mansion, the regional headquarters for the Shenzhen Energy Company.

 Located in the center of Shenzhen, China the 96,000 square meter project will be integrated with the surrounding environment and designed to withstand the tropical climate of the city. BIG’s winning proposal was selected by the jury experts from Shenzhen Municipal Planning Bureau chaired by Alejandro Zaera-Polo and client representatives.

 The headquarters rises 200 meters creating a new landmark visible from the highway in the cultural, political and business center of Shenzhen. BIG envisions combining a practical and efficient floor plan layout with a sustainable façade that both, passively and actively reduce the energy consumption of the building. The façade is conceived as a folded skin that shades the office complex from direct sunlight and integrates solar thermal panels, reducing the overall energy consumption of the building.

BIG explaining the project:

Modern Vernacular

The tropical climate of Shenzhen calls for a new approach to designing office buildings. How can we create comfortable working spaces in a tropical climate while reducing our energy consumption? The construction principle of the typical modern office tower is replicated all over the world. It has the advantage of a practical floor plan, and economical structural system.  But in tropical conditions the glazed curtain wall facades normally result in high energy consumption for air conditioning and poor views through coated windows. To achieve a comfortable working environment in these conditions an office building would especially need two things: Shading from direct exposure to sunlight, and dehumidification of interior air.

We are proposing a tower based on an efficient and well-proven floor plan, enclosed in a skin specifically modified and optimized for the local climate. We propose to enhance the sustainable performance of the building drastically by only focusing on its envelope, the facade.

Mill House by Wingardhs

I came accross this beautiful house on the Karmatrendz Blog.  If you like what you see click over there to see more pics and read the post.

Charles Gwathmey, Architect of the Modernist School, Is Dead at 71

As the owner of Consulting For Architects, I have had the opportunity and privilege to work with the architecture firm, Gwathmey Siegel from the mid nineties to present as a provider of staffing services.  Mr. Gwathmey’s passing is a loss for his family, friends, firm and the profession and I hope to bring together some of the things others have said about him recently in regards to his passing.

From the New York Times:

Charles Gwathmey, part of a generation of architects who put their own aesthetic stamp on the “high Modernist” style, died on August 3. He was known both for residential work — he built living spaces for Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jerry Seinfeld — and sometimes controversial public buildings.

In the New Yorker Magazine architecture critic Paul Goldberger said:

Postscript: Charles Gwathmey

In 1965, Charles Gwathmey, three years out of the Yale School of Architecture, designed a house and studio for his parents, the artists Rosalie and Robert Gwathmey, on Bluff Road in Amagansett, on eastern Long Island. Gwathmey was twenty-eight, an age when most architects are toiling away in large corporate offices and hoping for the chance to renovate a friend’s kitchen. When Gwathmey’s project, a pair of crisp, sharply angled structures covered in cedar siding, was finished, a year later, it became one of the most influential houses of the decade: a composition of cubes, cylinders, and triangles, it was a study in inventive modernist geometries. It cost somewhere around thirty-five thousand dollars, and it inspired a generation of beach houses in the Hamptons and elsewhere.

Architectural careers generally develop slowly, which made Gwathmey’s particularly unusual, the architectural equivalent of the young writer who comes out of nowhere and produces a brilliant first novel. In some ways, Gwathmey was the architecture world’s Norman Mailer, with the same bravado, the same raw talent, and the same career-long anxiety about whether he could continue to equal his spectacular first performance. Over the years, Gwathmey’s work became more complex than the house and studio in Amagansett, and vastly more elaborate. The cabinetry in any Gwathmey kitchen was certain to cost several times as much as his parents’ entire house.

A few years after the house in Amagansett was finished, Gwathmey and his architectural partner since 1968, Robert Siegel, designed an apartment at the El Dorado, on Central Park West, for Faye Dunaway, and over time they became the architects of choice for clients in the entertainment industry who were sophisticated enough to want something other than an interior decorator’s French Provincial. The firm of Gwathmey Siegel designed modernist houses and apartments for David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, Jerry Seinfeld, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ron Meyer, and Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, not to mention grandiose modernist villas for Michael Dell, the computer maker, and Mitchell Rales, a Washington, D.C., industrialist, for whom Gwathmey also designed a private museum, Glenstone.

