League of Shadows Will Invade SCI-Arc
(Courtesy P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S)
We just got our first look at next year’s SCI-Arc graduation pavilion, League of Shadows, by Los Angeles-firm P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S. Whoah. The pavilion, which will seat 1,200 people, will be built in the SCI-Arc parking lot for graduation events in spring 2013. The three-fingered structure will be made up of multi-story, angled frames (ahem) patterned with dark, vaulted, and layered multi-colored fabric strips, with seams like sails. The pavilion’s significant height will provide long shadows (hence the project’s name) and its location on the south end of the SCI-Arc parking lot will make it a sign for the school. Entries from the four competing architects will be on display in the SCI-Arc Library Gallery from October 19 to December 2.
Docomomo Tours In Palm Springs (and across the country)
Palm Springs City Hall by Albert Frey (Docomomo/Darren Bradley)
If you’ve never seen Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House or Albert Frey’s Palm Springs City Hall, now is your chance. This weekend Docomomo is hosing Palm Springs architecture tours, which will show off some of the city’s most famous architecture. The tours, which also include visits to the homes of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Cary Grant, are part of Docomomo’s US Tour Day, which offers similar events across the country, in 22 states. These includes tours of the Farnsworth House in Illinois, Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal in New York, and buildings by Felix Candela in Houston.
A+D Showcases the Secret Life of Saarinen in New Exhibition
Saarinen’s TWA Terminal (Ezra Stoller)
LA’s A+D Architecture and Design Museum is presenting Eero Saarinen: A Reputation For Innovation, which opens tomorrow night. The show will highlight one of the world’s most heralded mid-century architects, who designed, among other things, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the TWA Terminal at JFK in New York, Dulles Airport in Washington D.C., and the Entenza House in Los Angeles. Saarinen was also a renowned product designer, and, unbeknownst to most, an employee for the OSS (the precursor to the CIA), where he learned many of his design techniques. The show will explore this under-documented phase of his career and bring to light a designer whose influence still resonates today. For instance, did you know that Cesar Pelli, Kevin Roche, and Robert Venturi were among the many who worked for Saarinen? Get tickets to the opening here.
Slideshow> A Promising Runner-Up for the Keelung Waterfront
Last week AN revealed Neil Denari’s winning scheme for the $140 million Keelung Harbor Service Project, a plan to redevelop the Taiwan city’s underexploited waterfront for arts, office, recreation, and industrial uses. Above and below is one of the impressive runners up, the scheme by P-A-R (Platform for Architecture + Research) and Sériès et Sériès along with local architect Ricky Liu Associates. The project consisted of a cargo building, a 20-story office complex, and a three-story cruise ship terminal, all connected via a sloping, faceted landscape.
LA Council Approves Farmers Field Stadium
Farmers Field’s North Facade (Gensler)
Almost two years after the idea was first floated, AEG and Gensler’s 72,000 seat, $1.2 billion stadium proposal was approved by LA City Council on Friday. The vote in favor of the project’s environmental impact report (EIR) clears the way for the developer to seek an NFL team and for Gensler’s steel-winged Farmers Field to move ahead. The stadium had experienced some controversy lately as news spread that AEG was putting itself up for sale. But that didn’t deter the council, which voted 12-0 to move ahead with the plan.
The stadium, and an adjacent convention center that was recently panned by an architectural commission, is being paid for privately, although funds are coming from $275 million in tax-exempt bonds. Another proposal by developer Ed Roski and architect Dan Meis, located in the City of Industry, is also trying to lure a team. Let the games begin.
Commission Slams AEG’s LA Convention Center Plans
The Convention Center is designed to bridge over LA’s Pico Boulevard (AEG, Populous)
LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “Vision Team,” a group of eight architects consulting on the city’s planned football stadium and convention center expansion have issued a damning report on the latter project, reports the LA Daily News. The center is being designed by Populous and developed by AEG. “This is not good city design,” Norman Millar, dean of Woodbury University School of Architecture, and a Vision Team member, told the Daily News this week. Among the team’s complaints, they worry about having visitors enter the new hall through a dark passage created by bridging the building over Pico Boulevard. The team also frets about possible fumes under the tunnel, the configuration of the center’s huge ballroom, and the amount of natural light that would enter the building. The Vision Team also includes Hitoshi Abe, chairman of Architecture & Urban Design at UCLA; Scott Johnson of Johnson Fain; Joseph Coriaty, a partner at Frederick Fisher and Partner; and Paul Danna, principal at SOM. The group has met at least three times. Villaraigosa’s spokesman Peter Sanders told the Daily News that the mayor knew about the Vision Team’s concerns. ”We believe we have the best plan given the constraints that exist,” Sanders wrote. The project’s EIR goes before LA City Council tomorrow. Read More
Maltzan’s Revamped Regen Projects Brings Class To Hollywood
(Christopher Norman)
On Friday AN visited Michael Maltzan‘s new art space, Regen Projects, on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. The gallery, founded by Stuart Regen and Shaun Caley Regen, moved to its current gritty location from West Hollywood, and showcases artists like Doug Aitken, Catherine Opie, Andrea Zittel, Dan Graham, and Anish Kapoor. From the outside, the 20,000 square foot project resembles its own urbanscape, with stacked and staggered white boxes taking on the appearance of abstracted buildings in a skyline. Inside, light glows warmly into the main gallery through a system that Maltzan created in which the light from a long rooftop skylight is split via a metallic divider into two separate scrim-covered wells.
