Johnson Fain and Rios Clementi Hale Studios have been selected to transform Philip Johnson's 1981 Crystal Cathedral, originally a Protestant mega-church, to make it more in keeping with its new, Catholic identity.
The Cathedral, which had filed for bankruptcy in October 2010, was bought in early 2012 by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. Earlier this month, the architects were chosen for the renovation: Johnson Fain will focus on the interior, while Rios Clementi Hale Studios will oversee the masterplan of its 34-acre campus.
Favela Painting: Rio Cruzeiro, realized in 2008. Image Courtesy of Favela Painting's Kickstarter Page
Dutch duo Haas and Hahn gained fame in 2005 for painting a few houses of Rio Janeiro’s favelas in a palate of bright hues. Now they’re back again, this time with a Kickstarter Campaign to raise the funds to paint the rest of the favela in the hopes of further transforming this crime-ridden community.
Capitol Rotunda. Image Courtesy of Architect of the Capitol
The AIA President, Mickey Jacob, FAIA has just released the following statement on the US government's historic shutdown: “The design and construction industry is slowly recovering from one of the worst economic crises in modern history. The last thing we need is the self-inflicted wound that can potentially further damage the economy." To find out just how the shutdown could affect you, check out the AIA's FAQ page here.
Before you head out for the weekend, check out this awesome new video we found on Gizmodo that visualizes what Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia could look like in the year 2026 (hint: pretty gosh-darned amazing). Happy Friday everyone!
Videos
At the Clinton Global Initiative (l to r) Robert Ivy, FAIA; New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu; Cameron Sinclair, co-founder Architecture for Humanity; Former U.S. President Bill Clinton; Martyn Parker, Chairman Global Partnerships at Swiss Re; Alex Karp, co-founder Palantir; Judith Rodin, Ph.D, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. Image Courtesy of AIA
The AIA has decidedly found its latest buzz word: Resiliency.
Just this week at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, former-president Bill Clinton announced the American Institute of Architects' participation in the 100 Resilient Cities Commitment: an initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation to provide 100 cities with "chief resilience offers," responsible for developing and financing new, resilient urban infrastructures. So far, over 500 cities have requested to participate; on December 3rd, the Rockefeller Foundation will announce the winning cities.
Along with Architecture for Humanity, the AIA will then train those cities' resilience officers, "architects in their communities," by creating "five Regional Resilient Design Studios that build on our profession’s collective expertise in helping communities recover in the wake of major disasters."
In his TedxTalk, Australian-born, Tasmanian-raised architect Ross Langdon begins by reading from the book The Rabbits, a children's tale which depicts Australia's colonizers as an invasive, destructive species: rabbits. "I realized I didn't want to be a rabbit any more," Langdon explains. "So I thought it might be better to be like a chameleon, able to adapt and change and blend with our environment, rather than conquer it."
The original plans proposed converting the space under Hungerford Bridge, used by skateboarders for years, into a new riverside area for urban arts. In response to skateboarders' outcry, Southbank Centre has decided to alter the design of the space so that skateboarders' needs will be taken into account. The Centre commissioned Iain Borden, skater and Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and Rich Holland, skater and architectural designer at Floda31 to prepare a draft design brief earlier this summer; now, three architectural practices with skate-space experience have responded to the brief with three potential designs.·
An expert panel of skaters, including Borden, Holland, and film-maker Winstan Whitter, will then be responsible for "selecting the architect they’d most like to work with, finalising the design brief and developing the design."
Apple Store at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California. Image Courtesy of Wall St Cheat Sheet
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the architectural firm behind Apple's iconic 5th Avenue store, has returned to the tech brand to design their latest store in Palo Alto, California.
Although the new store maintains the glass storefront typical of Apple, the new store - which will be the prototype for stores opening next year in Portland, Oregon and Aix-en-Provence, France - distinctively features a "floating" roof design as well as a stone wall that hides half the store.
The store's opening may be in preparation for the increase in sales that will follow the unveiling of two new iphone models (today, purportedly).
More info on the new Apple store design, after the break...
Why is the "Walkie Talkie" melting cars? Well, according to its architect, Rafael Viñoly, it's not because of the building's shape or material, but rather "the superabundance of consultants and subconsultants" that UK law requires.
As reported by BD Online, Viñoly admitted that the building's unusually hot solar reflection (or "death ray," as many headlines are calling it) had been predicted early in the design process; however, it was thought it would only reach a temperature of 36 degrees, "but in fact it’s 72."