By the time the large villa that Gwathmey had designed in East Hampton for François de Menil, now owned by Larry Gagosian, was completed, in 1983, it was clear that Gwathmey had become not the avant-garde architect that his early success had promised but something closer to a modernist Stanford White or John Russell Pope. Gwathmey’s modernism, by then, had become not so different from what a Georgian manse was in the nineteen-twenties: a symbol of refinement and sophistication more than of cutting-edge sensibility. Maybe it didn’t matter: after all, his houses were impeccably designed and exquisitely crafted, and his clients were not just any rich people but ones who knew the difference between a Gwathmey house and someone else’s.

Still, Gwathmey hated to be thought conservative, and the unspoken theme of his career was the struggle between his desire to continue to make buildings that were new and different and his passion for a kind of classic modernism, which as time went on seemed ever more to be a part of history. He never copied anything literally, and he couldn’t bear to think of himself as one of those architects who replicate the past. He kept trying, over and over, to find new ways to rearrange the basic geometric shapes he loved so much—he was earnest, almost innocent, in his passion for pure architectural form—and his late work, if not dazzling in the way that his parents’ house was, had a striking richness to it. He tried new surfaces, he tried new materials, he tried new shapes, but there was always the same kind of sleek, crisp formality to his work. If there is such a thing as blunt intricacy, Gwathmey’s architecture has it.

He was at his best at small scale, which made him the opposite of almost every other major architect of our time. He did a few towers, none of which were great, and several institutional buildings, few of which equalled his best houses. (He was almost alone among first-class architects in making houses a central part of his practice, even when he had plenty of bigger, more lucrative projects.) Toward the end of his career, he poured his heart and soul into a non-residential commission he cherished, the restoration and expansion of the Art and Architecture Building at Yale, by his teacher Paul Rudolph. The Rudolph building is an impossibly difficult neo-Brutalist masterpiece from 1963, and Gwathmey made it look better than it has in forty years. His addition is smart and well planned on the inside, and too complex and overwrought on the outside. It tells you all you need to know about its architect, who couldn’t bring himself to sit quietly beside his mentor. Gwathmey paid loving homage to Rudolph in the restoration, and then he wanted to get into the ring with him. I don’t think he was trying to show his teacher up. He just worried about what it would look like if he didn’t assert himself. He never wanted anyone to think that he didn’t have the right stuff.

More from the New York Times:

While in his 20s Mr. Gwathmey became a sensation by building a house for his parents on the East End of Long Island. The house, completed in 1966, was consistently described as one of the most influential buildings of the modern era. Two years later he and Robert Siegel founded Gwathmey Siegel & Associates.

Perhaps the firm’s best known work was its addition to Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side, the rectangular tower beside the building’s famous spiral.

Mr. Gwathmey’s Astor Place condominium tower drew criticism from those who said it was insufficiently deferential to its surroundings.

Mr. Gwathmey in 1976, outside of Whig Hall at Princeton University. His renovation of the building was known as one of his more daring projects.

The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

Mr. Gwathmey created a proposal for the World Trade Center site, along with Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman and Steven Holl.

Mr. Gwathmey in his apartment in Manhattan.

Via New Yorker Magazine and NYT

Photos of the Remota Hotel in Patagonia, Torres del Paine, Puerto Natales-Chile by Germán del Sol

This is a special building.  I’ll let the photo’s speak for themselves…

Check out the rest of the photos courtesy of the Daily Dose blog.

NYC Firms and Unions Will Cut Costs To Boost AEC Work

The following deal was announced on May 29th in NYC.  Two months have passed by and there has been no quantifiable increase in announcements of the projects mention herein nor any recently issued Building Permits.  The idea for this deal and subsequent cost cutting agreements are quite an achievement and should begin to payoff for the local economy and AEC professionals.  I will continue to monitor the situation for you.

Here’s the announcement from New York Construction News:

In an effort to jump start building projects in New York City and put idle union construction workers back on the job, the leaders of more than 40 different building trades and union employer groups announced on May 29 what they termed a “historic compact” to cut wages of both labor and management and end expensive work rules. Proponents claim the citywide project-labor agreement will cut costs by as much as 21% on the first 12 high-rise and other commercial projects that it covers, representing $2 billion of construction and 10,000 jobs. But some are less enthusiastic about the cost savings, some unions are declining to participate and some developers may have to rethink profit margins in a changed city economy.

The agreement was reached between the Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC) of Greater New York, which represents 100,000 union workers and the Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA), which includes 28 contractor groups and 1,700 union firms. The groups have been negotiating since last October, said Louis J. Coletti, BTEA president. “Contractors would have liked more, unions less, but we’re trying to save jobs in New York City,” he says.

