While most things appear to be going gangbusters in San Francisco, it appears the fun hasn’t spread to HOK’s office there. The rumor mill says the firm has let go of a couple of its most revered staff, including Vice President Louis Schump. Schump, whose partner Todd Hosfelt owns the respected Hosfelt Gallery, headed some of the firm’s best workspace designs. Schump is in fact no longer with the firm. Other rumors are flying about people being put on “standby status,” but we won’t report them until they’re confirmed. We’re learning here at Eavesdrop, aren’t we?
Event> Celebrate: The Journey at LA’s A+D Museum
WORKS FROM A + D ARCHITECTURE. CHRIS FOX, SALON JETPACKERS, QUIFF, PONYTAIL, BOB, 2011. (A + D Architecture + Design Museum > LA)
What: Gala / Celebrate: The Journey
When: Saturday, May 11, 7:00 to 11:00 PM
Where: Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles (5900 Wilshire on LA’s Museum Row)
Join AN, a media sponsor for the annual A + D Fundraiser and Gala, this Saturday for CELEBRATE: THE JOURNEY. The event at The Architecture and Design Museum of Los Angeles connects the design industry with innovators to acknowledge the creative journey that kindles preeminent design. The night’s main focus will center on one-of-a-kind carry-ons created by renowned architects and designers such as traditional train cases, modern day satchels and ultramodern jet-paks. Custom carry-on designers include Adams Morioka, Gensler, Dan Meis and Cristobal Valecillos among others.
The celebrations will consist of several curated silent auctions, intercontinental cuisine, music, drink and much more. Chris Fox ‘Jet Packs’ and Pan AM Vintage Uniforms will provide special presentations while Raul Campos will DJ.
Over 600 people attended CELEBRATE 2012 and 2013’s event will be bigger and better! Tickets are available for purchase online and CELEBRATE: THE JOURNEY silent auction items are accessible for preview and bids.
San Francisco Passes Major Earthquake Retrofit Measure
Soft story building damaged after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. (Courtesy California Watch)
A big one hasn’t hit California for a little while, which means it’s the perfect time to enact more stringent retrofit legislation. Just in case, you know… Near the end of last month San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signed into law the city’s new mandatory soft-story retrofit program, which calls for retrofits to buildings with large openings for storefronts or garages. There are quite a few in the city: 2,800, home to about 58,000 people and 2,000 businesses, according to the Mayor’s office.
Architecture Filmmaker Wants to Take You Cross Country
(Evan Mather)
Los Angeles-based landscape architect and indie filmmaker Evan Mather is crowd-funding his to way to his first feature-length film. After having produced a series of experimental time-lapse videos about the built environment—including 12 minutes to Vegas— he’s launching a Kickstarter campaign to help fund From Sea to Shining Sea, a 105-minute documentary celebrating the diverse American landscape. Moviegoers will be able to cruise the Interstate Highway System from coast to coast through the extensive video collage, which Mather hopes to complete some time next year.
Controversial Malibu Lagoon Restoration Opens
The “Bird Blind” at the revamped Malibu Lagoon. This will be thick with reeds in a year or two. (Guy Horton)
On May 2, the ever-controversial Malibu Lagoon Restoration Project—designed to restore the lagoon to its natural shape after years of disruptions and enhance the visitor experience—had its official ribbon cutting ceremony. Or, in this case, kelp cutting ceremony. The newly revamped lagoon glinted in the sun as egrets skittered along the water’s surface. Inappropriately-dressed (dark suits and ties) state officials and project leaders posed for photographs, congratulated team members, and handed out certificates while protesters (some shirtless and in shorts), brandishing hand-made signs saying “Paradise Lost” and “Lagoonicide,” booed and shouted at every opportunity. It was another beautiful day at the beach.
Stanford University Breaksground on a New Hospital designed by Rafael Viñoly
- STANFORD BREAKS GROUND ON NEW HOSPITAL (RAFAEL VIÑOLY ARCHITECTS)
In the wake of the completion of the $111.9 million Bing Concert Hall in January, Stanford University has kicked off construction on a new seven-story hospital as part of the ongoing renewal of its medical center. Designed by New York City–based Rafael Viñoly Architects, the facility features a modular layout that allows for incremental horizontal extensions to the building. This development strategy seamlessly merges with the low-rise campus. “This project represents an unprecedented endeavor in the hospital’s successful 50-year history of healing humanity,” said the ever-modest Viñoly in a statement. “By reinterpreting and updating the Stanford campus and the original hospital through a modular plan, it is poised to adapt to evolving medical technology while continuing to provide advanced care and treatment—in a healing environment unique to Stanford—to patients from surrounding communities and beyond.” One of the largest developments currently underway on the San Francisco Peninsula, the new hospital will be open for patient care by 2018.
