Happy Thanksgiving from AN!
The Architect’s Newspaper extends our best wishes to all our readers for Thanksgiving. We’d also like to thank our 40,000+ twitter and nearly 30,000 facebook followers for your engagement throughout the year. We enjoy the conversation and hope more of you will join us. Happy Holidays from AN. We’ll be back on Monday.
Obit> Jane Holtz Kay, 1938-2012
Jane Holtz Kay in 1986.
Noted author and critic Jane Holtz Kay passed away November 5 at the age of 74 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Her book Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back propelled her into the national spotlight as she chronicled the affects of cars on the American landscape. Jane Jacobs remarked about the book, “Jane Holtz Kay’s book has given us a profound way of seeing the automobile’s ruinous impact on American life.” She had been working on a sequel to Asphalt Nation, documenting climate change and global warming, called Last Chance Landscape. Holtz Kay was also architecture critic for The Nation and formerly for the Boston Globe. She is survived by her sister, Ellen Goodman, daughters, Julie Kay and Jacqueline Cessou, and four grandchildren. The staff at The Architect’s Newspaper sends our condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues.
Congratulations to Joshua, Winner of AN’s Greenbuild Giveaway
AN was back at Greenbuild this year in San Francisco, and we offered readers at the expo a chance to win an iPad Mini and $250 to stock it with the latest tunes, apps, or anything else, really. Over 130 of you participated in the Greenbuild Booth Crawl Contest, and we’re pleased to announce that Joshua Hickman of California was drawn as the lucky winner. Congrats Joshua!
Join AN for the “Never Built: Los Angeles” Fundraiser on December 1
Koning Eizenberg’s Sobieski House will host the fundraiser.
On Saturday, December 1st, head to a fundraiser for an exhibition co-curated by AN West Coast Editor Sam Lubell called Never Built: Los Angeles. The show, which features a mesmerizing selection of unbuilt LA work from throughout the city’s history, will be held at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in March. But the fundraiser, held at Koning Eizenberg’s Sobieski House—a beautiful series of pavilions in South Pasadena—will take place on Saturday, December 1. You’ll be able to nosh on bites by Little Flower Cafe (the best food in Pasadena) bid on prints by Julius Shulman and many other famous Los Angeles figures, and meet Ray Kappe and others involved with Never Built projects around the city. Purchase tickets here. And preview a few Never Built projects below.
Photo of the Day> A Miniature City Made of Flowers
A parade float of a cityscape made of flowers. (Courtesy Zendert Flower Foundation)
The Dutch are known to love their flowers. They’re even building an entire city dedicated to them for a horticultural expo in 2022. On a smaller scale, the Bloemencorso flower parade covers imaginative and incredibly detailed floats in thousands of colorful blooms, and this year it featured a miniature flower city of its own.
Photo of the Day: Saarinen’s Swooping Dulles International Airport Turns 50
Inside Dulles Airport in 1964. (Courtesy BamaLawDog / Flickr)
No one understood airports quite like Eero Saarinen. His swooping Dulles International Airport turned 50 over the weekend and its uplifting form is still inspiring today. Saarinen was quite proud of it, too, declaring the building “the best thing I have ever done.” The control tower and main terminal building at Dulles opened on November 17, 1962, formally dedicated by President John F. Kennedy. The airport was named for Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Also, if you’re in Los Angeles, be sure to check out the A+D Architecture and Design Museum’s exhibition on Saarinen, now up through January 3rd.
Excitement Builds Over 8-Block SPURA Redevelopment in New York
Seward Park Urban Renewal Area marked in Orange. (Courtesy NYCEDC)
Attention developers! It’s almost time to prepare your visions for one of the largest redevelopment projects in Manhattan, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), now that all the approvals are in. While an official Request for Proposals (RFP) won’t be issued until early next year, the NYC Economic Development Corporation is getting a jump start on soliciting interest with a new informational brochure issued today including a panoramic new rendering of the SPURA site, marked in orange.
