Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner
Through October 12, 2008 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. An aesthetic, philosophical and social visionary, Lautner made buildings that continue to amaze architects and patrons alike with their formal variety and freedom, their structural originality and their sculptural force. Lautner’s work has come to represent some of the most important examples of architecture in Southern California. Photo: Joshua White. Courtesy of the gallery.
A Rooftop Garden for SFMOMA
Through October 26, 2008 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. With construction of the museum’s new 14,400-square-foot Rooftop Garden currently under way, this exhibition offers visitors an experiential glimpse of SFMOMA’s expansion. A horizontal projection on the second-floor landing mimics the span of windows that will overlook the completed garden from the fifth-floor galleries, transforming an opaque wall into a virtual portal. The projection, conceived by Rooftop Garden architect Mark Jensen, paints an atmospheric portrait of the nascent outdoor space, conjuring specific visual elements related to the design as well as abstract suggestions of the changing seasons, weather, and hourly light that will influence the mood in the garden. Image: Jensen Architects. Courtesy of the gallery.
Urban Re:Interventions
From August 4, 2008 to October 26, 2008 at the Center for Architecture and Design in San Francisco. Urban RE:Interventions explores perspectives on the urban environment through the lens of architects, designers, landscape architects and urban guerillas. From small-scale moments at the street level to large-scale imagineering of the city of San Francisco as a whole, the exhibition will re-envision how awkward spaces can be made beautiful.
Archinect.com provides an excellent weekly roundup of competition deadlines and upcoming events.
A couple of recent articles contrasting the architecture in emerging Asian and Middle Eastern cities with that in the West:
The Battle for the World’s Skyline, Spiegal Online, June 6
The New, New City, New York Times Architecture Issue, June 8
Forbidden Cities, The New Yorker, June 30
What do you think? Leave a comment.
An interesting article recently appeared in the New Yorker online, about the relationship of Beijing’s Olympic architecture to the city.
Many students have been studying buildings like the Aquatics Center (known as the Water Cube) and the National Stadium (known as the Bird’s Nest) of late. If you’re looking to learn more and you have a PolyCard, why not search the library’s architecture article databases for one or more of these buildings – quite a lot has been published (you’ll need to log into your portal if off-campus).
Beginning in January 2009, the USGBC will outsource the certification of buildings, according to a June 1 article from buildinggreen.com. Responsibility for certification “will pass to independent, accredited certifiers overseen by USGBC’s sister nonprofit corporation, the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI)”.
In addition, real estate news source costar.com announced that the USGBC will be tripling its office space in Washington D.C., reflecting the rapid growth of the LEED program in recent years.
A colleague of mine passed this tidbit on to me this morning. What a great use of GIS to inform study in the humanities! From an article in Campus Technology:
An interdisciplinary team from the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts and the College of Arts and Sciences collaborated with scholars in Rome to produce a new Web site dedicated to the work of one of Rome’s great vedutisti–or cityscape artists. The intention is to provide a rich historical resource for educators, scholars, students and others.
“Imago Urbis: Giuseppe Vasi’s Grand Tour of Rome” presents a geographic database and Web site that brings to life the work of two 18th century masters of Rome’s urban and architectural treasures: Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756), who published the first accurate map of Rome (La Pianta Grande di Roma, 1748); and his contemporary, Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782), whose comprehensive views of the city and its monuments from 1747-1761, can be precisely located and explored by using the Nolli map as a reference.
Known as QTVRs (Quick Time Virtual Reality), these panoramas offer a unique opportunity to experience the interiors of famous buildings in a way still photographs can’t capture. There are over 1200 available through the QTVR Panoramas of World Architecture collection in ARTstor (these have been provided by the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University).
To access the QTVRs, enter the ARTstor database (you’ll need to use your portal login if you’re off-campus, and you’ll need to have pop-ups allowed), then choose to Browse ARTstor by Collection. Scroll down until you get to the QTVR Panoramas of World Architecture collection and select it. All the panoramas will then be displayed as thumbnails. You can search for specific buildings, locations, etc. using the search box at the top right hand corner of the screen. To view a panorama, click the blue QTVR link that appears just under the thumbnail.
Buildings Magazine had an interesting article in their April issue that helps with deciphering all those phrases used by manufacturers to advertise the “green” properties of their products. Guard yourself against “greenwashing” by knowing what questions to ask!
Want to know even more? Why not check out the book Green Building A to Z: Understanding the Language of Green Building by Jerry Yudelson, available at the library (call number TH880 .Y633 2007).
In the most recent issue of ArcCa, the journal of the American Institute of Architects California Council, Jimmy Stamp writes about the blogging phenomenon (“blog” is short for “web log”). You can read the article on the AIACC website (look for the link to the “Blog is in the Details” article).
Stamp gives a list of his “Top Seven Architecture Blogs”, and I thought I’d just highlight three of them here. I read these regularly to find out the latest news in the world of architecture and design:
Archinect (shown at left). A staple for architecture news headlines.
BLDG BLOG. Wide-ranging topics with detailed discussion rather than just sound bites.
Inhabitat. Green design news.
Stamp concludes by saying that “many blogs currently act primarily as news outlets that inject wit and opinion into their hyper-linked stories. As architecture blogs evolve, more and more may move from reporting and critiquing into actually producing independent work to support their ideas. There are already those that dig for deeper meaning, trying to understand an architectural work on a more conceptual level, so it’s not a stretch to envision a very near future where an affiliation of architecture bloggers – perhaps even an international online design collective – will become the next Archigram or Team 10.”
While blogs do not replace scholarly journals (for instance, you’re not likely to find detailed technical information, high-quality illustrations or architectural drawings on blogs), they are a useful source of news, commentary, and ideas. They are a great way for students to gain a sense of trends and opportunities in the profession.