Building trades agreed to no strikes or work stoppages on projects included under the pact, as well as standard workdays and other work rule changes and enforcement. Contractors agreed to cut wages and benefits for management employees, reduce profit margins and strive for “improved project management and efficiency,” among other changes.

Several unions, which were not specified, have also agreed to one-year wage freezes and benefit cuts, according to BTEA. The pact is set to generate project cost reductions averaging 16% to 21%, based on a study conducted for BTEA by Hill International Inc., a Marlton, N.J., project and risk management firm. That figure does not include union wage-freeze cost savings, says the group.

“We have two problems in New York: the financial crisis and creeping nonunionism. This will help both,” said John A. Cavanagh, a former building contractor executive and chairman emeritus of the Contractors’ Association of Greater New York, a BTEA member group. He credited BCTC President Gary LaBarbera, a former teamsters’ union official. “Everyone had to do what they didn’t want to do, especially on the union side.”

The pact won praise from New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R). “Labor and management are not content merely to wait for a national rebound,” he said on May 29.“Their agreement is an important step to get stalled projects going again.”

But Stephen Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said, “It doesn’t go far enough.” He also says savings may be only between 3% and 8%, according to published reports. “We will be talking to our partners to bring costs down further,” he said.

But the pact press release coincided with the May 29 announcement by New York City-based Forest City Ratner Cos. that it plans to resume work on Beekman Tower, a planned 76-story mixed use project halted two months ago at the 37th floor. Reportedly set to be capped at 40 floors, the structure now will be built to its full planned height, says the developer, noting the new labor pact and cost reductions in materials and finishes. Kreisler Borg Florman is project contractor. Others among the first 12 projects that could restart include those being built by Bovis Lend Lease, Turner Construction, Tishman Construction, F.J. Sciame Co. and Plaza Construction. But Coletti acknowledged that not all may restart.

Even so, Coletti thinks the labor agreement is “more the end of the beginning,” noting that trades and employers are still discussing pact details and inclusion of new projects. The AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept. is set to review an additional 12 to 15 projects and the local labor-management committee will review up to nine more in the next week, he said.

One footnote, the city approved the master plan for the Coney Island Revitalization & Development Project yesterday.

The Bijlmer Park Theater in Amsterdam designed by Architect Paul de Ruiter

I came across a critique of this project on the Archicentral Blog, which is a good source of industry news and information.   The building is at once visually pleasing and interesting, but that is just the beginning.  As described in the text below, the architect pushes the envelope in so many meaningful and personal ways, qualifying this build as magnificent in my view.

It’s a long post, but here’s what Archicentral said:

In 2004, Paul de Ruiter was invited to compete in the selection of the architect who would design a cultural building in the southeast district of the city of Amsterdam. This cultural building was to be a multifunctional building for four users; a circus (Circus Elleboog), a theater (Krater Theater), the Youth Theater School and the Theater Workplace, all professional organizations in the field of talent development, cultural education, production and programming.

On the basis of a presentation of his vision, including his proposal to work with a dynamic program of requirements, Paul de Ruiter’s architectural bureau was selected by the city of Amsterdam, southeast district, to design the cultural building.

DYNAMIC PROGRAM OF REQUIREMENTS

How can you ensure that a design process proceeds efficiently, decisively and harmoniously when time is limited, but at the same time you must take into account the divergent requirements and interests of four different users? Paul de Ruiter developed a dynamic program of requirements – a flexible design process with a plan that was not already drawn up in detail.

To identify the specific wishes of all the users and integrate them into the design and to give the users a good idea of the architectural possibilities, several workshops were held during the design stage. During these workshops, plans were made with the users and the customer, and these were later reviewed at regular intervals. This finally yielded a design that satisfied the requirements of all the parties involved.

WORKSHOPS

The design process started with a study of the program for the cultural building. Paul de Ruiter’s architectural bureau built various scale models that gave an indication of the different options for form and layout. With these models on the table, it was possible to hold brainstorming sessions during the workshops on what the building should look like and what functions it needed to fulfill. In view of the location of the cultural building in a park, a recognizable, pavilion-like building was chosen with a layout that could be adapted to the various requirements of the users.

MEETING PLACE

The site of the cultural building is specified in the urban development plan. The building is located in the heart of the Bijlmer neighborhood at the edge of the Bijlmer park, beside the lake. It is public and accessible, and its position beside the water gives extra dynamism to this image due to the reflections in the water. To make it possible for performances to be held on the water as well, for example on large floating platforms, steps that can be used for seating have been placed at the water’s edge. When no performances are scheduled, the steps function as a meeting place, where cultures, generations and artistic disciplines meet each other.