The project calls for up to 1.65 million square feet of mixed-use space built from the ground up on a site covering eight city blocks in the Lower East Side that Robert Moses leveled in the 20th century. The project also calls for a reconstructed Essex Street Market and a new 15,000 square foot park. The notice comes with a warning that the RFP process “will have an aggressive timeline,” between January and May 2013. Watch for the official RFP to be released at the NYCEDC website, and get ready to rev those rendering engines, architects!
Massive Fire Engulfs 34-Story Dubai Condo Tower
Early Saturday morning, a 34-story residential tower in Dubai burst into flames running its entire height. The 160-unit Tamweel Tower, located in a complex of towers known as the Jumeirah Lakes Towers, caught fire at 2:30a.m. local time, sending hundreds of residents into the streets to seek refuge in a nearby park. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but The National reported that some believe the fire may have started near the roof and propelled down the tower by the building’s flammable cladding material, a similar phenomenon as what happened to Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV tower in China a few years ago when fireworks sparked a major blaze on the under-construction tower and the nearby 40-story Al Tayer Tower that caught fire earlier this year.
SHFT+ ALT+ DEL: November 16, 2012, Extreme Accolades Edition
‘Tis the season for bestowing “Best Ofs”, and this edition of SHFT+ALT+DEL includes some of the recent laurels laid upon architects and designers by business and consumer press…
Zaha Hadid is named one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year for 2012. (Glamour seems to have latched onto Condé Nast sibling The New Yorker calling Hadid “The Lady Gaga of Architecture…”)
Across the pond, David Adjaye is at the tippy-top of the 2013 Power List, ranked number one in the annual publication’s list of the most influential black people of the UK.
This year’s Pritzker Prize winner, Wang Shu, gets tapped as 2012 Innovator of the Year in Architecture by The Wall Street Journal.
South of the border, GQ Mexico named Esteban Suarez of BNKR Arquitectura, pronounced Bunker, Architect of the Year.
Congratulations to them all! Meanwhile, back in the salt mines…
Photo of the Day: Hurricane Sandy Recovery on Staten Island
(Spencer T Tucker/Courtesy NYC Mayors Office)
National Guard troops help clean up the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in Staten Island’s New Dorp Beach neighborhood this week during President Obama’s tour of damaged areas around New York. To get involved with recovery efforts in the region, please visit the NYC Service website to find groups seeking volunteers, supplies, and more.
Hurricane Sandy Deals Another Blow to New York’s Bike Share Ambitions
Citibike station at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (Michael Cairl/Brooklyn Spoke)
After the sad news back in August that New York City’s already-delayed bike share system—Citibike—would be delayed until the spring of 2013, we’d almost forgotten about the thousands of bright blue bikes that have been in storage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard while computer glitches are worked out. The apparently-cursed bike share system is back in the news, however, as the New York Times reports that some of the equipment was damaged during Hurricane Sandy when the East River inundated waterfront Brooklyn.
Floodwaters up to six feet deep apparently damaged program equipment including the docking stations, but the NYC Department of Transportation would not comment on the extent of the damage or whether it would cause further delays in launching the system. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told the Times, “We’re working on it.” Some believe the electronic design of the docking stations could make them especially vulnerable to flooding.
SOM Rumored to Have Been Chosen for Los Angeles Courthouse
AN has been anxiously awaiting official news of an architect for Los Angeles’ long-awaited Downtown Federal Courthouse, and we’ve picked up the scent of a promising rumor. Brigham Young’s DTLA Rising blog has heard from a “source at a large architectural and design firm in Downtown LA” that SOM has won the commission, beating out a short list of teams including Yazdani Studio and Gruen Associates, Brooks + Scarpa and HMC Architects, and NBBJ Architects.
The new $322 million courthouse will be located on a 3.7-acre lot in Downtown LA at 107 South Broadway and will contain 600,000 square feet incuding 24 court rooms. The General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency in charge of building the new courthouse, hopes to have the project completed by 2016. The former art-deco courthouse at 312 North Spring Street will be sold to help pay for the new structure, drawing criticism from some politicians.
The GSA is expected to make an official announcement soon, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated as news comes in.
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