Anheuser-Busch Taps Plans For St. Louis Biergarten
A new outdoor “biergarten” at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis will be a first for any of the beer conglomerate’s 12 U.S. breweries. (Courtesy Anheuser-Busch)
An 18-foot, bright red “B” plucked from St. Louis’ Anheuser-Busch brewery will find a permanent home in the beer conglomerate’s first U.S. “biergarten.” The “B” is a relic of the neon Budweiser sign replaced by LEDs in February.
Located adjacent to the brewery’s tour center at 12th and Lynch streets, the beer garden joins what is already one of the region’s largest tourist attractions, drawing 350,000 visitors annually. Five of the dozen U.S. breweries are owned by A-B, which itself is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belgium-based A-B InBev, but the St. Louis location is so far the only one with a beer garden on tap.
At a New York City Planning Commission review session this week, the staff at New York City Department of City Planning recommended a 15-year limit on the permit extension for Madison Square Garden (MSG), which would be an “aggressive but realistic” time frame to reach an agreement on the future of the arena. This gives MSG a few more years to come up with a plan for relocation or extensive improvements than the proposed 10-year renewal recommended by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Look for an extended story on the fate of Madison Square Garden in the next print issue of AN. (Photo: Wally Gobetz / Flickr)
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.
Spontaneous Interventions To Spruce Up Chicago’s Millennium Park This Summer
(Courtesy MAS Studio)
Starting Memorial Day, Chicago’s Millennium Park will host the U.S. debut of a bright array of public design projects, many of which appeared at the 2012 Venice Biennale. Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good will feature 84 works, including more than a dozen for Chicago and several that also appeared in Venice.
The Bruner Foundation Announces Winners of the 2013 Gold and Silver Medals for Urban Excellence
Gold Medal Winner, Inspiration Kitchens (Courtesy of Inspiration Corporation/Steve Hall, Hendrich Blessing)
The Bruner Foundation Inc. has named the 2013 Gold and Silver Medalists of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA). For twenty-five years, the foundation has celebrated urban projects that stand out for their “contributions to the social, economic, and communal vitality of our nation’s cities” with this biennial award. A panel of six urbanists—including such experts as Cathy Simon, design principal at Perkins + Will, and Mayor Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City—selected the four Silver Medalists, and the recipient of the $50,000 Gold Medal, Inspiration Kitchens in Chicago. Read More
On View> Tracey Emin’s Roman Standard Alights in Petrosino Square
Detail of Roman Standard. (Courtesy Lehmann Maupin)
What: Tracey Emin’s Roman Standard
Where: Petrosino Square (Spring and Lafayette Streets, NYC)
When: May 10 to September 8, 2013
This summer, Nolita’s Petrosino Square in New York will feature Roman Standard, a thirteen-foot-tall pole with a solitary bronze bird perched at the top. From the ground, the towering sculpture by Tracey Emin, sponsored by Art Production Fund, White Cube, and Lehmann Maupin in collaboration with NYC Parks & Recreation, is so lifelike that onlookers may mistake it for a real bird. According to the artist, the figure is a sign of “hope, faith, and spirituality” that should serve as a source of reflection. The showcase will be on view from May 10 to September 8, 2013.
Free No More: Cooper Union Trustees Choose Tuition
Students protested tuition during a lock-in last year. (Michael Fleshman / Flickr)
After nearly two years of intense debate and student protests, Cooper Union has announced that it will end its 155-year tradition of tuition-free education—a hallmark of the prestigious institution. The school’s board of trustees said in a statement that budget-cutting measures could not relieve the $12 million annual deficit it has on its hands. The new policy will cut the full tuition-free scholarship to 50 percent for the undergraduate class beginning in fall 2014. Depending on financial need, a student could pay nothing or up to $20,000. Industrialist Peter Cooper founded the school in 1859 on the premise of providing a first-rate, free education to the working classes.
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.
Wednesday> Architect Srdjan Weiss Examines Viennese Housing at the Austrian Cultural Forum
New low-density housing in a Vienna suburb.
The exhibit, The Vienna Model: Housing for the 21st Century City, currently on view at the Austrian Cultural Forum, is meant to provoke a discussion with housing advocates in this country. The Forum will host weekly tours of the exhibit by a variety of housing experts from various academic and professional fields. This Wednesday, the tour will be led by Srdjan Weiss, a Serbian-born architect and theorist based in New York City, with broad knowledge of the subject of housing in this country and Eastern Europe. The tour will be based on Weiss’ parallel living experience and expertise in housing design from former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia.
Join us for four days of hands-on digital design and fabrication workshops and at DesignX, hosted by the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, and earn your AIA CES credits! From May 18-21, you can join the industry’s leading experts at the Jacob Javits Center to get your hands dirty with the latest in web-based design apps, parametric design, and interactive modeling services. Stop by Saturday to get the lowdown on 3D printed fabrics from Francis Bitoni, the man behind Dita Von Teese’s miraculously printed gown. Learn how 3D printing is transforming the textile and fashion industries, and get started with the fundamentals of Rhino3D—the world’s leading modeling software. The workshop will cover the basics for creating your design, manipulating geometries, and preparing your textile model for 3D printing. Visit deisgnX.is to reserve your space now, and for more information of the workshops and events.
Bowery Street Art Too Provocative for IDEAS CITY?
The architect of the Bowery Mission John Young of Cryptome was invited by its director Matt Krivich in March to display an art work for the institution as part of The New Museum‘s just concluded IDEAS CITY street festival. Cryptome was restoring the mission’s underground vaults at the time and in August of 2012 put up a wall drawing by Deborah Natsios, a principal of the firm, on the street front scaffolding called Sidewalk Vaults. This original rendering was an illusion to the long history of the vaults as an important structural element of the Bowery, the city’s oldest thoroughfare. Natsios agreed to create a work and produced a series of eight panels in the style of Sidewalk Vaults that she called Partywall. This work was meant to question the relationship between the Mission and its neighbor the New Museum and the rapidly changing character of the Bowery.
From the Floor: Installation Design Showcase at Coverings 2013
A tile-centric vignette designed by Michael Nieswander and Margaret Nysewander of ASD Inc. was installed at Coverings 2013 over a period of four days. (Lagniappe Studio)
Trade shows are no longer simply product exhibitions: Education and networking sessions have become essential components to a show’s success. Coverings has expanded this formula to include installation vignette’s that, built over the course of four days during the show, demonstrate the versatility and variety of applications for ceramic tile. The Installation Design Showcase has paired four local, Atlanta-based design firms with four installation teams that have achieved the National Tile Contractors Association (NTCA) Five Star Recognition, and have been certified by the Ceramic Tile Education Foundation. Now in its fifth year, the teams will produce a bar/lounge; a hotel lobby; an in-patient room in a women’s birthing center; and a master bathroom, all designed to demonstrate the design possibilities of tile and stone.
“These rooms are not all settings in which you would necessarily expect to see tile,” said Bart Bettiga, executive director, NTCA. “Above all, the Showcase highlights just how important the ongoing designer/installer partnership is to a successful project. Bringing the field to life in this way is another example of what makes Coverings a unique and valuable experience.”
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