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Featured architecture projects from female-led firms based in the American West

2023-03-01T15:20:00-05:00

As we enter Women's History Month today we begin to highlight some of the work produced by female-led firms, to complement our existing stories and profiles.

Pioneering women in the profession continue to make their mark and shift our industry into a more inclusive direction. When you look at a realized design project, however, it's not always clear who the team of leaders and designers are behind that work. To kick off a celebration of women, Archinect launches a new series featuring built projects led by female-owned and operated firms.

For our first installment, we've started with 13 architecture firms based in the American West that have posted projects to their Archinect Firm Profile. Feeling inspired? Check out the job opportunities at female-lead firms in Archinect Jobs.

B+B House by Design, Bitches
The firm is led by Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph in Los Angeles, CA

B+B House. Image © Yoshihiro Makino. Learn more about the project here.

Armstrong Ave Residence by Robi...

Utah’s vaunted 'walkable city' still has tens of thousands of parking spots

2022-04-04T19:04:00-04:00

“It’s not that no one has a car,” said Peter Kindel, an urban design and planning principal at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who helped create the framework plan for the site that project overseers approved last year. “We’re suggesting it’s more than possible to live with one car to make that big-box [store] trip or go skiing. But for families and young people that are going to be part of the community, they won’t need that on a day-to-day basis.”

The 600-acre The Point development in Draper, Utah, will replace an aging prison complex and will include some 40,000 parking spaces — a typical figure for a community of its planned size of about 13,000 residents.

Previously on Archinect: A '15-minute' planned community is set to rise in Utah

A forthcoming mobility study to be presented to the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority by the transportation consultancy Sam Schwartz is aiming to reduce that number by half via a high-tech admixture of electric scooters, planned bikeways, car-sharing, and (potentially) a fleet of self-driving buses.

“We want to push the envelope,” Point of the Mountain State Land Authority Executive Director Alan Matheson told Bloomberg, “but we also need to be practical.”

A '15-minute' planned community is set to rise in Utah

2022-01-20T09:00:00-05:00

A new planned community in Utah will strive to make it possible for residents to meet all their daily needs within 15 minutes without getting in a car — and to serve as a model for other U.S. developers who want to build basic mobility into the foundations of their designs.

Called The Point, the envisoned community will be located in Draper, Utah, and take up about one square mile of state-owned land. The development, master-planned by SOM, will specifically aim to reduce the need for cars by featuring extensive biking, walking, and transit systems.

A range of transportation strategies will be employed in order to achieve this plan. Vehicle traffic will be restricted from a .125-square-mile section of the downtown core called the “pedestrian priority zone.” In addition, mixed-use zoning will make homes easily accessible to jobs, schools, and essential services. There will also be a city circulator that will shuttle residents around the community and connect to other transit routes.

The Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, the government agency overseeing the project, is currently in the process of selecting a developer for the project. Construction of the community will likely start in late 2024.

Take a look at this lenticular mural artist Phillip Adams created with EskewDumezRipple in Salt Lake City

2021-05-28T18:59:00-04:00

New Orleans-based firm EskewDumezRipple has collaborated with Philadelphia-based artist Phillip Adams to produce a vivid and detailed lenticular mural for their project in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Adams hand-painted the piece across the facade of EskewDumezRipple’s Mya Living project, a new, modern apartment and condominium complex. The project was spearheaded by real estate development and investment company, Domain Companies, an entity that specializes in sustainable, mixed-use development.

The artwork is inspired by a local Salt Lake City legend.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by EskewDumezRipple (@eskewdumezripple)

"The mural is inspired by the legend and celebrity of the flamingo, Pink Floyd, who escaped from Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City in 1988, and lived in the Great Salt Lake until last seen in 2005," Adams recounts the tale in this Instagram post. "He would return to the Great Salt Lake every winter. This playful homage to him links a unique a...

“Porsches in Nature” proposes displaying glass-encased Porsches in raw Utah desert landscapes

2021-03-18T15:05:00-04:00

Cars are crafted to take us on a journey to different places; to travel, to discover, and to explore an exciting adventure. However, automotive exhibitions for far too long have been dwelling cars on the inside within confined and enclosed walls reflecting otherwise.

Re-imagining this traditional museum display of automobiles, and with an intent to instill the true experience of personal freedom conveyed by automobile, Jared Zaugg, an automotive lifestyle brand specialist and multifaceted expert envisioned the concept of setting the exhibit en Plein air (outdoors). Zaugg pictured the idea of “Porsches in Nature” an assortment of significant Porsche models placed amidst a breathtaking landscape, where the sense of scale is softened by the massive expanse of nature’s backdrop.

