Today’s News - Thursday, November 14, 2019
● ANN feature: Mathias Agbo, Jr.: Lesson Plan #6: Teacher, Don't Teach Them Nonsense: Reforming Architecture's Broken Education: A curriculum overhaul alone cannot fix the problem; rather, the practice of architecture must first reform itself for any pedagogical reforms to make sense.
● Cramer considers "the future of architecture education is the future of civilization," and calls on architects to "read the drafts and comment on the constitutional documents of architecture school accreditation" that "are up for grabs, but only until Nov. 22."
● We lose Shoji Sadao, "the quiet hand two 20th-century visionaries," Bucky and Noguchi - he "was an architectural samurai - he understood them both and added to their mix, without need or benefit of self-glory."
● "Venice is on its knees," says the mayor, as more than 80% of the city is under water (up to 6+ feet!) - he blames climate change - Saint Mark's Basilica "was flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years - but the fourth in the last 20" (videos & photos - heartbreaking!).
● A new study by the FIU Sea Rise Solutions Center has Floridians considering changing the building code to require elevating coastal buildings an additional foot - "despite waffling political rhetoric, the people who plan and build in coastal Florida consider the threat of sea rise very real."
● Shaw hopes L.A. doesn't "become New York - it doesn't need global architecture to maintain its position as a worldwide force - but red flags are emerging. Don't let it succumb to the pressures of 'global architecture.' Don't let Boyle Heights become Hudson Yards."
● Nelson brings us the soon-to-open Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art & Design, carved out of a former high school (Elliott & Rudolph buildings) that "showcases how a museum's architecture can both shape a space and stand up as its own work of art" (Terry Riley's stints at the Miami Art Museum and MoMA helped).
● Welton cheers the Del Mar, California, Civic Center that includes more public space than the town hall and offices - the city fathers "are savvy thinkers. After turning down a starchitect or two, they turned to the lesser-known Miller Hull Partnership and got much more."
● Cornell researchers have released Urbano, a free software that "employs data, metrics and an easy-to-use interface to help planners and architects add and assess walkability features - a tool that works well with the design process, which can be fast, messy and circuitous."
● Sussman & Ward explain "why buildings need 'eyes,'" and the biometric software that "predicts where people look 'at-first-glance' - it does not matter if the 'face' in front of us is an inanimate building facade, it's going to check it out."
● The Cooper Union launches the Student Work Collection Database, showcasing the school's "experimental, influential approach to architectural education" by documenting "more than 4,500 projects by over 1,500 students from the 1930s through the present."
● ICYMI: ANN feature: Duo Dickinson: The End of Design Movements: We are in the greatest time of change since the Industrial Revolution. When things change, Movements happen. But is the Era of Movements over?
Weekend diversions:
● Jacobs parses both the Detroit and Chicago Biennials: "They pose more questions than they answer about the role architecture plays in society. The combined effect was to make me think that the best way to tell architectural stories is in situ, in the places where architecture happens (or fails to happen)."
● Moore mulls "Hello, Robot" at the V&A Dundee, that "raises more questions than it answers. Its aim is less to stargaze the future than to question what is actually going on, now that smartphones have in effect made people into cyborgs" - it is "cautiously positive - an intelligent exhibition on an important subject."
● Bucknell parses both "Moving to Mars" at London's Design Museum, and "Designs for Different Futures" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that "prod at the ethics, anxieties, and material culture of humanity as we gear towards a future interplanetary society."
● "Architectures on the waterfront" at the Maritime Museum of Barcelona features 68 works from the EU Mies Award archive that "bears witness to how the transformation of waterfronts has been fundamental both in large metropolises and in small urban centers."
● The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul offers the outdoor exhibition "Architecture and Heritage: Unearthing Future," featuring work by five architectural firms based in Asia.
● Starting tomorrow, "Postcommodity: "The Point of Final Collapse" will use data from the sinking Millennium Tower in a sound installation at the San Francisco Art Institute that will broadcast to North Beach and downtown every day at 5:00 pm until the tower "is fixed or torn down."
