Archinect - News

LACMA taps Zumthor for $650-million new look

2013-05-01T14:08:00-04:00

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, an acclaimed Swiss architect is hoping to pull off what an acclaimed Dutch one could not. Next month LACMA will publicly unveil a $650-million plan by Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor for a dramatic new museum building along Wilshire Boulevard.

The LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne reviews the "fittingly blunt" Bush presidential library

2013-04-23T20:41:00-04:00

Stern's architecture is always steeped in strategic references to past landmarks; there is no doubt he knows how to send, and shape, an architectural message. And the message the front entrance to the Bush Library delivers is clear: This is a building meant to honor a particularly blunt and plain-spoken kind of political power.

Editor's Picks #309

2013-04-02T11:00:00-04:00

Archinect was excited to announce a competition we're co-hosting with Designer Pages and the LA Film Festival. This competition seeks proposals for the interior design/layout of the VIP Director's Lounge for this year's LA Film Festival. The winner will have their design executed, with a cash prize and an "Industry Badge" pass to the LA Film Festival in June. The winner's designs will also be on display in the director's lounge throughout the festival.

News
The Architect’s Journal reported that Denise Scott Brown has called for her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 win to be acknowledged retrospectively as a salute to "the notion of joint creativity" and retrospectively acknowledge her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 Pritzker Prize during an AJ Women in Architecture luncheon in late March. Since, nearly 2,000 advocates have passionately rallied in Brown’s support by signing an online petition created by Harvard’s GSD Woman in Design Group. Among the signatures include architects Zaha...

The LA Time's Christopher Hawthorne holds no punches in his review of Morphosis' Perot Museum

2013-03-26T19:47:00-04:00

It is a thoroughly cynical piece of work, a building that uses a frenzy of architectural forms to endorse the idea that architecture, in the end, is mere decoration. Mayne's design appears to put innovative architecture on a literal pedestal — or a plinth, to be exact — while actually allowing it to become peripheral, noticeably separate from the heart of the museum and its galleries.

Stedelijk Museum's 'bathtub' awash in awkwardness: Review - latimes.com

2012-09-28T19:57:00-04:00

An overscaled monument flagrantly aloof from its surroundings, the addition is a laggard symbol of an era when the Netherlands, like this country, was awash in capital for boldly sculptural new projects. As such it's a reminder of how slow architecture can be. The $159-million extension is the architectural personification of boom-time thinking.

At LACMA, art on a grand scale

2012-07-09T12:22:00-04:00

Its character is determined not just by the color and texture of the boulder itself but also by the detailing and proportions of the ramp. To experience the piece, you descend the ramp, you stand in the shadow of the rock and then you ascend. That trajectory is an architectural one; in fact, Heizer has been upfront that he takes cues in his work directly from architecture.

Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times Architecture Critic, put his home on the market

2012-06-12T17:42:00-04:00

Although as a preservation-minded fellow, he probably wouldn't suggest that the two-bedroom, one-bathroom house off Colorado Boulevard is a teardown: "Now is your chance to live in the cottage and oversee construction, or you can just move in, enjoy the charm, the seclusion, the views--and write that novel."

Review: Lackluster Expo Line reflects Metro's weak grasp of design

2012-05-02T15:46:00-04:00

Designed primarily by Roland Genick, chief architect for rail and transit systems at Parsons, the huge Pasadena-based construction conglomerate, the new stations are topped by undulating light-blue canopies of perforated metal panels that are not only dated — bringing a public-art project from the early 1990s to mind — but provide almost no shade or rain protection. Or solar power, for that matter, though from certain angles the stations look a bit like they're covered with photovoltaic panels.

An Esther McCoy revival tells story of L.A.'s modern architecture

2011-12-16T17:37:30-05:00

Esther McCoy is having a moment. The architecture critic and historian, who died in 1989 at age 85, is the subject of a smart Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the Schindler House in West Hollywood, building on McCoy's deep connections with Rudolph Schindler himself. The show is accompanied by a Getty-funded catalog, and early next year East of Borneo Press will publish "Piecing Together Los Angeles," an anthology of McCoy's essays on architecture.

2011 year in review: Best in architecture

2011-12-16T17:31:22-05:00

It was a year in which American architects despaired that the economy might never really recover. It was also a year in which they produced a few small gems. And the profession as a whole continued to move past the flashy formalism of the last decade to seek new, genuine kinds of engagement with cities and people.

London's Olympic venues challenge architects

2011-11-29T00:10:56-05:00

In London's case the practicality of the architecture is a reaction to the economic rather than the political excesses of the recent past. The 2012 Games are shaping up, in fact, as one of the clearest signs yet that the architectural boom years of the last decade or so in the West have definitively ended.

Architecture Review: West Hollywood Library among top works

2011-09-30T19:28:08-04:00

The new library across from the Pacific Design Center strikes an appealingly upbeat tone, borrowing from various architectural influences to become one of the most impressive public pieces in the region in a decade.

Critic's Notebook: 'Urbanized' looks at the growth of city living

2011-09-26T20:25:47-04:00

All in all — despite a pretty obvious blind spot in Hustwit's thinking about cities like Los Angeles — "Urbanized" ranks among the smartest recent analyses of mass global urbanization and its discontents. Think of it as a cinematic version of "The Endless City," the book that Ricky Burdett (who plays a significant role in "Urbanized") and Deyan Sudjic put out three years ago.

Reading L.A.: The giant, complex legacy of the Case Study program

2011-09-20T19:59:15-04:00

The Case Study program, in case it still needs any introduction, was a pioneering effort sponsored by L.A.-based Arts & Architecture magazine and its ambitious editor, John Entenza, to develop new and unapologetically modernist prototypes for the postwar American house.

Apple's new headquarters lacks vision

2011-09-13T12:24:40-04:00

Though the planned building has a futuristic gleam — Jobs told the council "it's a little like a spaceship landed" — in many ways it is a doggedly old-fashioned proposal, recalling the 1943 Pentagon building as well as much of the suburban corporate architecture of the 1960s and '70s. And though Apple has touted the new campus as green, its sprawling form and dependence on the car make a different argument.

Check this previous article for more information, images and comments from the community: Plans for new Apple HQ, by Norman Foster, officially released

Post 9/11, symbolism of skyscrapers unchanged

2011-09-04T17:41:24-04:00

Any skyscraper is a contradiction. The tall tower is architecture's most famous building type and also the one most clearly at odds with the profession's roots. Fundamentally, architecture is shelter, a concession that we're afraid to face the elements without protection. A skyscraper is vertical hubris.

Previously: AS+GG Designs Kingdom Tower, to Be the World’s Tallest Building

Museums hire architects but forsake past architecture

2011-05-28T16:17:02-04:00

Institutions including SFMOMA, the Whitney, the Barnes Foundation and MoMA plan various additions and exits, a boom for contemporary architects but a bust for architectural history.

Commentary: What Happens to Architectural Criticism When Dailies Shrivel and Bloggers Take Over?

2011-05-13T13:55:37-04:00

As much as the blogosphere often turns crucial issues into soap-operatic fodder, it also keeps us honest to a degree that didn’t exist before. What has emerged is an architecture criticism less contemplative, perhaps, but more nimble — and better attuned to its audience, in ways good and bad. Martin Pawley might not recognize this new criticism right away, but even he, I think, would have to admit its heartbeat is plenty strong.

Shining a spotlight on L.A.'s landscape architects

2011-04-20T12:40:53-04:00

How to explain, much less minimize, the relative obscurity of L.A.'s landscape architects? There's no easy answer but our open spaces and preservation efforts give the issue added urgency.