Free No More: Cooper Union Trustees Choose Tuition
Students protested tuition during a lock-in last year. (Michael Fleshman / Flickr)
After nearly two years of intense debate and student protests, Cooper Union has announced that it will end its 155-year tradition of tuition-free education—a hallmark of the prestigious institution. The school’s board of trustees said in a statement that budget-cutting measures could not relieve the $12 million annual deficit it has on its hands. The new policy will cut the full tuition-free scholarship to 50 percent for the undergraduate class beginning in fall 2014. Depending on financial need, a student could pay nothing or up to $20,000. Industrialist Peter Cooper founded the school in 1859 on the premise of providing a first-rate, free education to the working classes.
AN’s Eavesdrop Makes A Mark on Chicago Nightlife
Left to right: Thomas Demand, Marina Fine Arts #23, 2011; Thomas Demand, Beyer #15, 2011; Thomas Demand, Segel #25, 2011. (Courtesy Graham Foundation)
Get Out Your Scotch Guard—Eavesdrop Is Coming! If the hors d’ouevres make a party, Luminaire threw quite the fête last month. The huge design showroom in Chicago’s River North staged the top floor with more affordable items from their inventory, alongside of pop-ups from local artisans, including European bike-lifestyle guru J.C. Lind Bike Co. This was our first stop of several that evening, so the substantial hors d’oeuvres—a.k.a. Prosecco sponges—were fully appreciated. What didn’t appreciate them?
On View> OVERDRIVE: LA Constructs the Future, 1940-1990
OVERDRIVE: LA Constructs the Future, 1940-1990
The J. Paul Getty Museum
Los Angeles
Through July 21
Gleaming cars speeding down an intricate freeway system, flashy movie theatres, quirky coffee shops, sleek corporate towers and residential spaces, drive-in churches, the infamous Hollywood sign, LAX Airport (above), and a lucrative petroleum industry are just some of the many impressive characteristics associated with the rich culture of Los Angeles. This exhibition at The J. Paul Getty Museum explores a metropolis that remained in “overdrive” throughout the 20th century, implementing cutting-edge architectural design to effectively respond to civic, environmental, and socioeconomic challenges that plagued the city. In just 50 years, the city rapidly evolved into one the most influential industrial, creative, and economic capitals in the world. Through drawings, photographs, models, animations, oral histories, and ephemera, the exhibition celebrates the notable transformation of the city of Los Angeles from 1940–1990.
On View> Low Rise High Density at the Center for Architecture
(Craig Hodgetts)
Low Rise High Density
The Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place
New York, NY
Through June 29
The 1960’s saw a transformation of the architectural landscape of urban and suburban neighborhoods across the United States. The introduction of a new kind of low-rise, high-density public housing type diverged from the conventional high-rise buildings that had previously characterized American cities. These new, low-rise living spaces increased suburban and urban connectivity by eliminating the need for elevators. Also, as more and more of these buildings continued to rise in suburban neighborhoods, distant from the hustle and bustle of the city, people were increasingly encouraged to use public transportation.
What Do We Want? Docent Rights! Farnsworth House Opts For Paid Labor
The Farnsworth House. (Courtesy Farnsworth House)
For seven years, Eavesdrop has lived in Chicago without a car and that means we’ve never made the trek out to Mies van der Rohe‘s Farnsworth House. But with all the flooding in the Midwest this year, we could have just used a boat. Now, a little bird has whispered in our ear that at least one docent is bent out of shape by recent changes. It would appear that the National Trust for Historic Preservation is replacing volunteer docents with paid part-time tour guides. Can you imaging, the desire to pay your help? Quelle horreur! We say: way to go Trust!
Let The Archi-Sparks Fly: Thom Mayne Fights Back Against Bad Reviews
Thom Mayne’s Perot Museum in Dallas. (Iwan Baan)
Ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a blood feud in Los Angeles. It seems that Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne doesn’t care for Thom Mayne’s work. At all. Reviewing his new Perot Museum in Dallas, he called the building, “One of the pricey, preening old breed.” Adding, “it is a thoroughly cynical piece of work, a building that uses a frenzy of architectural forms to endorse the idea that architecture, in the end, is mere decoration.”
Hawthorne has used this vitriol on other Mayne buildings, like the Caltrans building and the Cahill Center at Caltech, which, he said, employs a “skin-and-stair strategy that allows the client to make the rest of the building—every interior office or gallery—conventional at best and banal at worst.”
Mayne, not surprisingly, doesn’t appear happy. In a recent public tour of his new offices in Culver City, led by our friend and design journalist Alissa Walker, Mayne said he would not be allowing a local architecture critic to write about his new building for his firm’s offices—he was asking a science writer to do the story instead. “All local writers are horrible,” he said. “There are no good writers in Los Angeles.” We beg to differ!
