Archinect - News

Columbia GSAPP establishes new James Stewart Polshek Scholarship in honor of its former Dean

2023-02-01T13:31:00-05:00

Former Columbia GSAPP dean James Stewart Polshek has been posthumously honored with a new endowed scholarship in recognition of the commitment to design excellence and social causes he embodied while helming the school for fifteen years.

The Ennead founder passed away in September and was subsequently remembered with a foundational gift of $125,000 from the firm that was meant to keep alive his enduring legacy as both an architect and educator. The new $350,000 total fund will thus be given in perpetuity to an M.Arch student in their final year of study whose work demonstrates the intellectual rigor and social concern Polshek strove for beginning with his appointment in 1972.

During his tenure in Morningside, Polshek was instrumental in adding degree programs in planning and preservation to the then-named School of Architecture. He also helped to establish the...

Ennead completes dome rehabilitation for NYC's historic Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

2022-12-28T12:03:00-05:00

But now, after a painstaking three-year, $17 million rehabilitation — and just in time for Christmas festivities — the dome’s 113-year-old aches and pains have been tended to. Its striking terra-cotta tile has been repaired, and a new copper exterior has been added. “The new roofing could easily last 50 to a hundred years and there’s no reason it couldn’t last for centuries with good maintenance,” said Kevin Seymour, associate principal of Ennead

The project follows a 2019 addition and related work to finish the entryway and roof of the unfinished north transept, which was left incomplete after construction was halted in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The new copper dome covers the also incomplete south transept and was originally designed in 1909 by Rafael Guastavino. Costs for the three-year project are estimated to be about $17 million.

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James Stewart Polshek, academic and designer of important public architecture, has passed away aged 92

2022-09-12T19:14:00-04:00

A rare modest figure in a crowded era of star architects and designers has passed away as the New York Times is reporting the death of James Stewart Polshek on Friday at his home in Manhattan.

Polshek was known as the designer of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Newtown Creek sewage plant in Brooklyn, and Newseum in Washington, D.C., among many others. His colleagues recalled him as a progressive champion who balanced the ideological pull of high modernism with a sensitivity to different forms, themes, building types, and architectural styles. In a statement published by the Architectural Record, Polshek’s former firm partner Richard Olcott said he was "ahead of his time."

William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park. Photo credit: © Timothy Hursley.

Born in Akron, Ohio in 1930, Polshek studied architecture at nearby Case Western Reserve University and later Yale before pursuing a Fulbright Scholarship in Copenhagen and beginnin...

Birdproof glass technology is getting better — but its popularity still hasn't taken off

2022-01-05T18:02:00-05:00

Architects have known how to prevent their buildings from becoming bird killers for more than a decade: Patterned glass, exterior screens and turning the lights off at night can all significantly reduce bird deaths. But those standards clash with the big glass and big views that clients associate with big money.

The problem stems from the way glass reflects green spaces surrounding them. Recent advancements in data and social media tracking have combined with architectural studies have been able to successfully produce guidelines which recommend a wide array of interventions like ceramic frits, visual dot patterns and solar shades that have been successfully demonstrated in retrofit projects such as the Javits Center.

Annual bird deaths are currently estimated to be between 100 million and 1 billion globally. Initiatives from Ennead and others have been instrumental in protecting avian annihilation, though animal rights activists continue to argue that the preventative measures are not nearly widespread enough — especially in large cities like New York.

“Every project we work on, guess what? There’s a giant plate of glass, and the client says, we want some landscape here,” SCAPE founder Kate Orff told Bloombeg. “Over the past decade, Manhattan has been remade as a giant bird killer.”

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Ennead Architects unveils “eggshell” performance center in Shenzhen

2021-10-12T11:15:00-04:00

Ennead Architects has released images of their competition-winning design for the new International Performance Center in Shenzhen. The company, which is currently hiring a BIM Specialist and Computational Designer on Archinect Jobs, hopes that their scheme will “reimagine the possibilities of immersive performing arts experiences.”

Image courtesy of Ennead Architects. Rendering by Plomp.

Referred to as “The People’s Performing Arts Center,” the scheme is one of three new buildings to be built as part of a cultural masterplan for Shenzhen’s Futian District, alongside the Shenzhen Reform and Opening-Up Exhibition Hall and the Shenzhen Finance Culture Center.

Image courtesy of Ennead Architects. Rendering by Plomp.

Ennead’s scheme adopts the form of two richly-textured, golden egg-like shells to create a façade that changes with the time of day and season. The two elements are both dependent and complimentary of one another, reflecting the relationship between the performer and the a...

White Arkitekter wins “For a Resilient Rockaway” (FAR ROC) Design Competition

2013-10-23T17:45:00-04:00

Breaking news from New York City today: the team of Swedish firm White Arkitekter has won the two-phase "For a Resilient Rockaway" (FAR ROC) design competition at the Arverne East site in the Rockaways. [...] The winning team also included members from ARUP and Gensler.

Previously: For a Resilient Rockaway (FAR ROC) Design Competition Finalists

Stanford picks architect for art collection's $30.5-million home

2011-12-14T21:00:00-05:00

Having been given a prized collection of contemporary American art earlier this year, Stanford University on Wednesday announced plans for a new $30.5-million museum to house it. New York-based Ennead Architects will design a 30,000-square-foot building devoted to the Anderson Collection –- 121 works by 86 artists collected by a Bay Area family...