Architectural Desserts: Coolhaus Expands with Bricks & Mortar
(Andrew Echevarria)
Everybody’s favorite ice cream sandwich comes from the Coolhaus ice cream truck, where you can stuff your face with cleverly-named creations like Mies Vanilla Roe and ponder how Rem Koolhaas’ name ever got made into a dessert brand. Now Coolhaus’ owners, architects Freya Estreller and Natasha Case, who are opening Coolhaus trucks across the country and have even helped design a dog treat truck, have set up a permanent store in Culver City. The storefront abstractly references their trucks, from corrugated rubber that wraps around the service area to a windshield/menu to chrome detailing throughout. If you’re really ambitious you can buy make-at-home Coolhaus kits including hand-packaged dough and pints of ice cream, but you probably won’t be able to wait that long.
Gensler’s New Los Angeles Digs Filled With Energy
Inside the atrium at Gensler's new office. (Ryan Gobuty)
With all the news coming out of Gensler lately we’ve officially declared November Gensler Month. The latest is the firm’s new offices inside the Jewel Box building in Downtown LA, a glassy former bank branch located between huge towers at City National Plaza.
Metal In Bloom at M&A
Tomorrow LA gallery Materials and Applications will open the installation “Bloom,” a twisted sculpture (video of its installation above) whose metallic surface reacts to changes in temperature and sunlight. When the metal is cool, the surface looks like a solid object, but once heated the overlapping bi-metal panels (for you non techies, that’s panels made of two different types of metal pressed together) adjust and fan out to allow for air flow and increased shade. The best part is that if you’re lucky you can actually see, and hear, this change taking place. The structure, which rests on a steel frame in M&A’s courtyard, was designed by Doris Sung and Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter with Matthew Melnyk. The opening will take place from noon to five on Saturday.
© Sam Lubell
Wings Sprouting Again in San Diego
Tucker Sadler & Associates
It looks like wings are hot in San Diego (and apparently LA, too). Recently we reported that Zaha Hadid was building a wing-like house in La Jolla, and now we learn via the San Diego Union-Tribune that the Midway aircraft carrier museum has proposed “Wings of Freedom,” a 500-foot-tall sculpture consisting of two wings (they’ve also been described as sails, a tribute to maritime activity on San Diego Bay) on the south end of the city’s Navy Pier. The structures, designed by Tucker Sadler & Associates, would be made of titanium shaped around a steel frame.
A Winged Stadium for Los Angeles?
Courtesy Gensler
Yesterday, Gensler unveiled its newest plans for Farmers Field, Downtown LA’s proposed football stadium, which, of course, is still awaiting a team to play in it (as are several other proposed stadiums in California). The biggest changes to the design involve the roof, which will now have large projecting wings (likely made of ETFE, said one Gensler architect). The roof will no longer be retractable, but “deployable,” meaning the roof can be taken off, but not instantaneously, which will bring the structure’s cost down significantly, Gensler pointed out. The new roof design, which will open up views to the city, was likened to “shoulder pads” by Curbed LA, perhaps a fitting design for a football stadium?
So that the stadium doesn’t dwarf the rest of the adjacent LA Live, it will be partially sunken into the ground, noted Curbed. Meanwhile two levels of stadium meeting and suite space will connect directly to the new convention center that developer AEG is also planning for the site. AEG hopes to have the stadium ready by the 2016 football season.
Bay Bridge Bungle
Construction on the new Bay Bridge (courtesy Bay Bridge 360)
You may have heard that the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is being replaced. (Technically the west span is being retrofitted and the east span is being replaced.) But the $6.3 billion project, which has been underway since 2002, has hit a snag: We learn via the Sacramento Bee that the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has fired two employees after a Bee investigation showed that the technician responsible for testing the new bridge foundation’s structural integrity falsified and fabricated test results on other projects. The two fired were: Duane Wiles,who tested foundations for bridges and other freeway structures and Brian Liebich, who supervised Wiles as chief of the agency’s Foundation Testing Branch. The Bee‘s investigation examined about 50,000 internal Caltrans reports and test data documents and reported that Caltrans officials knew about the problems for years, but never conducted a serious investigation. Oops. The new bridge is expected to open to the public by 2013. Hopefully.
A rendering of the New Bay Bridge's self-anchored suspension span. (Bay Bridge 360)
Bye Bye, Behnisch Architekten in Los Angeles
Behnisch's LA office designed the Park Street Clinical Lab Building in New Haven (Roland Halbe)
Just when we were getting used to Behnisch Architekten having an office in Venice we learn that leader Christof Jantzen is leaving and the office is closing. Stuttgart-based Behnisch opened the outpost back in 1999 and the location has worked on projects ranging from a lab at Yale, student housing at UC Berkeley, and an upcoming parking garage in Santa Monica. Now Behnisch’s only U.S. office is in Boston.
“It’s an evolution,” described Jantzen. “We had a successful story together.”