“Porsches in Nature”- concept, an experiential outdoor museum exhibit in the Canyonland region of Utah, Photo credits: Jared Zaugg

The concept exhibition is in the picturesque Canyonland region of Utah as a sin...

Our first annual 'T-Bars for T-Squares' ski retreat was a huge hit

2020-03-06T15:39:00-05:00

We're just catching our breath after an amazing four days of skiing, drinking, eating, and hot tubbing in Utah's beautiful Snowbird/Alta ski resorts. Architects, designers, and artists came together from around the country, representing SHoP, Brininstool + Lynch, K&Co, Imbue Design, Artistic Tile, LOC, Ball-Nogues, & Gensler. We even had some ex-White House staff with us, telling stories of their time helping to get Obama elected!

Snowbird Mountain, photo by Matt Swindel

We're already starting to plan next year's retreat. If you'd like to be the first to hear about it, sign up to our T-Bars for T-Squares mailing list for updates.

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Trump administration initiates resource extraction plan for former national monuments in Utah

2020-02-07T13:02:00-05:00

The U.S. government implemented final management plans Thursday for two national monuments in Utah that President Trump downsized. The plans ensure lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits by conservation, tribal and paleontology groups challenging the constitutionality of the president’s action

About two years ago, President Trump cut the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost 50 percent and the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent. The President said the scaled back size was to reverse misuse of the Antiquities Act by previous Democratic presidents that he feels led to oversized monuments that hinder energy development, grazing ad other uses, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The plans come despite pending lawsuits from conservation, tribal, and paleontology groups arguing that the downsizing was unconstitutional.

Like to ski? Join Archinect and Designer Pages next month for some of the best powder in the country

2020-01-21T12:24:00-05:00

Calling all architects and designers that love to ski or board! Archinect's Paul Petrunia and Designer Pages' Jacob Slevin have blocked several rooms at the Cliff Lodge at heavily reduced rates for Thursday, February 27 to Sunday, March 1 (reduced rates may also be applied to the night of February 26, for early birds). The Cliff Lodge is not only the sole ski-in, ski-out hotel at Utah's world-class Snowbird and Alta Mountains, but it's also a stunning piece of architecture by Utah modernists Enteleki, Architecture, Planning, Research, and Brixen and Christopher Architect.

The Cliff Lodge at Snowbird

For the last few years Paul and Jacob have put aside their busy schedules to recharge on the ski slopes of the American West. It’s been an opportunity to share business knowledge, plan new ventures, and, most importantly, ski! This year they’ve decided to turn this into an official retreat, "T-Bars for T-Squares," with fellow architects, designers, and friends. For more information, chec...

"Epicenter", in rural Utah, wants to be the next art & architecture destination

2018-04-20T11:08:00-04:00

Architecture isn’t just looking at a building. It’s looking at how the city is shaped, and then thinking about, what can we do as citizens to make it a better place to live through architecture and design?

via PBS | News Hour

Jefffrey Brown reports from Green River, Utah. Small, with a population that "hovers at" 950, a nonprofit called Epicenter aims to use use art and architecture to bring new energy, life and economic development. There is even a "stationary" taco truck.

Brooks+Scarpa's new Southern Utah Art Museum draws its inspiration from the local artist that made it possible

2017-11-21T15:50:00-05:00

When the legendary artist Jim Jones, known for his painting of Zion and the Grand Canyon, died in 2009, he donated his Rockville home, and 15 of his late paintings, as well as the copyrights, to the Southern Utah University. The Cedar City native's gift was to provide the university with the seed money to eventually form the Southern Utah Museum of Art and almost eight years later, this dream has come to completion.

Brooks + Scarpa.

Ale Scarpa.

The new museum is part of the $39.1 million Beverly Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts campus—a 5.5-acre master planned complex that links downtown Cedar City with the Southern Utah University Campus. The museum itself comprises 28,000 square feet of adaptable gallery and exhibition space that will accommodate the special collection of Jones as well as regularly displaying the work of students, faculty, regional artists and juried shows.

Alan Blakely.

It has been designed by the Los Angeles-based firm, Brooks + Scarpa, who were in...

Silicon Mountain: Summit developing a ski-resort for innovators and artists on Utah's Powder Mountain

2017-09-11T18:30:00-04:00

Construction began this summer on a public mountain town that will straddle a 10,000-acre site between three skiing bowls. In 2013, Powder Mountain was purchased by Summit, a company—or, perhaps more accurately, a collective—founded in 2008 by five 20-something friends who want to “catalyze entrepreneurship” and “create global change.”

