Today’s News - Wednesday, March 10, 2021
EDITOR'S NOTE: Tomorrow, Monday & Tuesday will be a no-newsletter days. We'll be back Wednesday, March 10.
● A sad way to start the news day: We lose Hugh Newell Jacobsen, 91: His "deceptively simple designs honored the values of traditional styles while cleverly infusing modernist sensibilities" ("'Designing is like giving birth to a barbed wire fence,' he often quipped").
● Jacob DiCrescenzo, a 15-year-old architect-to-be, "wants the profession he joins to be dedicated to emotional experience - an architecture not only of structures and materials."
● Betsky looks at design competitions and "why image isn't everything - should something truer to architecture, intrinsic to its methods, materials, and purpose, determine who wins a commission or a competition prize?"
● John King reflects on how San Francisco's Ferry Building "has served as a marker to gauge daily life from one decade to the next" and, now, our cultural response to COVID - "there's a surreal aspect to efforts to thwart the virus but not make too much of a fuss" (#ILoveYouSoFerryMuch).
● An update on LUCE et Studio's $55M transformation of Balboa Park's Mingei Museum that "represents a marriage of art, architecture and public access manifested in both subtle and arresting additions" (yes - it really does say "a beautifully architected space").
● Rebecca J. Ritzel updates the status of Elyn Zimmerman's (once threatened) "Marabar" on the National Geographic campus: The society will "work with Zimmerman and her supporters to find a new home as well as foot the bill for the safe removal and reinstallation" - a new location "has yet to be determined."
● Crosbie's great Q&A with Moshe Safdie re: "projects that never came to fruition, how his early years with Louis Kahn and Buckminster Fuller continue to influence his work, and the lessons of unbuilt architecture" (excerpt from "With Intention to Build: The Unrealized Concepts, Ideas, and Dreams of Moshe Safdie").
● Meghan Drueding looks at the careers of Helen Liu Fong, Annie Graham Rockfellow, and Norma Merrick Sklarek, three women "who helped light the way for women in architecture" (Fong was a key part of Googie architecture that "whooshed through Southern California like a T-Bird rounding a corner").
● Call for entries: Request for Proposals to Develop 1.2-Acre Lot Across from Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's Far West Side.
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Obituary: Hugh Newell Jacobsen, award-winning modernist architect, 91: ...[his] deceptively simple designs for homes and prominent public buildings honored the values of traditional styles while cleverly infusing modernist sensibilities...“Designing is like giving birth to a barbed wire fence,” he often quipped...selected to participate in Life magazine’s Dream House series...mail-order home plans sold for about $600...More than 900,000 Jacobsen plans sold...His designs were almost the opposite of his blunt, exuberant personality, seeking the essence of the regional vernacular in a modest, respectful form...subtle suggestions rather than boisterous commands.- Washington Post |
Jacob DiCrescenzo: The Case for a Feeling Architecture: This 15-year-old architect-to-be wants the profession he joins to be dedicated to emotional experience: I’ve wanted to be an architect for as long as I can remember...I love the way in which the constraints of my environment would force me to find new ways in which to manifest my ideas...to give people a new experience of what it feels like to move through the world...Architecture is too much about the expression of thought and not enough about the experience of emotion...conceptually novel buildings can accurately reflect a philosophical or intellectual movement while simultaneously neglecting the lived experience of their inhabitants...the field I hope to join someday is...an architecture not only of structures and materials, but also of deeply felt experience.- Common Edge |
Aaron Betsky: How to Win a Design Competition: why image isn't everything: What makes a winning design? Is it the ability to produce that killer image? That seems to be the driving force in the presentation of the kind of “click-bait buildings”...Or should something truer to architecture, intrinsic to its methods, materials, and purpose, determine who wins a commission or a competition prize? The prevailing belief...is that...all the judges or clients care about is image and hype...the answer is more complex than that...but thank heavens there is some reason for architects to design something more than the kind of dumb, functionable boxes that would otherwise be the cheap and easy solution to a commission.- Architect Magazine |
John King: How S.F.'s Ferry Building reflects our pandemic landscape: Since the day it opened in 1898, [it] has been a symbol of San Francisco...the building itself has served as a marker to gauge...daily life from one decade to the next...there’s a surreal aspect to efforts to thwart the virus but not make too much of a fuss...The icon’s history shows that the Before Times were never as placid as they seemed...What has not changed at the Ferry Building, ultimately, is its underlying allure... -- Arthur Page Brown- San Francisco Chronicle |
The $55M transformation of Balboa Park’s Mingei Museum is nearing completion: ...represents a marriage of art, architecture and public access manifested in both subtle and arresting additions: It comes at a crucial moment for the 43-year-old museum and the park at large...Located in the House of Charm since its reconstruction in 1996, the Museum pays homage to human creativity...design details that either demand attention or cleverly blend into the 1915 Spanish Colonial-style building, as masterminded by Jennifer Luce/LUCE et Studio.- San Diego Union-Tribune |
Rebecca J. Ritzel: In New Plan, National Geographic Will Move an Acclaimed Sculpture: “Marabar,” a granite artwork by Elyn Zimmerman, had been endangered by the organization’s plan to expand its Washington campus: ...representatives from the society assured...they would work with Zimmerman and her supporters to find a new home...as well as foot the bill for the safe removal and reinstallation...[It] has been the centerpiece of the National Geographic campus for 35 years...altered only once...for a pair of mallards who began raising ducklings in the pool...final location...has yet to be determined...With help from The Cultural Landscape Foundation [TCLF], she is now seeking a university, sculpture garden or other cultural institution that would like to house [it]... -- Charles Birnbaum- New York Times |
Michael J. Crosbie: Moshe Safdie: “The Unbuilt Work is the Place You Grow the Most”: A conversation with the architect about the value of work that never makes it beyond the drawing board: ...[his] the unbuilt work of this AIA Gold Medalist influences and lives on in his firm’s future projects. Q&A excerpted from "With Intention to Build: The Unrealized Concepts, Ideas, and Dreams of Moshe Safdie" re: projects that never came to fruition, how his early years with Louis Kahn and Buckminster Fuller continue to influence his work, and the lessons of unbuilt architecture.- Common Edge |
Meghan Drueding: Three Designers Who Helped Light the Way for Women in Architecture: A look at the careers of Helen Liu Fong, Annie Graham Rockfellow, and Norma Merrick Sklarek: ...a small sampling of “Where Women Made History”...During the 1950s and ’60s, Googie architecture whooshed through Southern California like a T-Bird rounding a corner - and Fong was a key part of it...anyone with a clear set of eyes can see the change from before and after Rockfellow arrived at Henry O. Jastaad’s firm in 1916. It is very clear that she was the designer"...Sklarek left a trail of excellence wherever she went... -- Armét Davis Newlove; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM); Gruen Associates; Welton Becket & Associates; Siegel Sklarek Diamond; The Jerde Partnership- Preservation Magazine/National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) |
Request for Proposals to Develop Javits "Site K" on Manhattan's Far West Side: ...1.2-Acre Lot Across from Javits Convention Center...RFP for the commercial or mixed-use development of 418 11th Avenue, one of the last remaining vacant parcels on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan; deadline: May 6,- New York State Office of the Governor |
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