Archinect - News

New NEOM documentary features Thom Mayne, Peter Cook, Reinier de Graaf, and other architects speaking highly of The Line megacity project

2023-07-28T13:06:00-04:00

A new look behind the process and select architects involved in Saudi Arabia’s controversial The Line megacity for NEOM has been released, answering some questions as to its ideation while leaving many remaining in regard to the project's structural engineering, technical specifics, and design feasibility overall.

Among the torrent of quickly-spliced and placable bromides, the 45-minute "documentary" features Peter Cook stating, "if it's to be a success... parts of it will fail." None of the interviewees, including especially Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, offered an explanation as to how the "top-down, hardcore engineering" OMA partner Reinier de Graaf describes will be carried out in any detail, an element which has been a constant source of criticism since the segment was first announced a year ago.

"Many projects acquire their sanity as they go along, and I think very, very much the case here too — and the jury's out," de Graaf stated before bemoaning a "complete lac...

'Shop of horrors': Oliver Wainwright reviews Morphosis' newly-opened Orange County Museum of Art

2022-12-13T17:20:00-05:00

Nowhere is the gulf between digital promise and physical fact more spectacularly evident than at the new Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in California [...] Almost a generation in the making, it feels like the final death rattle of a bygone age, the last gasp of an era preoccupied with novel form for form’s sake. Perhaps it is fitting that this flimsy, paper-thin architecture is held together with tape.

The Guardian critic paid a visit to the new museum building to offer a thoroughly dejecting assessment based on what he observed to be a disorienting entrance, confounding wayfinding system, atrium configuration, and defective cladding panels made necessary by a “performative shell” that has come to be an “expensive and elaborate” trope of its designers.

Morphosis partner-in-charge Brandon Welling claimed the firm was pushed into its October completion date and is still going through its punch list of small details that will complete the design, which Wainwright called a “$94 [million] hymn to the difference between render and reality.”

“I have no interest in completing projects,” says Thom Mayne - too bad for the Orange County Museum of Art https://t.co/RIvHSkUuZE pic.twitter.com/RdYTpOSVSo
— Olly Wainwright (@ollywainwright) December 13, 2022

Builders for the project pinned some of the issues on supply chain delays and said some of the hastily assembled stopgaps like tape and sof...

First photos of Morphosis' soon-to-open Orange County Museum of Art

2022-09-29T13:06:00-04:00

With a grand opening just a little over a week away, the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) has revealed the latest photos of its Morphosis-designed new South Coast home in the beachfront community of Costa Mesa.

Located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the 53,000-square-foot museum will be inaugurated with five special exhibitions and 24-hour celebrations to honor the work that went into its design and three-year-long construction.

“The OCMA design represents a new model for museums based on public, urban, communal spaces with strong connections between interior and exterior,” Morphosis principals Thom Mayne and Brandon Welling shared.

Photo: Mike Kelley

“Engaging the urban realm with a public stair and ‘storefront’ galleries, the design invites visitors through sunlit atrium spaces, open galleries and an expansive sculpture terrace. The strong relationship in the building between indoor and outdoor space will encourage visitors to immerse themselves in the cele...

Saudi Arabia adds Morphosis to project team for its NEOM smart city megaproject

2022-06-14T18:08:00-04:00

The Line, as the car-free linear city that will form the backbone of Neom is known, could cost up to $200 billion to build, the prince said last year, though that was before the plan changed to include gigantic horizontal buildings. The buildings would be “different heights as you go,” adapting to the landscape, with their final size determined by engineering considerations and the terrain, Al-Nasr said.

The OPEC nation has thus far been mum as to the new plan’s details but says it will be funded in part through an increase in surplus revenues overseen by the Public Investment Fund, which is managed by NEOM’s CEO Al-Nasr. It is yet unclear whether Bechtel, who previously signed on their servicesfor the then-estimated $500 billion venture’s light rail and utility systems, will remain on for the project’s updated version, wherein Morphosis and designer Thom Mayne will deliver two parallel 1,640-foot-tall structures said to stretch from the Red Sea into the desert ar lengths of up to half a mile.