DYNAMICS

The cultural building consists of an ellipse shape, with the upper two floors slightly displaced in relation to the ground floor. This provides a covered entrance area located in a logical position in the urban development plan’s routing.

The elliptical shape of the building did mean that it was necessary to search for a financially viable way of reproducing this rounded shape in the partially glass façade. The solution was found in a combination of wooden slats and vertical aluminum strips placed against the steel and glass sections of the facade. This means that the intersection points of the segmented façade are not visible and the building has a rounded, dynamic and somewhat abstract appearance that changes continually as you walk around it.

RECOGNIZABLE DESIGN

During the day, the striking shape of the cultural building makes it clearly recognizable, while it is conspicuous in the evening because of its color, which can be altered to fit the occasion. This is made possible by the use of LED lighting. A line of light is fitted behind the steal façade in the façade, shining downwards. Because this light shines against the steel façade and the wooden slats, the building acquires an appearance of transparency, as if the light is coming from inside the building. The illumination of the building increases the level of safety and makes the cultural building clearly visible from the urban surroundings.

DAYLIGHT

One requirement that was specifically identified during the workshops was the need for daylight in the main auditorium. Lessons and rehearsals would take place here during the day, and a good level of daylight access is very important for the atmosphere and sense of orientation.

In the theaters that were visited for the workshops, the users often commented on the lack of daylight, which although understandably kept out deliberately for performances, is still very desirable during the day. For this reason, a glass surround was created on the first floor all around the main auditorium. This solution not only allows a maximum capture of light, it also makes it possible for parents and others who may be interested to watch lessons and rehearsals unobtrusively. These windows can be darkened to keep out the light when performances are held.

FLEXIBILITY

During the workshops, the most time, relatively speaking, was spent on identifying the users’ wishes in relation to the main auditorium. Circus Elleboog, for example, needed a space with a clear height of 7 meters for acrobatic, trapeze and juggling acts, while the preference of the other partners was for a theater-style auditorium. A solution was found by designing a rectangular auditorium with two ear-shaped appendages beside the performing area – a circus/theater auditorium with between 162 and 277 seats. These two rounded areas on the long sides of the main auditorium make it possible to use this in a range of circus configurations and theater configurations, by making use of versatile wings and movable seating areas.

MULTIFUNCTIONAL

In addition to the main auditorium, the cultural building has a spacious foyer, rehearsal rooms, three studios, storage rooms, dressing rooms, a sewing room, meeting facilities and offices. The building accommodates the four user groups in the dance class of the Amsterdam School of Arts. For all these users the three stories are arranged. The main auditorium extends to the height of all three stories and one of the studios is two stories high.

On the top story, the bridges for the operation of lighting and set management are integrated into the concrete floor. This is a practical and inexpensive solution that makes the bridges safe and easily accessible.

INSPIRATION

The design process for the cultural building was full of creativity. This was not just due to the unusual approach, but was also and primarily a result of the way the workshops were organized. Each workshop was held in a different, unconventional theater, selected each time by one of the users. During a guided tour preceding the workshop, the architect, users and customers were able to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of that particular theater, and inspiration was gathered for the brainstorming session. This then took place on stage, and on more than one occasion, a performance was given to test the size, functionality and acoustics of the space. There was no question of meeting agendas and minutes; the idea was to give creativity free rein. At most, a list of points was put together at the end of the workshop to act as a basis for the following session. This was an extremely flexible, practically-oriented approach, which resulted in an attractive and multifunctional design.

INTERACTION

As a result of the ample admission of light and the flexible layout, the cultural building offers maximum scope for freedom and creativity. It radiates openness. The building therefore plays an important role in facilitating the development of talent, particularly in children and young people. The regular tenants (Circus Elleboog, the Youth theater school, the theater workplace and Krater Theater) will work together in this building, creating an enormous level of synergy, a melting pot of cultures. A place for debates inspired by the diversity of the southeast district of the city of Amsterdam. To stimulate this interaction even further, the outer wall of the auditorium, most of which runs through the foyer, will be painted with blackboard paint, and chalks will be available everywhere. Visitors, particularly children, will then be free to leave their message, comment or greeting on the wall. The black outer wall of the auditorium also makes the layout of the theater clear and facilitates the feeling of orientation. It is obvious that this is the dynamic heart of the cultural building.

The Bijlmer Park theater is made possible with help from the EU.

Further information and more pictures: www.paulderuiter.nl.