Populous’ Livestrong Sporting Park: Duo-Gard
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Designers created the largest polycarbonate stadium canopy in North America (Duo-Gard/Alistair Tutton)
Custom canopy scores big at Kansas City’s new soccer stadium.
Kansas City’s Livestrong Sporting Park opened in June as the city’s first soccer-centric stadium and the new home of the Sporting Kansas City, the soccer team formerly known as the Kansas City Wizards. To make the arena both athlete- and fan-friendly, architect Populous envisioned a soaring roof canopy designed to evoke the arc of a soccer ball flying across the field. The team considered building the canopy with ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) pillows, but desired a look more in line with glass panels. The weight of glass would have significantly increased the amount of steel substructure, in turn raising the canopy’s price. Working with Michigan-based architectural canopy design, engineering, and fabrication company Duo-Gard, the team began instead to develop a high-performance polycarbonate glazing system that minimized weight and maximized light transmission onto the field.
From Avatar to Architects: New SpeedTree vegetation modeler launched today
A scene from Avatar created with SpeedTree (Industrial Light & Magic)
Since Avatar’s release in 2009 architects have coveted the lush vegetation of the habitable moon Pandora for their own digital models, and today their calls have been answered. Interactive Data Visualization, the South Carolina-based developer of SpeedTree Cinema and SpeedTree for Games—used to create Avatar’s abundant flora as well as landscaping in your kids’ favorite video games—has released a new architect-friendly format.
UrbanSHED Design Competition Prototype
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The Urban Umbrella is an alternative to traditional construction sheds (DOB)
A prototype of the city’s alternative to unsightly construction sheds is unveiled.
Two years after the NYC Department of Buildings and AIA New York launched the UrbanSHED competition to find a new sidewalk shed design that would beautify city streets, a prototype of the winning proposal has been unveiled. Called Urban Umbrella, the shed structure was developed by competition winner Young-Hwan Choi with architect Andrés Cortés and engineer Sarrah Khan of New York-based Agencie Group. Brooklyn-based architecture and fabrication firm Caliper Studio was hired late last year to detail and build the much-anticipated design, which the DOB and architecture, construction, and real estate backers hope will eventually replace unsightly sidewalk scaffolding at many of the city’s construction sites.
ACADIA Design and Fabrication Competition Winners Announced
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The RECIP modular furniture system designed by students of the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design
Three winning designs to be fabricated by Brooklyn-based Flatcut.
This October, winners of the ACADIA (Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture) design and fabrication competition will show off their parametric chops as part of the organization’s annual conference, now in its 30th year. Announced last week, winners were chosen from 15 finalists by a jury that included Tod Williams of TWBTA, Chris Sharples of SHoP Architects, Tom Wiscombe of Emergent, Dror Benshetrit of Studio Dror, and Thomas Christoffersen of BIG. The competition sought designs in three categories—furniture, partitions, and lighting—and entrants were encouraged to propose hybrid material assemblies that minimized waste and maximized material performance. Tomer Ben-Gal, founder of Brooklyn-based fabrication studio and competition co-sponsor Flatcut, served as technical advisor. Flatcut will fabricate the winning designs in its 100,000-square-foot Passaic, New Jersey, machine shop before they are sent to the conference, held at the University of Calgary, where they will be displayed from October 11-16.
OTD’s 45 Park Lane Facade Panels: Situ Studio with LuminOre
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45 Park Lane
Panels constructed with composite metal technology decorate facade of a new London hotel.
The Dorchester Collection’s 45 Park Lane hotel will soon open to guests in London’s Mayfair district following a renovation of the building led by The Office of Thierry Despont. The architect has transformed the building’s exterior with metal fins spanning the width of seven of nine floors, emphasizing the hotel’s curved shape and shielding its guest spaces from sun. All new or highly renovated buildings in the district must include a public artwork component, and Despont considered a series of repoussé copper panels on the hotel’s west side, which faces Hyde Park. Intrigued by Brooklyn-based Situ Studio’s digital modeling capabilities, he asked the firm to develop a gradient overlay for the panels in Photoshop, then translate it into Rhino. But once the design was put out to bid the cost of creating the panels proved prohibitive, so the team went back to the drawing board to explore other options.
Philip Johnson’s Peace Chapel: Radius Track
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The Interfaith Peace Chapel (Cunningham Architects)
Realizing the architect’s final project using advanced fabrication techniques Johnson may have never known.
Philip Johnson completed the design for the Interfaith Peace Chapel in Dallas just before his death in 2005. Working with Johnson’s firm Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects and architect of record Cunningham Architects, the Cathedral of Hope, United Church of Christ and non-profit social advocacy group Hope for Peace & Justice moved forward with the building. Completed late last year, the chapel is a monument to the congregation’s pluralistic worldview and acceptance of all religions. Its smooth, curving walls are central to Johnson’s goal of creating a cave-like sanctuary that is far removed from the site’s banal location near the runways of Dallas Love Field Airport. The project team hired cold-formed steel framing fabricator Radius Track to help realize the design.