Rendering of the proposed mega-city. Image courtesy of Neom. Previously on Archinect: Bechtel to lay groundwork for Saudi smart mega-city Neom

The mixed-use designs featured by the scheme could count as the world’s largest when all is said and done for the still highly-theoretical autonomous city, which may eventually be the same size as Massachusetts. Concerns over Al-Nasr’s toxic management s...

Morphosis-designed Orange County Museum of Art expected to open in 2022

2021-06-16T14:43:00-04:00

The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) announced that its new $93 million building will open to the public on October 8, 2022 in time for the return of the California Biennial 2022 (CB22) exhibition.

The 53,000-square-foot facility was designed by Los Angeles-based, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects. Breaking ground in September 2019, the new building will sit at the open public plaza at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa and will double the size of the museum’s former location. The California Biennial 2022 will be the inaugural exhibition at OCMA’s new home.

Previously on Archinect: Morphosis-designed Orange County Museum of Art tops out

“It is no coincidence that as we open a building defined by its innovative and forward-thinking design, we are also acknowledging OCMA’s important and pioneering foundation,” says new OCMA CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman. “California has long been a wellspring of innovation and creativity, and CB22 ...

Thom Mayne's unconventional carriage house for historic Brooklyn neighborhood approved

2021-04-21T20:11:00-04:00

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis appeared before the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) again Tuesday to present an updated proposal for the restoration of an 1868 townhouse in Brooklyn, and the construction of a new 2,000-square-foot carriage house at its rear. Mayne, who appeared with his collaborator, Ted Kane (who is overseeing the restoration), won the unanimous approval — and delight — of the LPC for his revised design.

Thom Mayne, co-founder of SCI-Arc, to return in a full-time faculty position

2018-12-17T19:14:00-05:00

After helping start the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the early 70's, Thom Mayne will be returning as a full-time "Distinguished Faculty", to teach and coordinate the SCI-Arc EDGE Design of Cities postgraduate program in fall 2019.

SCI-Arc has released the following statement discussing the new role and Mayne's previous accomplishments as an academic and architect/founder of Morphosis...

SCI-Arc is very pleased to announce that one of its founders, Thom Mayne, will be returning to SCI-Arc as a full-time distinguished faculty beginning fall 2019. Thom Mayne will be taking over the coordination of SCI-Arc EDGE's postgraduate program, Design of Cities. “It is wonderful to have Thom Mayne come back home. He is a major part of what SCI-Arc is, was, and will be," says Hernan Diaz Alonso, SCI-Arc Director/CEO. "Thom Mayne represents everything that we want our students to aspire to. Thom embodies the best aspirations of architecture as a historical, cultural, and politic...

Thom Mayne Young Architects Program is extended for third semester

2018-02-14T18:53:00-05:00

Morphosis has announced the educational initiative led by the firm’s Pritzker Prize-winning founder, Thom Mayne Young Architects, has been extended through the remainder of the 2017-2018 academic year in partnership with Hall Elementary School in Bridgeport, CT.

Students in the Thom Mayne Young Architects Program. Image: Google.

This program enables 6th grade students who participated last semester to continue developing their design skills in this 12-week course. The after-school classes are led by Pratt Institute architecture students, and task the students with creating a beautification proposal for their classroom. Each student received a new Pixelbook laptop donated by Google with state-of-the-art design software to develop their design skills.

An architecture model produced by a student in the Thom Mayne Young Architects Program. Image: Morphosis.

Students will demonstrate their grasp of architectural concepts and their mastery of design software in mid-term and final presenta...

Morphosis' new Bloomberg Center at Cornell Tech campus now open

2017-09-13T19:58:00-04:00

Morphosis' Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Center in Roosevelt Island, New York has officially opened its doors. Designed as Cornell Tech's “home base”, the academic building was named in honor of Emma and Georgina Bloomberg, in recognition of a $100 million gift from former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.

With Thom Mayne as design director and Morphosis principal Ung-Joo Scott Lee as project principal, the 4-story, 160,000 sq.ft. educational hub provides traditional classrooms and large workspaces as well as clusters of “break-out” spaces, huddle rooms, and social areas for group study sessions. Students can also use the quiet rooms and micro-pods for working privately or as telephone booths.