Here comes the good news: Jantzen is starting his own firm, Christof Jantzen Architecture, just down the street, and he hopes to take some of Behnisch’s eight Los Angeles employees with him. Jantzen described the venture as on the “smaller scale” to begin but noted, “we’ll see how it develops.” The web site isn’t yet live, but it will be www.cjantzen.com.
Big Architecture Weekend in Los Angeles
Check out "California Design 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way"
Every once in a while forces converge and we get an epic architecture weekend. One of those weekends is happening now. Here are some of the events going on in LA this weekend:
1.) Hollywood Wilshire Boulevard Focus Weekend, featuring free admission at the A+D Museum, Hammer Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum, MAK Center, Fowler Museum along Wilshire Boulevard as well as events at all the institutions. All revolve around the Getty’s epic Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions. These include: A discussion called The Legacy of the California Design Exhibitions at LACMA; a talk with Deborah Sussman about Eames Designs at A+D; a panel about Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement at the Fowler, a discussion about Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960 – 1980 at the Hammer; and a about Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design at the MAK Center.
2.) Launch of the exhibition, Architecture—A Woman’s Profession at WUHO Hollywood and a Saturday panel discussion at the MAK Center, moderated by AN‘s Sam Lubell and featuring author Tanja Kullack as well as Barbara Bestor, Monica Ponce de Leon, Dagmar Richter, and Ingalill Whlroos-Ritter.
3.) Inglewood Open Studios, featuring visits to the studios of more than 30 artists (and a few architects) in this emerging arts district, but showing off great arts spaces like the 32,400 square foot Beacon Arts Building.
LA Union Station Shortlist Announced & The Notables That Missed The Cut
LA's Union Station. (Martin Schall)
It’s official: the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (METRO) has revealed the shortlist for its Union Station Master Plan RFIQ (Request For Information & Qualifications), which seeks a team to oversee the redevelopment of 42 acres of land and up to six million square feet of entitlements around the station. “In addition to creating a model for Transit Oriented Development in the region, it is now important that the property be planned with an eye to its role as the center of regional transportation,” said METRO in an official document released by its executive management committee.
Shortlisted teams include: EE&K, a Perkins Eastman Company; Gruen Associates/ Grimshaw Architects; IBI Group/ Foster + Partners; Moore Ruble Yudell and TEN Arquitectos; NBBJ/Ingenhoven Architects; and Renzo Piano Building Workshop/ Parsons Transportation Group.
An impressive list, but perhaps even more notable are those that didn’t make the cut.
UCSB Names Dream Team For New Student Housing Complex
Aerial view of the UCSB campus
Why can’t every school be like the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB)? First it’s located on a lush, sun-soaked site overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And then this: the school just named a team led by SOM and including Daly Genik, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, Kieran Timberlake and WRNS Studios to design the San Joaquin Apartments, a new student housing complex. The project will include two apartment buildings housing a total of 1,000 students; a 600 car mixed-use parking structure; a new dining commons and a renovated 78,000 square foot neighborhood center. Other big names on the shortlist had included Brooks+Scarpa, Machado and Silvetti, AC Martin, Stanley Saitowitz, Lake Flato, Moore Ruble Yudell, Frederick Fisher and Partners, and several more. Stay tuned for info and images in the coming months.
Google Moves Into Gehry’s Binoculars Building
(©Darrell G)
In an effort to consolidate its efforts in LA Google has leased 100,000 square feet of office space in three buildings in Venice, including space inside Frank Gehry’s Chiat/Day Building, a.k.a. the Binoculars Building. Why is it called that? Because one entryway is shaped like a gigantic pair of binoculars, of course. Finished in 1991 on Main Street, the space is probably the most famous of Gehry’s forays into…shiver… Post Modernism. The binoculars themselves were designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. The new Venice Googleplex will hold many more employees than its present collection of buildings in Santa Monica, which contain about 300. Earlier this week Google announced that it would be adding 6,000 total employees this year. Recession? What recession? Not in Google’s world.
Denari Cleans Up At AIA/LA Awards
HL23 (courtesy HL23.com)
Without a doubt the big winner at Wednesday’s AIA/LA Design Awards, held in the shadow of Cesar Pelli’s almost-done Red Building at the Pacific Design Center, was Neil Denari. In an unprecedented display of dominance his firm‘s No Mass House took home Best in Show for unbuilt work (Next LA Awards), his firm’s HL23 Residential Tower in New York took home Best in Show for built work (Design Awards) and then Denari won the AIA/LA Gold Medal. Now that’s a good night. (By the way, we thought Best In Show was reserved for dog shows, but that’s besides the point…) In accepting the medal Denari, who was born in Texas, talked about being inspired not only by the light and sunshine of California, but also by its darkness, a tension that’s palpable in his work. To check out more of the design awards winners check out the AIA/LA’s new app on iTunes. And to check out the new Red Building you’ll have to wait until it’s finished early next year.
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