New York’s Standard Oil Building Gets New Life
26 Broadway in Lower Manhattan
The landmarked Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway continues to undergo its transformation from the oil giant’s Carrère and Hastings-designed New York headquarters into a bustling school building. Last week, AN got a sneak peek at the third academic institution to be completed there, a 104,000-square-foot space occupying the building’s first, mezzanine, and second levels. It will add 677 high school seats to the Broadway Education Campus, which currently includes The Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women (on the 4th and 5th floors) and Lower Manhattan Community Middle School (on the 6th and 7th floors).
All three schools have been designed by John Ciardullo Associates Architects, who have worked extensively with the SCA over the past several decades. Perhaps that relationship is why Ciardullo was allowed to have a bit of fun with the campus.
Radii’s WTC Marketing Suite
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Jean-Pierre Mutti/Radii
An abstract vision of the site’s future is also a high-tech marketing display.
As work at the World Trade Center site progresses steadily, a matryoshka-like replica of it has taken shape on the 10th floor of 7 World Trade. With a view of the construction below, the Silverstein Properties marketing suite occupies the same floor as the WTC architects’ annex offices, providing a tableau of the working architects as well as the completed site to prospective tenants of towers Two, Three, and Four. Scaled architecture studio Radii Inc. have been designing models of the site since its earliest phases, so Silverstein’s senior VP of marketing and communications approached Radii partners Ed Wood and Leszek Stefanski with his conceptual ideas for the diorama. “He wanted it to be big,” said Wood. “Our first questions was, ‘What are the ceiling heights?’”
Seeyond’s Parametric Building System
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A cable-suspended ceiling cloud (Seeyond)
Self-supporting tessellations can take almost any form.
“People are pretty burned out on the office cubicle and panel systems,” said Nat Porter, general manager of Seeyond Architectural Solutions. The company, which launched this month, aims to give architects an alternative to standard space dividers with its new user-controlled parametric design and digital fabrication building system. Seeyond’s history goes back ten years, to sculptor and designer Jonas Hauptman’s experimentations with folded materials. For a class he was teaching, he turned for materials to Liberty Diversified International (LDI), whose roots are in the corrugated fiberboard industry. Hauptman teamed up with Paul James, a mathematician, economist, and industrial designer already working with LDI (now Seeyond’s parent company). They presented their business proposal in 2009 and the new fabrication system was born.
Continue reading after the jump.
Shimoda Design’s Steelcase Showroom: Formglas
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Faceted column covers at Steelcase's Merchandise Mart showroom (Shimoda Design)
Molded gypsum shapes a Chicago Merchandise Mart space.
The Steelcase Worklife Center is one of the Chicago Merchandise Mart’s largest showrooms, spanning 45,000 square feet and encompassing four areas displaying the furniture manufacturers’ various brands. The company hired Los Angeles-based architect Joey Shimoda, who also designed the Steelcase center in Santa Monica, to create interiors that would unify the showroom with the common corridor bisecting it. After reading about a project by molded gypsum, concrete, and fiberglass fabricator Formglas in a magazine, he called the company and was on a plane to its Toronto headquarters the next day to discuss a series of geometric architectural elements he envisioned for the space.
NeoCon Preview> Diamond Mesh by Vitra
(Courtesy Vitra)
Diamond Mesh
Vitra
Vitra’s new ID Chair Concept by Antonio Citterio will include a mesh backrest option called Diamond Mesh, a 3-D pleated textile that allows for the air circulation of a standard mesh seat but with the comfort of an upholstered chair. Backrests are available in several heights, with optional head or lumbar supports. A complementary Silk Mesh seat upholstery is also available.
Atlantic Wharf Rain Curtain: Bluworld
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Water reservoirs are suspended from the atrium roof (Bluworld)
An 80-foot waterfall highlights the atrium of a new mixed-use development in Boston.
Atlantic Wharf is one of the newest additions to Boston’s changing downtown waterfront area. Located on the edge of Fort Point Channel, the one million-square-foot mixed-use center incorporates a series of restored and renovated structures built there more than 100 years ago. Beneath a new 31-story office tower, an 80-foot-high glass atrium encloses the original 19th-century street grid, creating a grand entrance to the tower from Congress Street. As a nod to the site’s history and Boston Harbor views, the building’s translucent glass screen wall is designed with a canted top resembling a sail. Working with developer Boston Properties, architect Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc. envisioned another nod to the site’s maritime past in the atrium. Custom water feature design and fabrication company Bluworld was brought on board to create a feature that would span the height and width of the space.
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