Viñoly then went on, placing blame on the consultant-heavy nature of design in the UK: “One of the problems that happens in [...London] is the superabundance of consultants and sub consultants that dilute the responsibility of the designers until you don’t know where you are.”
The U.S. Department of State has selected Storefront for Art and Architecture and PRAXIS Journal to organize the US Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architectural Biennale, “Fundamentals,” curated by Rem Koolhaas.
The US exhibition, titled, OfficeUS: Criticism by Remaking, will be curated by Eva Franch i Gilabert, Ana Miljački and Ashley Schafer.
Gund Hall (home of the Graduate School of Design) during Harvard Graduation. Year 2007. Image Courtesy of Wikimedia User Tebici
Every year thousands of young hopefuls attend architecture school, entering with the expectation that, after their years of struggle and long hours in studio, they’ll come out the other end as legitimate architects doing legitimate architecture.
How quickly they must abandon that unreasonable idea.
From CAD monkeys to baristas, most architecture grads are not doing what they thought they would when they submitted their first tuition checks. And, to add insult to injury, those tuition checks only multiplied, leaving our grads in thousands of dollars of debt.
Surely there must be another way. PAVE, a kind of Kickstarter that connects individuals to investors, offers—if not a solution—then a very intriguing alternative.
An inspiring little video from the folks at Virginia Tech that will make you want to get your designer hands dirty - today. The video follows the third-years of 2013 as they build their final project: a bridge. As the co-founder of the lab, Kieth Zawistowski, eloquently says at the video's end, "It doesn't really matter if you ever want to actually build something yourself again, what's important, in this case, is that you've seen the entirety of the process, from conception to realization." If you want to see more from design/buildLAB, check out the project completed by last year's students (which features in the last few minutes of the video): Masonic Ampitheatre.
The July Architecture Billings Index (ABI) has jumped to 52.7, up more than one full point from June's 51.6, indicating "acceleration in the growth of design activity nationally." As any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings, July's score reflects an increase in demand for design services; this increase was seen most dramatically in the area of new projects, which jumped from 62.6 in June to 66.7 in July.
Despite the optimistic results, AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, noted the uneven nature of the growth, and warned that "it is premature to declare the entire sector has entered an expansion phase.”
More statistics from July's ABI, after the break...
In honor of World Photo Day, we've rounded up the 13 architectural photographers who have been impressing us most in 2013. From industry heavyweights, like Iwan Baan and Thomas Mayer, to relative new comers, such as Miguel de Guzmán and Fran Parente, these photographers have traveled the world, getting the architectural shots we only dream of. See all 13, after the break...
Although critiquing the exhibit for some "critical flaws" - namely the choice of theme and the lack of explanatory text - Alexandra Lange's review for The New Yorker praises the MoMA's Le Corbusier exhibit, “An Atlas of Modern Landscapes,” as a "must-see" thanks to its varied displays, which show "the terrific span of Le Corbusier's career in time, space, and scale [...] If current architects take anything from the exhibition [...] it should be the power of those big, gestural drawings, where visual and verbal argument vividly come together." Read the rest of Lange's critique at The New Yorker.
As architects, it's often difficult for us to accept that the users who inhabit our buildings will modify the design in ways we never intended (or wanted). Of course, one can usually reasonably suspect that, at the very least, an inhabitant will never do this: a Professor Zhang has spent the last six years building a two-story luxury villa (complete with surrounding rocks and trees) on the roof of a Beijing apartment building. Unfortunately for Zhang, however, who legally bought the penthouse apartment, but never requested the planning permission to subsequently doze it and re-build another structure entirely, the Authorities will demolish the villa in the next 15 days, claiming that it places a dangerous amount of extra weight upon the building and increases "the susceptibility of the construction to earthquakes or lightning strikes." Story via the Shanghaiist.
Despite not winning the "People's Choice Award," HASSELL and Herzog de Meuron have, with a unanimous vote, won the competition to design the Flinders Street Station in Victoria, Australia.
As the Guardian reports, Victoria's premier, Denis Napthine, noted that the proposal displayed a "beautiful and compelling integration of aspects of the original station design [...] The design was judged to offer the best experience for rail travellers with a layout that was spacious, comfortable and easy to get around."
Nevertheless, the "People's Choice" poll, which garnered more than 19,000 participants, had preferred a proposal from a team from the University of Melbourne: Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Santiago Medina. Find an image from this proposal, after the break...