The Shortlist> Top Five Competitions of the Week
Competition site in Downtown Detroit. (Courtesy Opportunity Detroit)
Are you eager to put your architectural design skills to the test? Here are some exciting upcoming competitions that will be sure to present you with the type of challenge you’ve been waiting for. AN‘s editors have combed through our online listing of architecture and design competitions to bring you five of the most interesting competitions happening right now. If you’d like your competition to be included in the listing, please submit it here.
Redesigning Detroit: A New Vision for an Iconic Site. Opportunity Detroit is on the hunt for innovative, creative, and inspired designs for a new building that will be built on the historic Hudson’s site, one of the most beloved locations in downtown Detroit. The goal is to change the city’s image and to promote it as a positive place where anyone may live, work, play and invest. The competition, sponsored by Rock Ventures, will award a first prize of $15,000, a second prize of $5,000 and third prize of $2,500. Take action and submit a new vision for the iconic site.
Registration Deadline: April 30, 2013
Submission Deadline: May 31, 2013
On View> Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim Museum
(Courtesy Guggenheim)
Gutai: Splendid Playground
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York
Through May 8
“Don’t imitate others!” and “Engage in the newness!” are just two of the signature slogans of the Gutai Art Association, founded in July 1954 by Jiro Yoshihara. The Gutai—which translates to “concreteness”—artists dared to breakthrough the boundaries presented by traditional Japanese art. As their name suggests, the artists directly engaged with concrete materials (such as remote-control toys, sand, light bulbs, and paper screens) to create a new, never before seen, kind of art. The creative genius of these avant-garde artists manifested itself in the form of various mediums including, but not limited to, painting, installation and performance art, experimental film, and environmental art. Gutai: Splendid Playground explores the works of these artists, created over a span of two-decades, and features an enormous installation by Motonaga Sadamasa composed of a series of plastic tubes filled with colored water. The structure, created specifically for the Guggenheim’s rotunda, invites visitors to look up and use these “brush strokes” to create their own individual composition.
After announcing the winners of the 2012 Jane Jacobs Medal last month at Frank Gehry’s IAC Building in west Manhattan, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Municipal Art Society are in search of nominees for this year’s prize (the awards ceremony was pushed back due to Hurricane Sandy). The groups are accepting online nominations on the Rockefeller Foundation’s website through April 30. Among the qualities of a Jacobs Medal winner are that they “Open our eyes to new ways of seeing and understanding our city” and “Challenge traditional assumptions and conventional thinking.” Winners will be announced this September.
Norwegian/American firm Snøhetta has been enlisted by Temple University to design a new 350,000-square-foot library on the main campus in the northern section of Philadelphia. Craig Dykers, co-founder of the Oslo-based firm, will speak at the University during the 2013 Temple Architecture Week. Next City reported that Snøhetta has yet to release renderings, but they scored an interview with Dykers following his lecture at Temple, where he said “increasingly, universities are realizing that libraries can also be windows, gateways into the campus and immediately connected to the academic life of the place.” (Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia.)
On View> At War With The Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston
(William Eggleston)
At War With The Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Howard Gilman Gallery 852
New York
Through July 28
William Eggleston, one of the first American photographers to experiment with modern color photography in the 1960s, is known for his ability to capture the essence of southern life through photographs of ordinary people, scenes of everyday life, and commonplace objects, such as a child’s tricycle or a sign reading “Peaches!” set against the backdrop of a cerulean blue sky. Eggleston produced much of his color photography with a dye transfer printmaking process, a technique that was previously used solely for commercial and advertising purposes, and established it as a prominent artistic medium in the American tradition. The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, At War With the Obvious, celebrates Eggleston’s work by presenting together for the first time thirty-six dye transfer prints he created in the 1970s. It also features his first portfolio of color photographs, fifteen prints from his landmark book, and seven other of his most recognized photographs.
Photo of the Day: Amazing View From One World Trade
View from the top of One World Trade Center. (Courtesy Port Authority)
A couple weeks ago, we took a look at the trippy designs of the newly unveiled observation deck for Lower Manhattan’s One World Trade tower, rapidly adding to its antenna that will take the building to 1,776 feet. But while those renderings were long on the multimedia-rich halls that will presumably be filled with long lines waiting to get to the top, the big unveil was a bit short on the actual view. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has corrected that, however, posting a new photo taken from the very top of the tower, and we’re not disappointed. Note that Cass Gilbert’s 1913 Woolworth Building, appearing as just another tower in the center of the photo, was once the world’s tallest until 1930. See you in line for the view in person!
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