Scarpa is King of the World (Updated!)
Colorado Court (Courtesy Brooks & Scarpa)
[ Updated 02.08.2011: Added the interview video, a gallery of Scarpa's 502 Colorado project, and more. ]
You know you’ve hit the big time when you’re not only invited to appear on Oprah, but you’re interviewed by Leonard DiCaprio on Oprah. Such is the case with Larry Scarpa, of Santa Monica firm Brooks + Scarpa, who talked to Leo about his former firm Pugh + Scarpa’s 502 Colorado in Santa Monica, which DiCaprio calls the “first green affordable housing project in the country.”
Click through to watch the interview, see the project, and more!
Video> Amazingly BIG Fly-By at 57th Street Tower
(Courtesy BIG)
We told you this morning about new details surrounding the Durst Fetner Residential’s Bjarke Ingels-designed West 57th Street tower, but now there so much more to share. BIG’s Danish office has released additional renderings, detailing Manhattan’s surf-and-turf hybrid tower in all it’s mountainous glory. And you won’t want to miss the fly-by video, either!
Video> Fly Through the New Broad Museum
Public lobby at The Broad (Diller Scofidio + Renfro)
Yesterday, Sam Lubell detailed The Broad Foundation’s much-anticipated LA museum complete with all the renderings. Now, we have a video fly-through of the new Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed space and isn’t it something! You can really start to appreciate the porous nature of The Broad‘s structural concrete “veil” and the views inside and out it will offer. You also gain a sense of its street presence sitting alongside Frank Gehry’s Disney Hall, which appears rather large in comparison. What do you think?
The Coolest Video We’ve Ever Seen
Street artist Blu recently made LA headlines when his commissioned mural for MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary (featuring coffins draped by dollar bills) was subsequently whitewashed by MOCA itself. In a statement, MOCA called the mural, which was across from the LA Veterans’ Affairs Hospital, “inappropriate,” and the move has angered (to say the least) the street art community.
For those of you unfamiliar with Blu, please take a look at this video, called Big Bang Big Boom. There are no special effects, just stop-action animation; a dazzling combination of architecture and art. It’s unclear where he shot this piece, but he obviously needed to find an area with lots of empty, and largely abandoned, walls and lots. We’re blown away, so to speak.
So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (Courtesy Library of Congress)
Not many architects can boast being the subject of a pop song, but, then again, Frank Lloyd Wright was always something special. Back in 1969, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel eulogized the architect in the eponymous “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright,” appearing on their Bridge Over Troubled Water album. Garfunkel took an interest in Wright while studying architecture at Columbia and later challenged Simon to write the song while living in California.
While some argue that the song is really a cryptic breakup poem between the two singers on the verge of splitting, I’m sticking with architecture going mainstream. As the song says, “Architects may come and/Architects may go and/Never change your point of view./ When I run dry/I stop awhile and think of you.”
Friday Video: Little Plane Flies Through Big City
It’s Friday afternoon, so why not take a joy ride through the skies of New York? Gothamist uncovered this amazing video of a homemade RC airplane with a video camera attached to its nose making its way among the skyscrapers and bridges of New York. Makes for some pretty amazing footage!
Rose Window is Lower East Side’s Newest Star
It’s official. The multi-decade restoration of the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue is now truly complete with the recent installation of the new rose window that we told you about last February.
Artist Creates Amazing Breathing Wall From Trash Bags
One Hundred and Eight installation (Courtesy Nils Völker)
Artist Nils Völker has created a breathing wall comprised of trash bags and cooling fans. One Hundred and Eight selectively inflates a grid of, you guessed it, 108 bags to create a strikingly simple yet poetic result. The softness of the trash bags rising and falling is really something to see. The installation can also interact with the viewer, sensing a person’s presence before the wall. From the artist:
Although each plastic bag is mounted stationary the sequences of inflation and deflation create the impression of lively and moving creatures which waft slowly around like a shoal. But as soon a viewer comes close it instantly reacts by drawing back and tentatively following the movements of the observer. As long as he remains in a certain area in front of the installation it dynamically reacts to the viewers motion. As soon it does no longer detect someone close it reorganizes itself after a while and gently restarts wobbling around.
Can you imagine this idea translated to the scale of architecture? Cloud-like hallways – or even full facades – might actively follow passers by with a gently inflating and deflating rhythm. [ Via Today and Tomorrow. ]
Watch the video after the jump.
Video: Chinese Hotel Climbs Fifteen Stories in Six Days
Chinese hotel built in just six days (DifferentEnergy Video)
Would you stay in a 15-story structure built in six days? Through the magic of prefabrication, one new hotel in Changsha, China was built erector-set-style at just such a fantastic pace and recorded through time-lapse photography. The better term might be constructed in six days, however, as the building’s foundation and the factory-made pieces were already finished at the beginning of this architectural ballet, but the feat proves rather amazing nonetheless.
While you might have never heard of Changsha, China, home to the new Ark Hotel, the country’s 19th largest city mirrors the building’s rapid growth. Changsha tripled in size between the 1940s and 1980s and today contains an estimated population of 6.6 million.
While such a quickly constructed building might seem prone to shoddy construction, the Ark Hotel is reportedly built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake, meaning a quake over 1,000 times more powerful than January’s quake in Haiti. Call us skeptical, but we’d opt to be out of the building when disaster strikes.
Prefabrication, architecture’s “oldest new idea,” can have its green benefits. The Ark Hotel is thermally insulated and boasts only one percent construction waste. [ Via Gizmodo. ]
So You Want To Be An Architect? Think Twice
Oh, to be a wide-eyed and optimistic student ready to enter architecture school and stake his or her claim in the world of starchitecture. A humorous take on the soul-crushing, back-breaking, pain-inducing life of an architect. Be warned, some language NSFW.
Calatrava's Arch Towers Over Dallas
Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas under construction (Diana Darling)
Construction continues at Santiago Calatrava‘s bold Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in Dallas after it’s signature arch was topped off in June. The cable-stayed bridge is one of three planned as part of the Trinity River Corridor Project, which aims to redevelop the Trinity River and its floodplains, improving traffic flow, increasing parkland, and providing flood protection for the region.
Nouvel Sanguine About Midtown Guillotine
Jean Nouvel optimistic despite MoMA Tower's shortened stature (CBS News)
Jean Nouvel feels like his MoMA Tower has been put under the guillotine. The starchitect behind the lopped-off Midtown Manhattan proposal told CBS News this weekend that “It’s very French to cut the head, eh?” His 75-story tower would have rivaled the Empire State Building for supremacy over the New York skyline, standing 1,250 feet tall, but met significant opposition from neighbors worried the tower would drown their street in shadow.
City Planning Commission officials voted earlier this year to allow a shortened version of the tower – chopping off 200 feet of the Pritzker Prize winner’s design. Nouvel’s vision has been sent back to the drawing boards, but he says it’s “not in his character” to feel discouraged. Be sure to check out AN‘s cameo appearance at the end of the interview.
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