Page-turners:
● Assemble's Jane Hall spotlights eight female trailblazers included in "Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women": "It is a necessary political act to name women as authors of buildings."
● Korody has some issues with Colomina's "X-Ray Architecture": It "is devoid of the evaluative testimony of any ill, injured, disabled, or dying body not belonging to an architect, a striking omission" - it "might have benefited from a closer examination of the relationship between ill, injured, or disabled bodies and a built environment that excludes them."
● Hill brings us eyefuls of Fueyo's illustrations from Oppenheim's "Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains," an "extremely fun romp through 15 films," and "a visual feast."
● Eyefuls of Herwig's photographs of "opulent details" in "Soviet Metro Stations" that, along with Hatherly's introduction, "gives an insight into the array of political influences and architectural styles seen during the Soviet era."
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ANN feature: Mathias Agbo, Jr.: Lesson Plan #6: Teacher, Don't Teach Them Nonsense: Reforming Architecture's Broken Education: A curriculum overhaul alone cannot fix the problem; rather, the practice of architecture must first reform itself for any pedagogical reforms to make sense.- ArchNewsNow.com |
Ned Cramer: The Future of Architecture Education Is the Future of Civilization: The constitutional documents of architecture school accreditation are up for grabs, but only until Nov. 22. Please, read the drafts, and comment on them: Three areas of concentration leap to my mind, namely preparation for practice, commitment to equity, and action on climate change....the Venn diagram of prosperity, justice, and sustainability totally overlaps...Architects have the power to keep this planet, our only planet, habitable. I can’t think of a more valuable and necessary focus for architectural education.- Architect Magazine |
Obituary: Shoji Sadao, Quiet Hand Behind Two Visionaries, 92: An architect, [he] translated the ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi to the real world: Fuller was pursuing out-there ideas in design and architecture, and it often fell to Sadao to do the practical work of implementing them...He helped turn Noguchi’s concepts...into reality...“Shoji was an architectural samurai - he understood them both and added to their mix, without need or benefit of self-glory.” -- Alec Nevala-Lee; Peter Floyd/Geometrics Inc.; Fuller & Sadao Architects; Thomas T.K. Zung/Buckminster Fuller, Sadao & Zung Architects- New York Times |
Venice mayor declares state of emergency after 'apocalyptic' floods: "Venice is a wounded city" Venice Archbishop said: Thoroughfares were turned into raging torrents, stone balustrades were shattered, boats tossed ashore and gondolas smashed against their moorings as the lagoon tide peaked at 6 feet 2 inches...mayor was quick to blame climate change for the disaster. "Venice is on its knees"...Saint Mark's Square...was submerged by more than one meter of water...Saint Mark's Basilica was flooded for the sixth time in 1,200 years - but the fourth in the last 20...More than 80% of Venice was under water...flood barrier...Mose has been plagued by...corruption, cost overruns and prolonged delays. [Reuters]- NBC News |
Florida’s building code doesn’t take sea rise into account. That could change: ...required any new construction along the coast to elevate buildings a whole foot...a new study suggests that may not be enough and calls for yet another foot...despite waffling political rhetoric...the people who plan and build in coastal Florida consider the threat of sea rise very real..."It does not appear FEMA is updating their flood maps soon enough or fast enough"...biggest barrier to adding more freeboard is cost..."Florida’s got some rude awakenings that there are no good, cheap, easy answers to adapting to climate change.” -- Florida International University/FIU Sea Rise Solutions Center- Miami Herald |
Matt Shaw: Los Angeles is at a crossroads - don’t let it become New York: ...it doesn’t need global architecture to maintain its position as a worldwide force. How it defines itself as a physical place is still up for grabs...L.A. has a unique architectural culture and urban fabric, but red flags are emerging...The biggest red flag might be the shortlist for the La Brea Tar Pits project...a truly odd and troubling list...[the city] doesn’t need the continental, polite, same-as-everywhere architecture...what would be provincial is thinking that it is necessary to look outward for world-class architecture...Don’t let it succumb to the pressures of global capital and “global architecture.” Don’t let Boyle Heights...become Hudson Yards. -- BIG -Bjarke Ingels Group; Herzog & de Meuron; Frank Gehry; WEISS/MANFREDI; Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Dorte Mandrup; Thom Mayne; Barbara Bestor,;Michael Maltzan; SelgasCano; Arata Isozaki; Christopher Hawthorne- The Architect's Newspaper |
