One World Trade Center Plays Light Tricks
One World Trade Center appears to glow in the sunlight. (William Menking / AN)
The 1973 World Trade Center twin towers by Minora Yamasaki were not great buildings but in various light conditions or in the dark of the night they would take on a mute sculptural quality that New Yorkers now remember with fondness or nostalgic reverence. Now something quiet similar may be happening with the replacement to the tower—One World Trade Center. In certain light and atmospheric conditions the top floors of the building seem to glow like a bright incandescent light build.
Soane’s Annual Gala Dinner
Catherine Ingraham, Carole Ann Fabian, Barry Bergdoll (Courtesy Cutty McGill)
Tuesday evening’s John Soane’s Museum gala was a great evening for the assembled supporters of the London museum on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It started when Soane Board President Thomas Klingerman asked the audience “How many of you read The Architect’s Newspaper?” You probably saw the Eavesdrop column on Jay Z and Beyonce visiting Cuba on a Soane architecture tour (their itinerary included landmarks by architect Miguel Coylua, among others). Things are really changing at Soane! After the irrepressible Suzanne Stephens opened the program awards, inscribed Soane Foundation medallions were given to Carole Fabian, director of Avery Architecture & Arts Library at Columbia, and Barry Bergdoll for their joint acquisition of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives.
Nanne de Ru Named Director of Berlage Institute in Holland
Nanne de Ru. (Mirjam van der Hoek)
The Berlage Institute in Holland, recently reformed as part of Delft University has named Nanne de Ru to be its new Director. De Ru follows an illustrious series of Directors that include Herman Hertzberger, Wiel Arets, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, and Vedran Mimica. The new director is an architect and partner of Powerhouse Company in Rotterdam and holds a Masters Degree in architecture form the Institute in 2002. There is no word yet on the role and direction of the newly restructured Institute.
Wednesday> Architect Srdjan Weiss Examines Viennese Housing at the Austrian Cultural Forum
New low-density housing in a Vienna suburb.
The exhibit, The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st Century City, currently on view at the Austrian Cultural Forum, is meant to provoke a discussion with housing advocates in this country. The Forum will host weekly tours of the exhibit by a variety of housing experts from various academic and professional fields. This Wednesday, the tour will be led by Srdjan Weiss, a Serbian-born architect and theorist based in New York City, with broad knowledge of the subject of housing in this country and Eastern Europe. The tour will be based on Weiss’ parallel living experience and expertise in housing design from former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia.
Bowery Street Art Too Provocative for IDEAS CITY?
The architect of the Bowery Mission John Young of Cryptome was invited by its director Matt Krivich in March to display an art work for the institution as part of The New Museum‘s just concluded IDEAS CITY street festival. Cryptome was restoring the mission’s underground vaults at the time and in August of 2012 put up a wall drawing by Deborah Natsios, a principal of the firm, on the street front scaffolding called Sidewalk Vaults. This original rendering was an illusion to the long history of the vaults as an important structural element of the Bowery, the city’s oldest thoroughfare. Natsios agreed to create a work and produced a series of eight panels in the style of Sidewalk Vaults that she called Partywall. This work was meant to question the relationship between the Mission and its neighbor the New Museum and the rapidly changing character of the Bowery.
Who Builds Your Architecture? Panel Considers the Sustainability of Labor
(Courtesy Hans Haacke)
The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School has—under its director Carin Kuoni—been an instigator in drawings links between artistic and design practices and the real world of politics. The Center sponsors symposia, lectures, and exhibitions that draw links that are often crucial and obvious but not discussed by professionals and academics in the design professions. Once again it is highlighting such an issue with a series of discussions, Who Builds Your Architecture?, that connects construction and labor.