The company plans to build 500 single-family houses along with a village for amenities and a place to house the organization's non-profit arm. The founders hope that the skiing mecca—an hour's drive north of Salt Lake—will become a year-round community for innovators and other creatives "to solve the world’s most pressing challenges, from environmental catastrophe to access to basic medical care" over a shared chairlift up the mountain.

Summit Phase I Master Plan.

Physical design will play a large role in creating this idyllic snow-capped development. To guide the construction, Summit has enlisted a diverse team of designers, land planners and architects from places like Studio MA in Salt Lake City, Skylab Architecture in Portland, and Saunders Architecture in Norway. The list of architects also includes Sparano + Mooney in Salt Lake City; Marmol Radziner in Los Angeles; Bicuadro Architects in Rome; Bertoldi Architects in Ogden, Utah; Olson Kundig in Seattle; Prentiss + Balance + Wic...

Archinect's comparison of transient-oriented architecture

2015-08-26T21:55:00-04:00

In 2003 in Utah, government officials decided to try a radical solution to homelessness: giving people who would otherwise be on the street permanent housing. Twelve years later, the surprisingly cost-effective program is a success: almost all of the people given homes remained in them, and the number of people out on the streets in the state has dropped nearly to zero. So what works and what doesn't architecturally in homeless housing?

James Furzer, a 26-year old architectural technician for the U.K.-based Spatial Design Architects, is currently crowdsourcing funds to build single-person housing modules that attach to preexisting buildings in dense urban centers like London, where 7,500 people routinely sleep on the streets.

The Fakro’s Space for New Visions award-winning design is a great emergency shelter idea, but doesn't foster a sense of permanence, unlike Utah's Sunrise Metro Apartments, which take the form of a traditional (relatively aesthetically boring) apartment building ...

Park City Rejects Bjarke Ingels' Kimball Art Center Designs - Again!

2014-08-26T13:10:00-04:00

City Hall on Thursday rejected the designs of the Kimball Art Center's expansion proposal, determining they do not meet the municipal government's strict Old Town guidelines. It was a significant setback as the not-for-profit organization attempts to press ahead with an ambitious redo of the high-profile intersection of Main Street and Heber Avenue. [...] The Kimball Art Center selected a renowned Danish architectural firm, Bjarke Ingels Group, to draft the designs.

Previously: BIG is named winner of the Kimball Art Center Transformation Project Design Competition

Why Buy A House When You Can Buy A Mountain?

2013-06-18T13:03:00-04:00

It's not your everyday real estate deal. A team of young entrepreneurs persuaded about 50 deep-pocketed investors to help them purchase a mountain. The deal just closed in April, and development on Utah's nearly 10,000-acre Powder Mountain is now underway. [...] "We were inspired by the core concepts of the Sundance Film Festival and the Aspen Institute. You can build place around a shared ethos."

Inside Adobe's New Silicon Slope Headquarters

2013-01-16T14:41:00-05:00

The location in the south suburbs of Salt Lake City is an up-and-coming region for tech business sometimes called "Silicon Slope." Adobe's new campus will operate as the company's digital marketing division. The company has hired designers from Rapt Studio to make sure the building design is integrated into the space at the deepest level, ensuring that, despite being an office building at its core, this isn't just one more massive tech campus.

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

2012-03-19T18:30:00-04:00

... thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol. Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards.

BIG is named winner of the Kimball Art Center Transformation Project Design Competition

2012-02-10T20:52:00-05:00

He plans to build an 80-foot-tall tower by stacking former railway planks at a slight spiral so that the entire structure will appear to change directions midway up, like a game of Jenga gone askew. Inside, a restaurant will sit on the building's lobby floor while a cantilevered, wooden staircase will lead visitors to the various white-cube gallery floors above.

UPDATE: Park City Rejects Bjarke Ingels' Kimball Art Center Designs - Again!

Kimball selects Top 5 architects

2011-10-22T00:09:00-04:00

The Kimball Art Center is one step closer to its expansion and restoration project. A seven-person jury has selected the Top 5 architectural firms to compete for the job.

The five firms, which were chosen from a list of 18, are:

BIG/Bjarke Ingles Group, New York and Copenhagen, Denmark
Brooks and Scarpa Architects, Los Angeles
Sparano and Mooney Architects, Salt Lake City
Will Bruder and Partners Ltd., Phoenix
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, New York

Jail break: Utah County suing architect for $1.35 million

2011-05-22T19:53:57-04:00

The drawings and specifications submitted by GSBS Architects contained “numerous safety, security and functional defects, including but not limited to Defective Work,” according to the suit filed Monday in state court in Provo.