Krueck + Sexton Architects have been selected by the GSA Design Excellence Program for the firm’s design of the Federal Office Building in Miramar, Florida just outside of Miami. The 375,000 square foot building is designed with three goals in mind: reduce energy, resources and consumption, incorporate high performance buildings materials and systems and harvest renewable energy sources available on the site. Currently out to bid, the project is scheduled for completion in mid-2014.
Vitra presents an office of possibilities called Citizen Office – one in which employees control the way they interact with their work environment. Through the creative implementation of products and arrangements that stimulate the flexible use of space for each individual, employees can choose how their work will be most productive. This promotes physical and mental well-being and reflects positively on employee performance. According to Katharina Weisflog, Marketing & Public Relations Manager for Vitra, “feeling at ease makes people more motivated and productive” which is why at Citizen Office “the workers decide autonomously which rhythm and which form is right for their respective activity at which location”.
Click through for images of the working environment created within Citizen Office.
The Art Institute of Chicago is hosting a retrospective for Bertrand Goldberg, famed architect of Marina City (1959–1967), two cylindrical corncob-shaped commercial/residential towers. The exhibition contains a range of Goldberg’s work; it begins with his work at the Bauhaus and the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition and follows his career into his visionary plans of a postwar America. The exhibition will feature architectural drawings, models, photographs, along with graphic and furniture design.
Follow us after the break for images of Goldberg’s work.
To honor the 50th anniversary of Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Municipal Art Society of New York is hosting the Jane Jacobs Forum focusing on Women as Public Intellectuals. The forum will discuss three prominent female writers: Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) and Betty Friedan (The Female Mystique) all of whom challenged the status quo. Their voices contributed to discussions about urban planning, environmental responsibility and the role of women in society. The forum will be moderated by Robin Pogrebin with five other panelists who will address the circumstances of these women’s successes and the role of women engaged in public critique today.
Photographers allow us to see pieces of the world that we normally miss – historic events, fleeting expressions on people’s faces, the urban fabric of the places in which we live. Matt Lambros is a New York City-based photographer who does just that. He captures photographs of spaces that have long been abandoned to distant memories – concealed behind decaying walls and “No Trespassing” signs. The subjects of his lens are the abandoned theaters of a time when, as Lambros describes, theater-going was a celebrated social event.
For the past two years Lambros has been photographing theaters for “After the Final Curtain“, a personal project that is a collection of photographs of abandoned theaters throughout the United States. Thus far he has photographed approximately thirty theaters and has many more scheduled. He shares with us some of his favorites – join us after the break to see more…
Forget stairs, elevators and escalators, Carsten Höller is bringing a new method of circulation through the New Museum in New York City. It will take visitors down a three-storey, 102-foot tunnel, and may require helmets and elbow pads. What is this innovative invention? None other than the age-old, kid-friendly slide. This insallation is part of a survey exhibition of Höller ‘s work over the past twenty years in which he has explored “such themes as childhood, safety, love, the future, and doubt” in with an attitude towards his work that is “equal parts laboratory and test site.” [New Museum.org] Höller’s pieces explore human sensory experience and perception by creating environments and experiences that over-stimulate or deprive us of our senses. Read on for a preview of what to expect at the New Museum.
Cornell University and Stanford University are competing for the environmental affections of New York City’s public officials as part of a contest for the design of a school of applied sciences. The Bloomberg-supported competition will end on October 28th and it promises to dole out $400 million in land and infrastructure improvements to the winning school. Each school is running an impressive campaign with a well developed infrastructure of “green technology”. Read on for more about the proposals.
The space of sound created by Carlito Carvalhosa’s Sum of Days on exhibit at MoMA until November 14, 2011 is a sublime environment of billowing white fabric and the white noise of the atrium reflected upon itself. The psuedo-boundaries established by the translucent material that hang from the ceiling create a confined space of light and ambient sound – fleeting and ephemeral. Upon entering the exhibit, you pass an array of speakers affixed to the wall. They are emitting a low hum – the sound of voices and echoes that are distant, yet recognizable. It is unclear at first from where these sounds are originating, but behind the fabric bodies are drifting in and out of view. The curtains, which are constantly swaying, direct you in an ellipse to the center of the space where a single microphone hangs, picking up the noise within the exhibit and sending them to the dozens of speakers that hang at intervals inside the curtains, along the walls of the exhibit, and up through the galleries at the mezzanine levels that overlook the atrium.
Between 1989 and 2003, Liberia was ravaged by two civil wars. The fighting killed 300,000 – young and old alike. Currently, Liberia is 162nd in the Human Development Index and is still recovering from the devastation. The Bamboo School Project in Fendell on the outskirts of Monorovia, Liberia, led by Brazilian architect André Dal’Bó da Costa and film maker Vinícius Zanotti, seeks to establish one of the most important social and architectural programs for future development: education.
Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future by Matt Hern is a collection of ten essays about the future of city-living – or living in general – with very specific examples derived from his city of residence, Vancouver, and its relationship to the numerous cities he has visited. Hern addresses the successes and pitfalls of Vancouver, a relatively young city, through the critical lens of ten cities each of which is the point of departure for the essay.
Each city gives Hern insight into the structure of cities in the future with references to how Vancouver is dealing with its own development: its history, its urban identity, its division of public spaces, the privatization of the natural environment, its density and the activities that it wishes to foster for its inhabitants.
Come back after the break for more on this collection of essays.
The BMW Guggenheim Lab recently dismantled its mobile laboratory in New York City, and after two exciting months it is vital to reflect on the conversations and ideas that were sparked by its discussions, lectures, workshops and screenings. This impromptu laboratory / forum / classroom, free and open to the public, was situated on the corner of Houston Street and 2nd Avenue in a sliver of a lot in First Park in the Lower East Side of Downtown Manhattan. Since August 3rd it has hosted charged discussions focused on architecture, urban studies, environmental concerns and community participation.
On October 5th, the lab hosted the screening of The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream (2004), directed by Gregory Greene and produced by Barry Silverthorn. With brutal honesty it presents the threats of our current lifestyle, particularly the suburban lifestyle, and the displacement of the long established tradition of “American Dream” by way of its ecological ramifications.
“Architecture is not just one thing. It is not just an art. … It has to deal with the real situation; it has to do something good for the society. Architecture can provide a better life for people. Urbanization is the most current thing happening in China and it does greatly affect Chinese life.”
White Rock, a small surburb outside of Vancouver, Canada can now boast to having the largest green wall in North America thanks to Green Over Grey, Vancouver, Canada-based company that design and install green walls (also known as living walls). The once bare 3000 square foot wall is now a lush garden of a wide variety of plant life. It is located on the facade of the Semiahmoo Public Library and RCMP Facility.
This summer Coop Himmelb(l)au recieved two awards for two different buildings in Europe. The Dedalo Minosse International Prize was awarded for the firm’s design of BMW Welt in Munich on June 24, 2011 in Vicenza, Italy. According to the president of the Italian Association ALA, Bruno Gabbiani, who presented the award, the prize boosts “the quality of architecture looking at final result, analysing and focusing on project and constructive plan process and giving special attention to people who determine the success of the work: the architect and the client”. The awarded works, with Coop Himmelb(l)au among them, will be presented at the CISA, Cento Studi di Architecttura Palladio in Vicenza until September 18, 2011. Read more on this project here: BMW Welt / Coop Himmelb(l)au
Green Technology has given architects several things to rejoice about. It is helping designers become more responsible and conscious about the impacts of their buildings on the environment and the future; it is also sparking more creative approaches to design while engaging technological innovation. And perhaps most importantly, it is providing new jobs in the market for architects, engineers, researchers and manufacturers. So how can each of these professions benefit from this boosted interest in sustainability and renewable technology? Read on for tips on how and where to acquire a “green job”.
Gowanus Lowline Competition: Connections will be exhibiting winning entries from the Open Ideas Competition on Thursday, September 15th, 6:00 – 9:00 pm at the SET Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Check out the winners here: Gowanus Lowline Competition Winners. The competition was framed with the goal of inspiring projects that questions and confronted urban development in postindustrial sites. The open-ended program asked for a “pedestrian-oriented architecture” that engaged the canal and the watershed, long neglected as an industrial and manufacturing zone. This competition is a first of a series that focuses on the connections in and around the canal. As it is right now, the Gowanus Canal is just out of reach, and with its levels of contamination – which the EPA is begining to address – it may be for the best.
The EPA estimates that in 2009, the United States produced approximately 486 billion pounds of solid waste, most of which could have been recycled. And where did all that solid waste go? Right into our landfills, not too far from where we live and work. The same year, 34% of municipal solid waste was recycled (compared with only 10% in 1980) but the problem remains that, according to Chemical & Engineering News, most product-design methods used today are short-sighted. Most of these products were not designed with an end-of-life solution in mind, therefore most cannot be recycled or reused.
Read on to find out what this means for design after the break.
Courtesy of Meisel Spottswood Marina Management Co.
In late August, the Key West Truman Waterfront Advisory Board heard from three firms vying to design a future park on the Truman Water Front. The seven-person board ranked the three presenting firms as follows: Atkins (formerly Post Buckley Schuh and Jernigan), Bermello Ajamil & Partners Inc., and Parker/Mudgett/Smith Architects Inc.
For more information on the firms come back after the break.
