Miami’s Development Booming: Top 11 Starchitect-Designs Remaking the Magic City
The Grove at Grand Bay by Bjarke Ingels Group. (Courtesy BIG)
After a tumultuous few years, Miami’s real estate market is on the rise once again. When the recession hit the city in 2007, new developments came to a dramatic halt and abandoned construction sites became ubiquitous. But now, a surge of new projects—running the gamut from residential and retail to hotels and cultural institutions—are cropping up around Miami with many more slated for construction in the next few years. And some heavy hitters, such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, and Bjarke Ingels, have signed up to lend their design sensibility to Miami’s changing landscape. The Miami Herald reported that the city now boasts 20 new condo towers with an additional five towers in the works for neighborhoods just north and south of downtown Miami. AN has compiled a list of the most significant projects taking shape in the Magic City.
Three Winning Teams Imagine Sustainable Infrastructure for Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up!
Meeting Green. (Courtesy Community Design Collaborative)
On Friday, three winners of the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up! design competition were announced following deliberation by a jury of sustainable stormwater infrastructure industry insiders at Drexel University on Thursday. Created by the Philadelphia Water Department, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Community Design Collaborative, the competition called for creative and sustainable solutions for Philadelphia’s stormwater management. Architects, landscape architects, engineers, and other professionals formed 28 teams to provide innovative means for urban infrastructure to transform the city. From nine finalists, three winners were selected, each responding to a different urban context (industrial, commercial, and neighborhood) and cashing in on the $10,000 prize.
Veyko’s Four Star Installation for Le Bernardin
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The main metal screen in the dining room of Le Bernardin measures 32 1/2 by 11 1/2 feet. (Eduard Hueber)
Veyko’s custom metal screens are composed of 284 aluminum strips, each containing several varying 45-degree angles.
After 25 successful years, it was time to update the interior of Le Bernardin—a New York restaurant renowned for its constantly evolving menu. Owners Eric Ripert and Maguy Le Coze turned to New York-based architecture firm Bentel & Bentel Architects & Planners to design an interior that matched its trend-setting carte du jour. Part of the sophisticated new palette includes three metal screens that offer privacy and transparency in the main dining area, a new lounge, and the entry foyer. To craft the screens’ 284 undulating aluminum strips and frames, the architects turned to Veyko, an ornamental metal fabrication studio outside of Philadelphia.
Jumping off from a two dimensional drawing, Veyko owner Richard Goloveyko said the specific form of the screens developed organically through the design and fabrication process. “We spent a lot of time establishing our ability to bend each bar consistently,” he said. “One of the intricacies of the project was keeping the bends consistent to form a pattern; if a bend isn’t consistent it can start to read.”
Laurie Olin Awarded Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture
Laurie Olin. (Courtesy OLIN Studio)
Landscape architect and OLIN principal Laurie Olin has been awarded a 2013 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal for Architecture by the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. The award recognizes leaders who exemplify the actions and goals that Thomas Jefferson, an architect himself, would have admired. The medal will be awarded to Olin on April 12, the day before Jefferson’s birthday, and he will be delivering a lecture at the UVA School of Architecture. We assume he will be sporting a bow tie.
“Laurie Olin is one of the most revered landscape architects of our time,” Kim Tanzer, UVA’s architecture dean, told UVA Today. “He is an inspiring teacher, an extraordinarily talented and prolific designer, and an international thought leader in environmental design. From his drawings and writings to his built projects, he has set an amazing example for several generations of landscape architects. We are thrilled he will become the 2013 Thomas Jefferson Medalist in Architecture.”
Past architecture winners have included Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and Maya Lin. The other two recipients this year were Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III.
3D Printing’s Newest Champion: Newt Gingrich?!
Newt Gingrich with a Makerbot 3D printer. (Montage by AN)
While President Obama may have called out the economic potential of 3D printing in his State of the Union, one prominent Republican is trumpeting the new technology. In an article posted on the conservative website Human Events, former Speak of the House and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich claims, “the greatest difference in our generation may not be between liberals and conservatives, but between the pioneers of the future and prisoners of the past.” Among the technologies he praises, 3D printing is nothing less than “revolutionary.”
Gingrich has long been a fan of futurist thinking and advanced technology. He campaigned for a colony on the Moon, another place where 3D printing would come in handy:
3D printing may revolutionize logistics and save an amazing amount of money in the Defense Department. It may also revolutionize our capacity to go into space by allowing manufacturing on asteroids and the Moon with minimum weight requirements. 3D printing may also return manufacturing to the United States by eliminating the advantages of low cost mass produced production runs.
