What’s Out There Weekend San Francisco: September 17-18
At the Oakland Museum of California, Dan Kiley's roof terraces are on the tour circuit in What's Out There Weekend San Francisco. Courtesy T.L. Cheung
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to many landmark works of modern landscape architecture. While the names of Lawrence Halprin, Robert Royston, and Dan Kiley may not be known to a general public that just recently latched on to Eames and Neutra, the Washington, D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation is trying to change that. This weekend, it is holding What’s Out There Weekend San Francisco, free tours of publicly accessible landscapes across the region, from San Francisco proper to Oakland down to Santa Clara. Read More
Arquitectonica Cozies Up to DS+R in LA
Arquitectonica's potential addition to Grand Avenue in LA. (courtesy blogdowntown)
Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Broad center for contemporary art features a distinctive structural honeycomb facade. It may be getting a neighbor with another notable facade, a new 19 story apartment building with staggered windows in a variety of sizes designed by Miami-based Arquitectonica. According to blogdowntown, the building would include 258 units with 52 set aside for affordable housing and 308 parking spaces in a three level below-grade garage. Developed by Related Companies, the tower would share the plaza with DS+R’s museum and back up to the planned Regional Connector light rail station.
Mesmerizing SCI-Arc Graduation Pavilion
Courtesy Oyler Wu Collaborative
SCI-Arc held its graduation ceremony on Sunday in the parking lot in front of its building in LA’s Arts District. And they did it in style: in front of a billowing 60 x 110 foot canopy designed by LA firm Oyler Wu Collaborative, whose principles Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu are both SCI-Arc professors. Read More
Burning Man Amazes Yet Again
Temple of Transition (Michael Holden)
For the second year in a row (check out last year’s report here) we’d like to share some of the most amazing, ridiculous, and inspiring architecture of Burning Man, which just wrapped up in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. And like last year the Playa’s temporary installations didn’t disappoint; displaying an aggressive level of imagination and ambition for Burning Man’s 25th anniversary (has it really been that long?).
The theme this year was Rites of Passage, although we’re not sure the artists here are interested in following any rules. Photographer Michael Holden was on the ground to document the event. Here are our favorites from Burning Man 2011:
Event> Eva Hagberg & Roy McMakin Talk Design in Berkeley
Roy McMakin's True House is one of 24 notable projects featured in Nature Framed. (Courtesy Tom Fowlks)
Discussion: Eva Hagberg & Roy McMakin
University Press Books
Berkeley, California
Thursday, September 8, 2011
6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Writer Eva Hagberg’s new book, Nature Framed: At Home in the Landscape (The Monacelli Press, 2011, $50), has a granola-crunchy-sounding title, but the architecture inside is as sharp as it gets. From a delicate floating house on Lake Huron by MOS to Anderson Anderson Architecture’s acrylic-clad Chameleon House in Michigan, these houses are not, for the most part, about blending in.
Among the 24 projects included in the book is True House in Seattle by artist/furniture designer/architect Roy McMakin, who also recently published a monograph titled Roy McMakin: When is a chair not a chair? where he details his often-whimsical furniture designs from the past 30 years.
Catch both minds at Berkeley’s University Press Books for a discussion on design this Thursday!
UCSB Shortlist Has All The Big Names
The San Joaquin Apartments will be located within the red circle above (courtesy UCSB)
Yes, things are slow these days, so we’re looking at every RFP we can. One of the biggest in Southern California is for the new San Joaquin Apartments at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), which will include two buildings housing 1,000 students as well as a revitalized neighborhood center. The RFP was issued in June, and we just got our hands on the shortlist, which was posted on August 26. The winner should be announced very shortly. Below are the finalists, including some very impressive names.
Eric Owen Moss to Receive Jencks Award
Moss' proposed Jefferson Tower in Culver City
LA architect Eric Owen Moss will receive the 2011 Jencks Award, an annual prize named for British architect and critic Charles Jencks recognizing “major international contributions to the theory and practice of architecture.” Previous winners of the award include Zaha Hadid, Foreign Office Architects, Peter Eisenman, Cecil Balmond, UNStudio, Wolf Prix & Coop Himmelb(l)au, Charles Correa, and Steven Holl. The award will be presented on December 6 at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.
Best known for his highly experimental work in Culver City’s Hayden Tract, a former industrial area transformed into creative offices, Moss is now planning several projects around Los Angeles. Below is a small collection of recent and upcoming work from his firm: Read More
Help! Only Two Votes Needed To Fix California’s Infill Policy
California Capitol Building. (Courtesy jjkbach)
Okay, let’s take advantage of this Democracy thing, folks… Today you have the rare opportunity to shape urban planning policy in California by convincing a few swing voters in the state’s Senate to support AB 710, the Infill Development and Sustainable Community Act of 2011. Apparently the bill is two votes shy of passage. If passed it would do a number of things to improve the state’s sprawling urban development policy, including… Read More
“Architecture of Consequence” Opens in San Francisco
Fletcher Studio came up with an intriguing way to reuse the Bay Bridge. (Courtesy Fletcher Studio)
Last night, the AIA SF launched a new exhibition, Architecture of Consequence: San Francisco, kicking off a whole slew of events in its annual Architecture in the City Festival, the country’s biggest such celebration of the built environment. The exhibit explores important social needs that architects can address and features the work of four San Francisco firms—Iwamoto Scott Architecture, Fletcher Studio, SOM, and Envelope A+D—side-by-side with four Dutch firms—Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten, 2012 Architecten, ZUS (Zones Humaines Sensibles), and OMA.
Videos> Harmon’s Headaches Signal Thunder in the Vegas Sky
The Harmon Building (right) adjacent to the Crystals (left) in Las Vegas. (Courtesy vrysxy/flickr)
It’s official. Norman Foster’s unfinished and beleaguered Harmon Building at Las Vegas’ CityCenter is among the walking dead. Its owner MGM has announced its intention to implode the building, whose construction was plagued by incorrectly-installed rebar. These severe structural flaws led to a decision in 2009 to scrap the top half of the building, and it’s been sitting unoccupied ever since.
But what better way to send off what must be among the biggest buildings never occupied than a collection of the most spectacular implosions Las Vegas can muster? There are fireworks, spotlights, music, and lots of gawking onlookers. This stuff is fun, trust us.
On View> Density Frames: Worship The Puffy Chapel
If you didn’t catch the giant inflatable pop-up chapel/igloo at Silver Lake’s Materials & Applications gallery last year, now’s your chance to experience it in person. Well, it’s cousin anyway. The 25-foot-tall second rendition, Density Frames was designed by USC’s architecture director Gail Peter Borden for the school’s Religious Center courtyard. The irregularly-shaped balloon-like structure will be on display through December 15.
On View> Noguchi: California Legacy at the Laguna Art Museum
(Courtesy Laguna Art Museum)
Noguchi: California Legacy
Laguna Art Museum
307 Cliff Drive
Laguna Beach, CA
Through October 2
Noguchi: California Legacy features three bodies of work that capture the connection Los Angeles-born sculptor Isamu Noguchi had with the California landscape. California Scenario: The Courage of the Imagination celebrates the 30th anniversary of the Segerstrom commission at the South Coast Plaza sculpture garden; a gallery is illuminated by Noguchi’s famed Akari lights for the 1986 Venice Biennale in What is Sculpture?, shown above; and for Noguchi at Gemini G.E.L., his sculpture for atelier Gemini G.E.L. Los Angeles in 1982 are reproduced as flattened steel plates, described by Noguchi as “short poems pertaining to California where I was born, and to the world I have known.”
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