PROFILE> Kevin McClellan + Andrew Vrana Decode Parametric Facades, July 27
Winning 2011 entry by Vlad Tenu by TEX-FAB's 2.0 and REPEAT competition.
Kevin McClelland and Andrew Vrana of TEX-FAB, the Texas-based fabrication think tank, are also pioneering members of the Digital Fabrication Alliance—an international network of digital fabricators, academics, architect, designers, and developers of hardware and software with a goal of sharing information and knowledge. The TEX-FAB partners bring their expertise into the classroom at Texas A&M, and also host the annual REPEAT conference and competition.
On July 27 McClellan and Vrana will delve into the making of such facades in “Parametric Facade Tectonics,” a special workshop that is part of AN‘s upcoming conference Collaboration: the Art and Science of Building Facades, taking place July 26-27 in San Francisco.
Adaptive Reuse, Aisle 7: How An Empty Big Box Can Give Rise to Community
THE MCALLEN MAIN LIBRARY, ONCE A WALMART. (IMAGE COURTESY MEYER SCHERER & ROCKCASTLE)
An average Walmart tops 100,000 square feet. With more than 600 stores nationwide, the company has a mighty footprint. And when a store goes under, it can be somewhat of a crater in the local real estate market.
One Walmart in McAllen, Texas—about 15 miles from the Mexican border—got a major facelift from Minneapolis-based Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, who also have an office in Marysville, Md. They won an ALA/IIDA Library Interior Design Award for their work converting the defunct big box store into a library.
Surface Deep: Undulating Installation Invites Visitors to Climb Atop Its Mossy Nooks
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Asensio_mah & Harvard’s Graduate School of Design’s moss-covered installation is architecture on the cellular level
When visitors stroll through Quebec’s Redford Gardens, the first of many large installations they come upon is Surface Deep, an undulating, moss-covered structure designed by international architecture firm asensio_mah in collaboration with students from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. It was built last summer, but with this year’s Metis International Garden Festival, Surface Deep is once again getting major foot traffic in the most literal sense of the word. Surface Deep is a mountable, climbable series of snaking panels that invites visitors to explore it in its entirety, from its long, sweeping form to its small, mossy nooks.
Tex-Fab Competition Proposals Harness “Research Through Fabrication”
"Latent Methods" explores the possibilities of shingles. (Courtesy of Tex-Fab)
While a winner has not yet been selected, Tex-Fab’s new APPLIED: Research Through Fabrication competition has already produced interesting results as four semi-finalists emerge. The competition solicited proposals that best displayed “research through computational fabrication.” The four proposals selected in the first round of adjudication address acoustics, structure, construction, material, and surface effects, each using on digital modeling and fabrication techniques. The proposals, described in more detail below, will be shown at ACADIA 2012 this October at the Synthetic Digital Ecologies conference, hosted at the California College of the Arts.
Unveiled> Yale-NUS Campus in Singapore
The new Yale-NUS campus in Singapore by Pelli Clarke Pelli. (Courtesy Pelli Clarke Pelli)
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects have released renderings today of the Yale-NUS campus which has begun construction in Singapore. The new institution, offering a four-year liberal arts curriculum to one thousand students, is a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore. To design the new campus, the architects have taken the distinct cultural backgrounds of the founding institutions as a reference for the design of the campus.
Blues Documentarian’s Historic Home Restored in Nashville
JOHN WESLEY WORK HOUSE AT FISK UNIVERSITY BEFORE RESTORATION (LEFT) AND AFTER. (COURTESY MOODY•NOLAN)
A Victorian house once home to Nashvillian composer and ethnomusicologist John W. Work III received a full restoration from Columbus, Ohio-based Moody•Nolan, the nation’s largest African-American owned and operated architecture firm, in 2011.
That project recently won three awards: a Citation of Excellence from the Associated General Contractors, a Certificate of Merit from the State Historical Commission and an Honor Award from the Metro Nashville Historical Commission.
A Lifeline in Sight for Orange County Great Park?
The OC Great Park's North Lawn (Sam Lubell)
One of the biggest casualties since the death of California Redevelopment has been the Orange County Great Park. The 1,360-acre expanse on the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station near Irvine has seen more than $1 billion in funds redirected to other state priorities, putting its future in severe jeopardy.
One (very) partial solution just emerged, according to the LA Times: developer Fivepoint Communities would more than double the number of residences surrounding the park in exchange for chipping in $200 million to the city of Irvine to aid with park construction.
Of course that’s just a small fraction of what’s needed, leaving many wondering if the park, which is not even one-tenth complete, will ever be finished. But City Council member Larry Agran disagrees: ”The fact of the matter is, the Great Park will be built. It may take longer than 20, 25 years, maybe 30 or 40 years. We’re making progress, and major construction is underway right now at the Great Park.”
Counter to what one might expect, bike-sharing programs might actually help fuel bike sales, according to bike shop owners in Washington, D.C. Since it launched with 1500 bikes, Capital Bikeshare has encouraged people to try cycling, made roads safer and more bike friendly, and, ultimately, encouraged people to get their own set of wheels. The shortage of shared bikes and docking spaces–due to so much demand–is one thing encouraging individual ownership. “When I started riding Bikeshare, there was a phase when I’d see another person and we’d say hey, Bikeshare! This is awesome!” said on bikeshare member. “Now I see them and I feel like I need to pedal faster to get to the dock before them.”
New York CityVision 2012 Competition Results Announced
Second Prize: E. Pieraccioli – C. Granato (Courtesy CityVision)
The New York CityVision competition posed the question: “If the future is gone, what past is expecting us?” Sponsored by Rome-based architecture journal and laboratory CityVision, the competition aimed to find links between our past, present, and future cities. The winners of the 2012 competition speculated on possible futures for New York while commenting on the effects of today’s development with a mix of humor, anxiety, and a bit of eccentricity.
Shortlist to Replace Los Angeles’ Iconic Sixth Street Bridge Revealed
Sixth Street Viaduct (John Humble)
We learn from our friends at Curbed that Los Angeles’ Sixth Street Viaduct Competition, replacing one of the most famous—and fragile—landmarks in LA, has a shortlist. The 3,500-foot-long, art deco span was recently deemed beyond repair, and the winner will build a $401 million, cable-stayed bridge in its place. The teams, all present at an LA Bureau of Engineering meeting last night, are AECOM, ARUP, HNTB, Parsons, Parsons Brinckerhoff, and SOM. Three of those teams will present their plans in September, with a winner chosen in October.
New York City Targets Buildings’ Heating Oil to Improve Air Quality
Hazardous smoke rises from a building using heavy oils. (Courtesy Environmental Defense Fund/Isabelle SIlverman)
What’s your building burning? Some 10,000 buildings in New York City are stuck on the dirty stuff—heavy heating oils—to keep warm, which is polluting the air across the city. But as of the first of this month, the city has begun to phase out these feuls in favor of more environmentally-friendly and health-conscious alternatives. As part of plaNYC’s initiative to remake New York City with the cleanest air of any major U.S. city, NYC Clean Heat aims to achieve a 50 percent reduction in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by the end of 2013.
The Times is reporting that four finalists are competing to build a new tower at 425 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan: Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Richard Rogers. AN previously reported an international roster of 11 firms were in the running. The new tower could be the first of many in the area, if the Department of City Planning’s proposal to up-zone the area is approved.
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