Winners of New York’s Telephone Booth Redesign Competition Announced
The Loop telephone booth proposal by FXFOWLE. (Courtesy FXFOWLE)
The “payphone”—like subway tokens—is a word that has increasingly become synonymous with an older New York. It’s been years since many of us have even stepped into, let alone used, one of those bulky, eerily abandoned and, let’s face it, uninviting, telephone booths peppering New York City’s sidewalks. But unlike subway tokens, the payphone is making a comeback.
On View> Cooper Union Exhibition Explores Environmental Design in Modernism
Moderl of Oscar Niemeyer’s Building for the Emprezas Graficas o Cruzeiro. (Courtesy Cooper Union)
Lessons From Modernism is the smartest and most compelling exhibition ever mounted in New York (and maybe anywhere) on the influence of nature and the environment in architectural design. This Cooper Union exhibition looks at and analyzes 25 iconic modern buildings from architects like Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Jean Prouvé, and Oscar Niemeyer. Conceived and curated by Cooper Union Professor Kevin Bone, Lessons From Modernism brilliantly demonstrates how these and other important modern architects integrated environmental concerns into their designs and “explores the extent to which these practices have produced environmentally performative and distinctive architecture.”
Architect’s Plan Would Add A Bike and Pedestrian Tube to San Diego’s Coronado Bay Bridge
Rendering of the proposed bike and pedestrian tube on the Coronado Bay Bridge. (Courtesy Domus Studio)
From the top of San Diego’s soaring 200-foot-tall Coronado Bay Bridge, architect Lew Dominy says you can see Mexico, but outside of special events when the bridge is closed to automobile traffic, pedestrians and bicyclists who might stop to admire the view are prohibited. Dominy, principal at San Diego-based domusstudio architecture, has a plan to build a tube through the distinctive archways of the Coronado’s support piers that would bring multi-modal access to the bridge.
Norman Foster Turns the World on Its Head With Mirrored Pavilion in France
(Nigel Young / Courtesy Foster+Partners)
Norman Foster has hoisted a slender sheet of mirror-polished stainless steel above a plaza on the edge of Marseille’s historic harbor, creating a new pavilion that reflects the activity of the bustling public space overhead. Foster + Partners’ “Vieux Port” pavilion officially opened over the weekend in the French city. The pavilion roof measures 150 feet by 72 feet, tapering at its perimeter to create the illusion of impossible thinness and is is supported by eight thin stainless steel columns inset from the pavilion’s edge.
Van on Van: Guggenheim Curator to Lead Van Alen Institute
David van der Leer. (David Heald / Courtesy BMW Guggenheim Lab)
David van der Leer, an associate curator of architecture and urban studies at the Guggenheim, has been appointed executive director of New York’s Van Alen Institute. He will take over in May. The Institute, which has existed for more than 100 years in various forms, is dedicated to improving the public realm through exhibitions, competitions, and programming initiatives in New York and beyond. Reached by email, van der Leer declined to elaborate on his plans for the Institute.
Groundbreaking Pushes Bjarke Ingels’ Hedonistic Sustainability Into Spotlight
Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy Plant. (Courtesy BIG)
Against all odds, BIG-founder Bjarke Ingels is actually building a mountain-slash-ski-slope-slash-waste-to-energy-power-plant in his hometown of Copenhagen. Announced in 2011, the project nearly stalled during the approval process, but officials in the Danish capital broke ground on the facility on Monday. Called the Amager Bakke Waste-to-Energy Plant, the structure represents Ingels’ concept of Hedonistic Sustainability, the notion that a sustainable building shouldn’t only be green, but should also be fun.
Related Breaks Ground on Two SHoP-Designed Towers at Hunters Point South
Rendering of Hunters Point South. (Courtesy SHoP Architects)
While everyone is transfixed on SHoP’s dramatic unveiling of its new plan for the Domino Sugar Factory on the Brooklyn waterfront, another SHoP-designed project began construction to the north on the Queens waterfront. The first two towers of the Hunters Point South development, what will be New York City’s largest affordable housing project since the 1970s, broke ground, and the $332-million first phase could accept its first residents as soon as 2014. The first phase includes 925 permanently-affordable housing units, 17,000 square feet of retail space, an already-under-construction 1,100-seat school, and a new five-acre park.
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