Join Architects and Urbanists On A Bike Ride From Coast to Coast
Riders in Paul Smith Socks. (Greg Bartley)
The English architectural editor, author, and founder of the London Festival of Architecture, Peter Murray, is also a devoted urban bicycle activist. Murray always arrives at events in London with a bicycle helmut under his arm because it’s the only way he moves around the city. He believe’s that ”cyclised cities are civilised cities” and has organized group rides around Britain and Europe to publicize the need for cities to become more bicycle friendly. To demonstrate that commitment and to promote cycling, Murray and a group of peers are taking a 4,347 mile ride.
Hermitage Museum’s Calatrava Show the World’s Most Popular Design Exhibition
Santiago Calatrava’s Oriente Station in Lisbon, Portugal. (Courtesy Santiago Calatrava)
The Art Newspaper is out with its latest listing of top exhibitions and museum attendance for 2012 and in the category “Architecture and Design” there are some surprises. MoMA, the first museum in the world to have an architecture department, has led this category for many years and in 2011 as usual had the top three architecture and design exhibitions in the survey. But for 2012 St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum’s first show dedicated to a living architect, Santiago Calatrava: The Quest For Movement, broke MoMA’s monopoly of the category and became the most popular exhibit in the world.
Architects Celebrate the Life of the Stubbornly Audacious John M. Johansen
Frank Gehry’s remembrance of John Johansen. (William Menking / AN)
The Century Club in New York recently hosted a memorial celebration of the life of the late architect John M. Johansen organized by his daughter, Deborah Johansen Harris, and son, architect Christen Johansen. Christen, who collaborated with his father on later renovations and additions to various projects, read a touching tribute to Johansen that recalled his series of fast British sports cars and his ability to do “a handstand from a seated position in a lawn chair, or holding himself horizontally from a lamppost when the opportunity arose.” He remembered that John delighted guests to the New Canaan house “by setting his martini down on the window sill and, mid-conversation, vaulting out the window to the lawn below, reappearing moments later through the front door.”
Rem Again: OMA Designs a Third Gallery for Lehmann Maupin
Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star 1/5 at the Lehmann Maupin 26th Street Gallery, 2008-11. (Courtesy Lehmann Maupin)
Rem Koolhaas and OMA may have grander commissions and more famous clients (Miuccia Prada?), but probably not a more devoted and long lasting partnership than with David Maupin of the Lehmann Maupin Gallery. The gallerist first commissioned Koolhaas to design a new exhibition space on Manhattan’s Greene Street in 1995 and again when they moved to 26th Street in Chelsea ten years later (there is non-OMA-designed Lehmann Maupin on the Lower East Side). Now the Lehmann Maupin Gallery has asked OMA to design a third gallery, this time in Hong Kong.
New iPad App Explores the Architecture and Urban Design of Berlin, Beirut & Venice
Architecture and urban design apps are appearing so fast its hard to keep up with the latest new site to investigate city history and growth. But a new one—Archipelago Town-lines—is the result of a 3 year-long research on three key places: Berlin, Beirut, and Venice. It uses original photo galleries, video, and audio content and interactive data visualization features, as a guide for new urban geography, history, and lifestyle of these three very different cities. These places are then place holders for the analysis of contemporary urban trends, in order to propose a new possibility for growth.
International Architects Call On Milan’s Mayor To Reinstate Stefano Boeri
Stefano Boeri.
Stefano Boeri—the talented architect, politician, and former editor of Domus—was summarily dismissed this week from his position as Councillor for Culture, Fashion, and Design for the city of Milan. Boeri, who for several years has tried to bring architecture and design into official decision making process, has apparently butted heads with Milan’s Mayor Giuliano Pisapia and has been pushed out the door.
He has, according to one observer of Italian politics, clashed with the mayor “over how much he spent on an exhibition,” who may be using the country’s budget woes as an excuse to sack a potential political opponent.
Boeri was coordinating the upcoming Milan Year of Culture and is not gong without a fight. A petition signed by host of major architects, artists, and cultural workers is being distributed to the press to put pressure on the mayor to bring Boeri back into government.
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