Interior. Photo: Matthew Carbone for Morphosis.

Ground floor. Photo: Matthew Carbone for Morphosis.

Aiming to be New York's first net-zero university building, the non-fossil fuel Bloomberg Center is equipped with multiple sustainable features, such as a 40,000 sq.ft. solar canopy that supports 1...

Pritzker winner Thom Mayne among 17 members of President's Arts Council that resigned in protest

2017-08-21T13:46:00-04:00

All 17 members of a White House advisory panel on the arts and humanities resigned en masse Friday in response to President Trump's divisive comments on the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va. The move follows the mass exodus of major business CEOs who quit two White House panels this week to protest the president's response to last weekend's clashes between far-right groups and counter-protesters.

Last week as multiple CEO's began quitting both the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum in protest of Trump's response to Charlottesville, Trump has decided to not move forward with the Council on Infrastructure. On Friday, the entire Arts Committee resigned over the same issue. To drive home the point, the members spelled out the word "resist" with the first letter of the six paragraphs that make up the memo.

“Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values,” the committee members wrote in a letter announcing their resignation. “Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.”

The arts commission was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, and while mostly ceremonial, it works to advise the president on cultural policy and funding initiatives.

Ten years after opening, Morphosis' San Francisco Federal Building is not a crowd pleaser

2017-07-18T13:02:00-04:00

Neighbors have complained about the plaza for years, calling it an unsafe blight. The frustration is shared by Maria Ciprazo, the federal architect who oversaw the process that in 1999 awarded the project to Mayne and his Southern California firm, Morphosis.

In this article, the San Francisco Chronicle takes issue with Morphosis' Federal Building, noting that its plaza has not become the cultural hotspot much hyped by developers at its opening in 2007:

But when we view the complex in hindsight, it didn’t transform the local architectural scene. It’s a flash of isolated drama. Look no further than the three residential slabs that have been built on the block since then, each a box with no higher aspiration than to satisfy the developer’s bottom line.

As for the social agenda — to create a neighborhood haven — the plaza and its corner cafe have come up short on all fronts.

Want to live in Thom Mayne's iconic Sixth Street House?

2017-05-10T19:38:00-04:00

Then we have good news for you, that is, if you have $7,600 a month to spare on rent. The LA-based architect's Santa Monica home has been put up for lease following his recent re-location to Cheviot Hills. Two years ago, Thom Mayne and his wife, Blythe Mayne, bought beloved science-fiction author Ray Brabury's old home and have since, spent the past two years rebuilding on the site. Now that they have made the move, their old residence is up for grabs.

Some might recognize the home from its prominent role in Michael Mann's 1995 crime movie, Heat, in which Al Pacino famously rants about the "dead-tech post-modernistic bullshit house." Quick aside: the restaurant Kate Mantilini, also designed by his firm Morphosis, makes an appearance in the film as well.

Beyond its legacy in Hollywood, the home has received plenty of acclaim in the world of architecture. It was the recipient of the 1987 AIA Los Angeles Honor Award and the architectural drawings of the home have been displayed at MOMA.

Y...

Thom Mayne to serve as Critic-at-Large at Pratt Graduate School

2017-04-04T17:45:00-04:00

According to a newly released press statement, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne has been named the first “Critic at Large” at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program (GAUD). The position was created “to expand discourse across the GAUD curriculum and build connections between the pedagogical and professional aspects of the program.”

Mayne is expected to work directly with students from each year and each program on projects on “several key days”. The press release states that these days will manifest as both intimate, one-on-one discussions and public events.

In honor of the appointment, Mayne will deliver a lecture on Thursday, April 13 at 6 PM, reflecting on his work as a pedagogue and architect.

