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.
Arb-itects? English Registration Board Flips Out Over Titles
Daniel Libeskind (left) and Renzo Piano (right).
In a letter to Building Design magazine, the Architects Registration Board in London, aka ARB, has requested that BD no longer refer to Renzo Piano and Daniel Libeskind as “architects.” Apparently, neither are registered as architects with the all-knowing ARB, therefore “they are not entitled to be described as such,” states the letter. BD Editor-in-Chief Amanda Baillieu immediately called out ARB’s high-handed mandate in an online editorial, writing, “there is no other word to describe ARB’s ban on calling Renzo Piano an architect except bonkers.” The registration board’s Alison Carr later apologized for the letter, “Do I think that this was a great example to bring to BD’s attention and help raise awareness? No I don’t. We should have been more cautious so that we get the right message across at the right time, and for that I apologise.”
Days After Major Renovation, Sandy Shutters Statue of Liberty Indefinitely
The Statue of Liberty the day after Hurricane Sandy. (Courtesy US Coast Guard)
In October, AN reported on new accessibility improvements at the Statue of Liberty, including installing a new HVAC system, improved ventilation, and a fire stair climbing through the 126-year-old statue. After remaining shuttered for a year during the improvements, Lady Liberty triumphantly reopened this fall.
Until Hurricane Sandy. The New York Times reports that the statue itself suffered no major damage during the storm (despite any fake Twitter photos you may have seen), but the grounds surrounding the “Mother of Exiles” suffered quite a bit of damage. Among the problems is damage to the large dock where ferries would unload visitors. Additionally, the promenade surrounding the island lost more than half of its brick pavers during the storm. There’s also some worry that the new mechanicals just installed might have suffered damage when the statue’s basement flooded. No timeline has been given as to when the monument will reopen.
On View> Parks for the People Reimagines Our National Parks as Social & Cultural Destinations
(Courtesy Val Alen Institute)
Parks for the People
The Octagon Museum
1799 New York Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
Through November 30
Parks for the People presents student ideas of how to reimagine our national parks as natural, social, and cultural destinations. Teams from City College of New York, Rutgers, Cornell, Florida International University, Kansas State, Pratt, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Washington competed in a semester long studio, engaging questions of the preservation, sustainability, accessibility, and technology in 21st century national parks. The National Parks Service, Van Alen Institute, and the National Parks Conservation Association sponsored the competition, which ultimately declared the teams from City College, for their work on the Nicodemus National Historic Site in Kansas, and Rutgers, for their project at the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Pennsylvania (above), the winners. All seven entries, each representing a different region of the country, will be on view at the Octagon Museum in Washington, D.C.
Relocation Time on the West Coast
Rendering of Barton Myers’ DPAC Orlando Performing Arts Center. (Courtesy Barton Myers)
Everybody seems to be opening up new offices these days. One of our favorite firms, Barton Myers Associates, is moving from Westwood all the way to Santa Barbara, which doesn’t sound promising. Cunningham Group has opened new digs in Culver City’s Hayden Tract, the collection of arts offices made famous by the wild constructs of Eric Owen Moss. And UCLA Architecture will remain in Westwood. But it’s ready to open a new robotics lab inside the old Playa Vista research facilities of Howard Hughes.
Egg on Face at Louis Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park?
Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island. (Paul Warchol / Courtesy FDR Four Freedoms Park)
You can’t make a monument without breaking some eggs. Fabergé cosmetics heir Reed Rubin is protesting a decision by the board of Roosevelt Island’s Four Freedoms Park to not include a donor inscription on the Louis Kahn-designed FDR memorial. For a $2.5 million donation in honor of Rubin’s parents Vera D. and Samuel Rubin, founders of the cosmetics firm and the Reed Foundation, the foundation claims it was promised an inscription in a prominent spot (preferably near the bust of FDR on a slab facing Manhattan).