Tim Nelson: A Former High School Turned Art Museum Gives Way to Stunning Gallery Spaces: The Sarasota Art Museum [of Ringling College of Art & Design] showcases how a museum’s architecture can both shape a space and stand up as its own work of art: ...a testament to the benefits of close, intuitive collaboration between art curator and architect...makes use of Leo Elliott’s 1926 Collegiate Neo-Gothic building, [and] the adjacent, more modernist 1960 Paul Rudolph construction...result is a diverse array of gallery spaces...artists...“so excited about the quirkiness of the space"... -- Terry Riley/K/R Architects; Lawson Group Architects- Architectural Digest |
J. Michael Welton: In Del Mar, an Iconic Civic Center: What city government in its right mind would decide to build a civic center with a 3,000-square-foot town hall, 12,000 square feet of offices - and 20,000 square feet of public space dedicated to fundraisers and musical events? ...the one in Del Mar, California...These guys are savvy thinkers. After turning down a starchitect or two, they turned to the lesser-known Miller Hull Partnership...and got much more. -- Mike Jobe; Spurlock- Architects + Artisans |
Software helps planners design walkable cities: Urbano, a free software launched Oct. 26 by Cornell researchers, employs data, metrics and an easy-to-use interface to help planners and architects add and assess walkability features in their designs as effectively as possible...a tool that works well with the design process, which can be fast, messy and circuitous...while experienced architects will automatically consider walkability in their designs, Urbano provides simulations backed up by facts and data...."“This tool lets professionals quantify everything so the stakeholders can have confidence in what they propose.” -- Timur Dogan,- Cornell Chronicle |
Ann Sussman, RA & Janice M. Ward: Why Buildings Need ‘Eyes’: As a social species, we are built to see eyes, so we look for them all the time...it’s no surprise that tour buses driving through historic Cambridge, Massachusetts, always stop in front of the Harvard Lampoon building...[It] looks like it’s waiting to see you...biometric software...predicts where people look ‘at-first-glance’...from our brain’s million-year-old perspective, it does not matter if the ‘face’ in front of us is...an inanimate building facade, it’s going to check it out. Why does this matter? Because to understand and build architecture successfully today, it’s important to acknowledge our ‘secret’ human biases that secured our survival over millennia.- The Genetics of Design |
The Student Work Collection Database, Showcasing Nearly a Century of Architecture Pedagogy from The Cooper Union, Launches: ...represents over eight decades of The Cooper Union’s experimental, influential approach to architectural education...encompasses analog image, text, and audio records as well as born-digital media that document more than 4,500 projects by over 1,500 students from the 1930s through the present...- Cooper Union (New York City) |
Karrie Jacobs: The Detroit and Chicago Biennials Go Big: What these exhibitions say about the transformative power of architecture: “&hellip And Other Such Stories"...“Detroit Design 139: Inclusive Futures"...Taken together, [they] pose more questions than they answer about the role architecture plays in society, about how the physical transformations brought about by new architectural thinking affect economic, political, and environmental realities...The combined effect of the two shows was to make me think that the best way to tell architectural stories is in situ, in the places where architecture happens (or fails to happen). -- Yesomi Umolu; Sepake Angiama; Paulo Tavares- Architect Magazine |
Rowan Moore: "Hello, Robot: Design Between Human and Machine" - where human and machine don't quite meet, V&A Dundee: ...an exploration of the science and fiction of robots raises more questions than it answers: Its aim is less to stargaze the future than to question what is actually going on, now that smartphones, for example, have in effect made people into cyborgs...doesn’t want to wow people with the gee-whiz amazingness of new inventions; nor does it want to revert automatically to the nightmares that...are the flip sides of scientific optimism. The overall tone is cautiously positive......an intelligent exhibition on an important subject... thru February 9, 2020- Observer.com (U.S.) |
