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 Touch of DUMBO in Williamsburg: Two Trees Envisions Office Space at the Domino Sugar Factory
Domino Sugar Factory. (Courtesy Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning)
The redevelopment of Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Factory has been a long and controversial process, but is showing signs of progress, or at least a slow but steady crawl to the next phase of planning. The Wall Street Journal reported reported that developer Jed Walentas of Two Trees Management wants to make room for office space in addition to residential units long proposed for the site. The Brooklyn-based firm purchased the 11-acre property last October for $185 million from Community Preservation Corporation Resources (CPCR).
Let There Be Light: Cleveland Museum of Art’s New Atrium Open
A view of the skylight that defines Cleveland Museum of Art’s new atrium. (Courtesy Bruce Kratofil via Flickr.)
After seven years of construction, during much of which visitors were sent on an underground detour, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s expansive atrium opened in late August.
The 39,000-square-foot Rafael Viñoly-designed atrium is essentially a massive skylight, which arcs from 55 to 66 feet in height across a space nearly as large as a football field. Planting beds complement the granite floor, anchoring an airy space that houses a second floor mezzanine and could seat upwards of 700 people for events.
Grand Concourse Discourse: Rosenblum on a New Landmark
The Bronx County Courthouse sits within the new district. (Lehman College Art Gallery/Stoelker)
Shortly after the Landmarks Preservation Commission declared a section of the Grand Concourse an historic district on Tuesday, New York Times columnist Constance Rosenblum received a call with the news. Walking down Montague Street near her home in Brooklyn Heights, the usually unflappable writer burst into tears. When it comes to the Concourse, Rosenblum wrote the book. Her 2010 chronicle of the corridor, Boulevard of Dreams (NYU Press, $20), played a significant role in calling attention to the plight and promise of the neighborhood. “It was notable day,” she said in a phone interview in reference to the announcement. “It wasn’t easy for the Bronx, and the stigmas will remain for a long time.”
AN Video> Viñoly on Postmodernism, etc.
AN exec editor Julie Iovine in conversation Rafael Viñoly at the Museum of the City of New York.
AN‘s Julie Iovine held a freewheeling conversation last week with architect Rafael Viñoly under the subject heading “What Comes After Postmodern Architecture.” The architect had some choice words about the period before moving on to a variety of other topics, including corporate architecture, collaboration, and New York.
Event> What Comes After Postmodern Architecture?
Rafael Viñoly (Photo by Adam Friedberg)
- What Comes After Postmodern Architecture?
A Conversation with Rafael Viñoly - Museum of the City of New York
- 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
- New York
- Tuesday, April 5 at 6:30pm
Join Julie Iovine, executive editor at The Architect’s Newspaper, tomorrow (Tuesday) evening for a compelling discussion with architect Rafael Viñoly at the Museum of the City of New York at 6:30pm. The topic for the night, “What Comes After Postmodern Architecture?”, will tackle the state of New York City architecture.
The recent building boom in New York City has radically altered the look and feel of the city and added considerably to the list of starchitects currently reshaping New York’s iconic skyline. It has also helped redefine boundaries of the eclectic pluralism of postmodern architecture. How do we label the current architectural style of the last decade? Is there a post-postmodern?
Reservations required. Call 917-492-3395 or purchase tickets online through MCNY. Tickets: $12 for non-members, $8 for seniors & students, $6 for museum members.
Stanford Hospital Plans to Be Surprisingly Hospitable
The new hospital will be the tall man on the Stanford campus. Courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects.
One of the biggest projects on the San Francisco Peninsula is the upcoming $720 million Stanford Hospital. It will replace — though not displace — the hospital’s current home, a three-story affair designed by Edward Durell Stone in 1959, which has a concrete brise-soleil and is very much a building of its time. The new structure, which Rafael Viñoly Architects is in charge of, looks more like a hotel than a hospital, and the design is an indication of what state-of-the-art healthcare facilities are emphasizing these days. Designed to maximize natural lighting in what is often a rather closed, oppressive environment, the Viñoly hospital features a checkerboard layout, in which buildings are interspersed with squares of open space.
What Were You Thinking, Mr. Foster?
The Architect prepares to take off.
Last night, I was lucky enough to enjoy assorted swells (but not very many architects) at the Hearst building for a screening of the enigmatic “How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?”, a film devoted to his lordship’s extravagantly photogenic architecture and life of work. Or so it looks in this approximately 90 minute film which sweeps us from the Engadin Alps where Foster annually plows through a 26-mile mile cross-country ski marathon in tight black lycra with some 14,000 others to his redbrick childhood home quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks in Manchester to his current home in a Swiss villa, spectacularly void of human touches, to his 1,000-plus strong office in London to the early Sainsbury Centre; the Swiss Re gherkin; the British Museum Great Court; the Berlin Reichstag, etc, etc, and of course, the Hong Kong Beijing Airport that is the largest building on earth as narrator Deyan Sudjic intones mellifluously. (The trailor below provides but a morsel of this delight.) Read More
Berkeley Art Museum: Yet More Contenders
The future home of the Berkeley Art Museum. Courtesy Google Maps
Update (4/21/10): Three more firms have been confirmed: Snohetta, Rafael Viñoly, and L.A.’s Frederick Fisher. This is shaping up to be a pretty diverse crew.
The SF Chronicle reports that the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive has sent out letters to ten architecture firms, asking them to submit qualifications to design their new home. Adding to the three that have already been sussed out (Bernard Tschumi, Tod Williams Billie Tsien, and Will Bruder), we have confirmed a fourth: Ann Beha, whose Currier Museum of Art in New Hampshire has been well-received. Read More
Tipping Over Domino
Is Domino decaying before our eyes?
Even with its generous amounts of affordable housing—30 percent of some 2,200 units, as opposed to 20 percent—the New Domino project surrounding the former Domino sugar refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront has faced stiff opposition from the community, as we reported in Issue 02 earlier this year. The local community remains opposed to the project’s density and lack of infrastructure to support all those new residents in towers designed by Rafael Viñoly that reach 40 stories, twice as tall as the iconic Domino refinery they will surround. Community Board 1 reaffirmed its opposition last night, when it voted 23-12 against the project. Our pal Aaron Short has an insanely detailed blow-by-blow over on his blog, but it all basically boils down—not unlike most of the board’s decisions on land-use matters—that the project is just too damn big. Meanwhile Read More
To the Ramparts
Viñoly's massive Battersea development got the approval of the British architecture office this week. (Courtesy World Architecture News)
With all the notice being paid to the new U.S. embassy this week, an even bigger (physically if not psychically) project just next door was overshadowed as it won a key approval yesterday. Rafael Viñoly’s massive Battersea development, which will turn the iconic Battersea Power Station and 40 surrounding acres (once on the cover of a Pink Floyd album) into a huge mixed-use community, won approval from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. According to our colleagues at BD, the CABE found the 5.5 billion pound project to be “intelligent and well-resolved.” Read More
Jailbreak
Top brass breaks ground on the Rafael Vinoly-designed 121st Precinct Stationhouse in Staten Island.
City-funded architecture work is becoming scarce, if the DDC’s latest list of Design and Construction Excellence firms is any indicator, so it’s heartening when public projects promised during the boom times move into the construction phase. Today, Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, and DDC Commissioner Burney broke ground on the Rafael Vinoly-designed 121st Precinct Stationhouse, which was unveiled in last year. It will be the first police station built on Staten Island since 1962, and the first in the city to be built under the 2030 sustainable design initiative. The project is expected to earn a LEED Silver rating and to be completed in 2012. See a rendering after the jump. Read More
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