The board of the park, not wanting to compromise the monument’s design, proposed an inscription in another location in the park. Rubin and the foundation are fighting back, and had tried to postpone October’s dedication. The New York Daily News quoted a letter written by the park’s board chairman William vanden Heuvel to the foundation: “You may prevail in a courtroom. But it will be a Pyrrhic victory, dear friends, a scar not a medal on the list of your achievements.”
After Sandy: A Look Back at New York’s Worst Storm Ever
While New York and the East Coast try to return to normal after the brutal Hurricane Sandy, AN takes a look at most dramatic storm-related sights as we batten down the hatches for the oncoming nor-easter. Our Lower Manhattan offices reopened on Monday with lights working but our steam-powered heat is still out (space heaters have been working overtime). Architecture for Humanity and AIA New York have already begun mobilizing the design community to help with the recovery effort, as have countless other organizations accepting donations and volunteers.
On View> Greta Magnusson Grossman: A Car and Some Shorts
Rare three panel folding screen in walnut and metal, 1952. (Courtesy PMCA)
Greta Magnusson Grossman: A Car and Some Shorts
Pasadena Museum of California Art
490 East Union St., Pasadena, Calif.
October 28–February 24
Before Ikea introduced cheaply made Swedish-designed furnishings to dorm rooms across the globe, there was Swedish architect and designer Greta Magnusson Grossman, an often overlooked founding figure of Swedish modernism. For the first retrospective of her work, the Pasadena Museum of California Art presents Greta Magnusson Grossman: A Car and Some Shorts, which showcases designs that chronicle Grossman’s remarkable career. Her work fuses Scandinavian minimalism with California modernism, as illustrated by her well-known and widely replicated Grasshopper and Cobra lamp designs.
Cincinnati is Recovering From the Swine Flu
Aerial view of Over the Rhine and beyond in Cincinnati. (OverTheRhine/Flickr)
Dear readers, Eavesdrop had the opportunity to explore Louisville, KY—our hometown—and Cincinnati, OH (a.k.a. Porkopolis) over the weekend. It’s been six or seven years since our last trip to Cincy and we have a couple things to say about it. It’s kind of a real city, like dense and old, with just enough corporate headquarters looming over the skyline.
We finally got to see the HOK designed Great American Tower in real life and it’s just as bad in person as its renderings. You may remember that we thoroughly made fun of its fugly, Princess Di inspired, steel tiara—something about lipstick on a pig. Let’s update that to a more current comparison. That tiara is more Honey Boo Boo than Princess Di. Eavesdrop is not a fan of hats or tiaras on buildings—i.e. the Pappageorge Haymes-designed One Museum Park in Chicago with its sailor cap. The American Institute of Steel Construction disagrees, recently giving said tiara a design award.
Watch Out For Starchitects While Trick-or-Treating Tonight
Zaha Hadid as Elphaba. (Courtesy Building Satire)
The sun has set on the east coast and trick-or-treaters are beginning to fill the streets, but keep your eyes peeled for starchitects lurking in the shadows. Building Satire has imagined five of our favorite international stars as vampires, witches, mimes, scary clowns, and Frankenstein. Spooky! But what starchitect could pull off a pirate or headless horseman? Share your suggestions in the comments. [Via Curbed.]
Hurricane Sandy Hits AN’s Lower Manhattan Headquarters
Flooded streets at 34th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. (@LassanaDiarra_/Twitter)
Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the northeastern United States overnight, hitting Lower Manhattan especially hard. The 14-foot storm surge, the highest tide ever recorded in 200 years, swept across the city filling tunnels, basements, and streets and causing massive power outages across Lower Manhattan.
AN‘s Murray Street headquarters is fortunately located on high ground in Tribeca, but the city-wide subway shutdown, power outage, and cell service outages have made the offices temporarily inaccessible. Editors in New York and across the country continue to work through the aftermath of the natural disaster to produce the best in architectural journalism daily, both in print and online as New York returns to normal, but please bear with us as we work to return to our normal routine, and check back often for the most current architectural news.
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