Alice Bucknell: Exhibitions on Both Sides of the Atlantic Ponder Future Life - on Earth, and Beyond: In London and Philadelphia, curators prod at the ethics, anxieties, and material culture of humanity as we gear towards a future interplanetary society: "Moving to Mars" (Design Museum, London, thru February 23, 2020)..."Designs for Different Futures" (Philadelphia Museum of Art thru March 8, 2020)...these exhibitions serve as a timely reminder that the fate of planet Earth - and the rest of the solar system - is not written in the stars, but an urgent question that we all must answer. -- Justin McGuirk- Metropolis Magazine |
"Architectures on the waterfront": The Fundació Mies van der Rohe in collaboration with Arquitectes per l’Arquitectura (AxA) inaugurate the exhibition at the Maritime Museum of Barcelona...68 works belonging to the archive of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award (EU Mies Award)...selection bears witness to how the transformation of waterfronts has been fundamental both in large metropolises and in small urban centres. thru January 12, 2020- A As Architecture |
MMCA’s Deoksugung outdoor project remembers Gojong, last Joseon king: The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea kicks off an outdoor exhibition...“Architecture and Heritage: Unearthing Future” features works by architects from five architectural firms based in Asia: Space Popular, CL3, Bureau Spectacular, OBBA, and Obra Architects. thru April 5, 2020- Korea Herald |
"Postcommodity: "The Point of Final Collapse": The art collective uses data from San Francisco’s sinking Millennium Tower to create new sound installation at San Francisco Art Institute...broadcasting multichannel sound composition to North Beach and downtown San Francisco for a 4-minute duration each day at 5:00 pm...until the Millennium Tower is fixed or torn down.- San Francisco Art Institute |
Assemble's Jane Hall spotlights female trailblazers in "Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women": "It is a necessary political act to name women as authors of buildings"...she picks out eight female architects featured in the book...features 180 buildings from across the world - all designed by female architects...between 1900 and the present day. -- Judith Edelman; Carla Juaçaba; Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak; Elisabeth Böhm; Mariam Kamara/Atelier Masomi; Lina Bo Bardi; Itsuko Hasegawa; Sandra Barclay/Barclay Crousse- Dezeen |
Nicholas Korody: In "X-Ray Architecture," the Metaphor Escapes Control: Beatriz Colomina's new book overlooks the concrete cruelties of the designed environment: According to her account, around the advent of its appellation as “modern,” architecture became increasingly obsessed with the health of bodies. Architects...started to imagine their work as prophylaxis, treatment, and even cure...book is devoid of the evaluative testimony of any ill, injured, disabled, or dying body not belonging to an architect, a striking omission...Bodies, real or imagined, are abandoned altogether and architecture appears to burrow into a celebration of its own internal discourse and patrimony...[book] might have benefited from a closer examination of the relationship between ill, injured, or disabled bodies and a built environment that excludes them. -- Alvar Aalto; Frederick Kiesler; Mies van der Rohe; SANAA- Metropolis Magazine |
John Hill: Drawing Atlantis - and Other Lairs of Evil Villains: "Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains" by architect Chad Oppenheim, is an extremely fun romp through 15 films that are united by the incredible lairs of their bad guys, and are beautifully depicted through highly detailed architectural illustrations...With silver ink on black paper...a visual feast that should appeal to both fans of cinema and of architecture - and the many, like myself, who love both. -- Carlos Fueyo/playard studios- World-Architects.com |
Christopher Herwig photographs opulent details of Soviet-era metro stations: ...series documents the most unusual details of the Soviet-era metro network built between the 1930s and 1980s...Intended to give an insight into the "closest realisation of a Soviet utopia"...photos focus predominantly on the details...which range from propaganda sculptures and artwork to elaborate mosaics and opulent lighting..."Soviet Metro Stations"...with an introductory text by Owen Hatherly...gives an insight into the array of political influences and architectural styles seen during the Soviet era.- Dezeen |
ANN feature: Duo Dickinson: The End of Design Movements: We are in the greatest time of change since the Industrial Revolution. When things change, Movements happen. But is the Era of Movements over?- ArchNewsNow.com |
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