Oyler Wu, Take 2
Oyler Wu’s torqued steel shells shelter guests at the SCI-Arc Graduation. (Scott Mayoral)
Last year we showcased Oyler Wu’s SCI-Arc graduation pavilion, a swooping steel, fabric, and rope construction that floated above the event like a billowing sail. For last week’s graduation the firm added a small addition while making significant improvements. The addition, which sat school directors and special guests, became a stage for diploma presentation. Made of a torqued steel shell fitted with twisting fabric (Wu calls it a three dimensional twist), the addition is no replication: it creates a simpler, more unified complement to the original, which involves a more complex web of fabric and roping. As for the original pavilion, they replaced its (disturbingly) dirty fabric with darker material and re-oriented the whole thing toward the school itself. Next year’s pavilion will be designed by Marcelo Spina. We can’t wait.
Parking Day is Coming!
Park(ing) Day Bogota (image courtesy deespacio)
Tomorrow cities around the world will celebrate Park(ing) Day . What started in 2005 when San Francisco firm ReBar converted a parking space in San Francisco into a temporary park has exploded into a global event. Last year 975 parks were built in 162 cities in 35 countries, up from 800 parks the year before. This year will be even bigger. To get you excited here are some pictures of our favorite temporary parks from last year. And for those of you who still want to do a last-second park, according to the organizers, doing it without pemits is risky, but not out of the question: ”It’s your call, but we do encourage you to look for creative ways to work with/within the law,” says the Park(ing) Day site. Read More
Denari Takes Keelung
(image courtesy Michael Speaks)
Neil Denari Architects have won the challenge everyone is talking about: the international competition to design the Keelung Harbor Service Project in Taiwan. According to Keelung’s web site the project will become the “Gateway to the Nation,” developing unused waterfront land into a passenger and cargo terminal, a transfer station, an arts plaza, and a wharf for more industrial activity.
According to images posted by jury member Michael Speaks, Denari’s plan consists of carved out metallic-skinned masses floating above narrow bases above raised plazas. Surfaces are textured with graphic components including repeating angular window patterns and lime green and powder blue colors. The curved buildings interconnect forming internal courtyards and, at one point, a huge framed view onto the waterfront. The $140 million project is meant to accelerate development in the surrounding areas, including several commercial buildings near the site. Read More
Zaha to Take Parametric Design a Step Further at SCI-Arc
Rendering of Zaha Hadid’s Pleated Shell Structures installation at SCI-Arc. (Courtesy Zaha Hadid)
Prepare yourselves Angelenos: Zaha is coming to town. Her installation Pleated Shell Structures will be on display at the SCI-Arc gallery beginning October 12. The installation’s details are still limited, but it appears that it will further push Hadid’s and partner Patrik Schumacher’s legendary experimentation with parametric design, giving smooth forms a more tactile, imbedded surface. So if parametric design is 3D, could this be 4D? Which dimension are we in now, anyway?
Dan Meis on the Move… Again
Meis’s planned Sports City Stadium in Qatar
Big-time sports architect Dan Meis, who has designed, among other projects, LA’s Staples Center and Seattle’s Safeco Field, is on the move yet again. In the span of just a few years he has shuffled from his own practice to Aedas, then back to his own firm to Populous, to his own firm again, and now he is joining Australian firm Woods Bagot Sport to become its global director. Exciting opportunties? Commitment issues? “I’m not crazy about having been with a couple of different firms in a short time period,” admitted Meis. But he sees it differently: “For me it feels like I’ve been in the same practice all along. It just feels like I’ve been associated with a lot of firms.”
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