A Global Bicycle Trek from Portland, Oregon to London’s Portland Place.
(Grant Smith)
Peter Murray, of the New London Architecture center, together with a dozen architects and planners, is biking from Portland, Oregon to Portland Place in London, studying how cities are responding to the demand for better cycling infrastructure. He reports from the start of his ride. The Architect’s Newspaper is USA media sponsor of the trip and will post periodic updates of these architects on bicycles.
Portland is to America what Copenhagen is to Europe: everyone looks to it as an exemplar cycling city, and it has been continually improving its cycling infrastructure for more than 40 years – the first Bicycle Masterplan was published in 1973. As a result, 6 per cent of Portland commuters now bike to work and the Active Transport Alliance’s annual Bike Commute Challenge attracts over 700 participant companies. Cycling is undoubtably a part of Portland’s culture with its Neighbourhood Greenways, bicycle boulevards, routes across key bridges, safe routes to school and the Eastbank Esplanade – a wide path shared with walkers and joggers overlooking the Willamette river. The city was awarded platinum status by the League of American Bicyclists and acclaimed by Bicycling magazine as number one for cycle-friendliness.
Where’s the Money, MOCA? Questions surround the possible cancellation of A New Sculpturalism
Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. (Courtesy Gehry Partners)
The intrigue continues at MOCA, whose upcoming show A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture in Southern California, is close to being cancelled, according to multiple sources. The show’s curator Christopher Mount has told AN that Frank Gehry’s withdrawal is not the cause for the exhibition’s possible demise, as was suggested yesterday in the Los Angeles Times. The real reason, he said: MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, who halted installation of the show a few weeks ago, claiming that money for the undertaking had run out. Mount, however, says there is plenty of money left in the show’s budget. Read More
We Have A Winner at UC Davis: “Grand Canopy”
SO – IL’s Grand Canopy. (Courtesy SO – IL)
Last month AN reported that UC Davis had selected a shortlist for its Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. Well we have a winner: ”Grand Canopy,” by So – IL / Bohlin Cywinski Jackson/ Whiting-Turner. The design features a 50,000 square-foot floating steel canopy which weaves together exterior and interior space for galleries, exhibitions, concerts, art studios, as well as artists’ residencies. Jurors selected the design from a shortlist of three finalists for its unusual incorporation of light, close connection to the UC Davis campus, as well as the ability to adapt and grow over time to the changing needs of its users–the students, faculty, staff, and visitors. The museum will occupy 1.6 acres on the southern edge of the UC Davis campus.Watch Florian Idenburg, design architect and partner for SO – IL, talk about the winning design (Joe Proudman/UC Davis).
LACMA Transformation Coming Into Focus
(Diana Lee Photography / Flickr)
The Wall Street Journal recently published a confirmation of two things we’ve been hearing whispers of for years: One, Michael Govan is more of a builder than a museum director; and two, that Govan and Peter Zumthor are planning to basically take LACMA apart and start over. The full scope of the plans will be unveiled in June, with LACMA’s exhibition, The Presence of the Past: Peter Zumthor Reconsiders LACMA. But for now the story has gleaned that under Zumthor’s plan, four of the museum’s midcentury structures will be replaced by “curvaceous modern glass structures.”
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!
Apple Makes Adjustments To Silicon Valley Campus Proposal
Newly released pedestrian improvements planned for Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. (Courtesy Apple)
Apple’s spaceship-like campus plans, designed by Foster and Partners, have been criticized for—among other other things— a lack of pedestrian friendly design. It appears the company has listened. New documents presented to the city of Cupertino show extended bike paths, winding walkways and private roads both circling the grounds and running through the center of the campus. The bike lanes would have buffer lanes to protect them from cars, pedestrian walkways would have increased lighting, a transit center would be the focal point for buses, and the plans also make room for public art projects.
Not all the changes are eco/pedestrian friendly. The new design calls for an increase in parking spaces from 10,500 to 10,980. Slated for completion in 2016, the campus has also been in the news for budget overruns and delays, with Bloomberg Businessweek reporting its cost ballooning from $3 billion to $5 billion. The first phase of the campus is scheduled to be complete by 2016.The original date was 2015.
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