The New World Symphony designed by Frank Gehry may rank as one of the architects most important works. The New World Symphony located in South Beach is evolutionary in the same way that Gehry’s Santa Monica House or Guggenheim Museum Bilbao are now monuments that mark different periods in the architect’s career. America’s most famous Canadian architect has crafted a pivotal work that will determine the future creative direction of Gehry and his office. The New World Symphony represents a much more restrained Gehry than we are used to seeing.
When going to Miami this weekend I was excited at the prospect of seeing my first Richard Meier building. Meier was one of the first architects that I was introduced to in my architectural education, and have always had an appreciation for his ability to take a consistent formal language and evolve it with the completion of each new project. The project pictured to the left is a rendering of the Beach House in South Beach Miami, Florida. The developers of the project, which there are many, never miss an opportunity to tell you that the project is designed by Richard Meier.
Everybody loves the work of Renzo Piano, even his bad buildings. Until now, monographs and texts depicting the work of Piano were both expensive and outdated, highlighting popular older works of the RPBW. Piano: Renzo Piano Building Workshop 1966-2008
Remember every year in undergraduate school how it seemed that there was always one kid who gets the bright idea to create a ramping system, which serves as the major vertical circulation system in his design? And do you remember when that one kid is told during a critique that his design does not meet the requirements of the building codes? He is also told that ramp slopes cannot exceed 1:20, and that the maximum run without a 5 feet landing is 30 feet? Do you remember what happens after he stares blankly at his drawing and realizes that his design does not work? In case you forgot, he comes back the next week with a design that he claims fully satisfies the requirements of the building code.
Rape space is a term that I first encountered while in attendance at the University of Cincinnati’s undergraduate architecture program. The term rape space was spoken by faculty members with the same frequency as other designer-ly words such as form and hierarchy. If you have not yet guessed, a rape space is a bad thing, and no student ever wants to be credited with creating a rape space or hearing that phrase during a critique. The exact origin of this term remains unknown to me, and I am unsure if this term has populated the architectural vocabulary of other respected architectural education programs.
DesignIntelligence proves every year that they are the architectural community’s greatest oxymoron with the publication of their highly suspect and highly controversial ranking of accredited undergraduate and graduate architectural programs in the country. If you have had any doubts about the credibility of DesignIntelligence’s yearly ranking of architectural programs, you are really going to love this. I received an email from a friend a couple of days ago regarding the announcement of the new 2009 Design Futures Council Fellows. I did not care at first, because I did not even know what the Design Futures Council was.
Images of contemporary architecture do not necessarily come to mind when thinking about the architecture of Orlando. While Orlando is not the architectural capital of the United States, there are actually a great number of buildings in the Orlando area that have been designed by architects of varying styles, different eras, and degrees of fame. Although great examples of contemporary architecture do exist in Orlando, I did not think that I would find a high design contemporary structure at the mall, but that is exactly what I found shortly after moving to this city.
Glass block is a great building material; I believe that if Louis Kahn would have had the opportunity he would have made his arches out of glass block and not bricks. Don’t believe me check out his unbuilt design for the Memorial to Six Million Jewish Martyrs. When is the last time that you asked glass block, what do you want? Has anyone ever? Glass block is one of those materials that have only had part of its potential exploited. Before I die, I’ll have to build a glass archway as a tribute to the deceased master architect, but until then let’s look at some glass block details.
It’s not just important to be a talented renderer, developing a great set of resources is essential, and allows you to spend your time on design rather than modeling a lamp. Time spent searching the internet for the perfect sky could be better spent developing a stronger proposal in order to win a new commission or simply meet a deadline. This posting contains many high resolution (3,000 pixels wide) images of skies that are open source and free to use. Over the years I have developed a plethora of graphic resources that I keep in my satchel (LaCie Little Disk 500 GB Portable Hard Drive, designed by Sam Hecht
If you live in the U.S. and have not heard of the company Soprema, don’t worry because you probably are not alone. Soprema is a European based company that was founded in 1908 and they have recently entered the U.S. market. Soprema is responsible for the production and manufacture of many great roofing products which offer great performance benefits available at competitive rates, compared to traditional roofing products used in the U.S. The most innovative product that Soprema has developed is Soprasolar. Soprasolar offers an alternative ‘green’ roofing option for designers and architects seeking to integrate sustainable building strategies into the design of buildings with flat roofs.