Turn the lights off on the way out: Iñaki Ábalos's keynote at Day 2 of the GSD's Heliomorphism conference

2016-09-19T19:31:00-04:00

Day one of Heliomorphism, the inaugural conference convened by the new research arm of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Office for Urbanization, ended with Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects finally breaking through the jargon and superficiality of the topic at hand. The theme of the environment, solar performance along with sustainability were all absorbed and raised to the echelon of where they should exist; as already built in qualities of any project, not a topic or excuse for architectural exuberance. Thom Mayne’s ability to recognize and exploit this only provided further proof of the scale, method, and nature of his work as worthy of his recognition and role as a leader in the discipline.

Sadly, during the second and final day of the conference we found ourselves again forcibly located at the epicenter of Ivy League semantic blurring and Copernican alignments. Day one seemed to have fallen into the shadows of the tone and wording at hand. The day was kicked off with a s...

Thom Mayne and Jeanne Gang play it safe with Heliomorphism keynotes at the GSD

2016-09-16T18:23:00-04:00

We once knew the world was flat.

We once knew earth was the center of the universe.

We once knew the sun was the center of the universe.

We once knew the Milky Way was the center of the universe.

Maybe the 3rd is not so far off in the end.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) officially launched its new research focused arm, Office for Urbanization, with a conference titled 'Heliomorphism'. Research has a long and varied history at the GSD and of course at Harvard in general. Exploiting and creating these opportunities for collaboration and exploration of disciplinary topics are at the highest aspirations for the Office.

Its goal is thus to become a transdisciplinary initiative designed to focus the intellectual and practical capabilities of the School on a range of applied design research projects, attendant to the contemporary city. While the school itself already contains a plethora of Design Labs, Groups, Lectures and conferences, the Office of Urbanization hopes to distinguish...

Editor's Picks #444

2016-04-13T17:48:00-04:00

ICYMI Amelia Taylor-Hochberg published a 3 part interview with Coy Howard, by students in John Southern's “Architectural Media and Publishing” Cultural Studies seminar at SCI-Arc. Ewa Lenart was impressed "Great Work and greatly inspiring teacher!"

Plus, Nicholas Korody explored ‘Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work’ by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. Chris Teeter thought it was "good work...very interesting...these guys are 100% correct about scale".

News
Dame Zaha Hadid DBE passed on March 31st. Frank Gehry remembered "she was one of the guys...[That’s] sexist in its own way I suppose. I don’t mean it that way...She was undaunted by all the stuff that would be against a woman coming into a field at that level. She didn’t pay attention to it…She was very confident."

Daniel Elmore criticized some of commentary "She deserves to be remembered not as one of the best 'female architects' but one of THE BEST architects of our time...A visionary before her time and a...

"How Much a Dollar Costs": Thom Mayne's hard road to success and what "Postcapitalism and a World without Work" could mean for architecture, on Archinect Sessions #57

2016-03-24T14:38:00-04:00

This past week on Archinect, we heard Thom Mayne's story of "jazz, sex, and the alienation of singular genius" in Julia Ingalls' interview with the Morphosis lead, and hypothesized on the future of architectural work in a world of full automation and universal basic income, based on Nicholas Korody's interview with the co-authors behind Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. Both Ingalls and Korody join us on the podcast to delve deeper into these pieces, and share some juicy tidbits that couldn't make the final cut.

Listen to episode 57 of Archinect Sessions, "How Much a Dollar Costs":

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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

"Untitled" (1961) by Cy Twombly:

Pers...

A peek into The Now Institute's "Haiti Now" publication + giveaway winners

2015-11-10T11:48:00-05:00

Looking back at the Season 1 finale of Archinect Sessions this past summer — featuring Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi, our listeners had the chance to win a copy of "Haiti Now". The book is a visual almanac of the "Haiti Now" project from the NOW Institute. Founded by Thom Mayne, the Now Institute is an urban research center at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design that applies strategic urban thinking to real-world issues.

Photo via The NOW Institute.

Haiti Now is a cross-disciplinary research-driven project that is dedicated to addressing Haiti's contemporary urban issues and potential for future development as thoroughly as possible. The project began in 2011 when the Now Institute was asked to be involved in the development of Haiti, after the Institute completed a design for the Make It Right foundation and a proposed masterplan for the city of New Orleans.

"It is our hope that this book can provide a foundation of knowledge and understanding of Haiti and many issue of development to uni...

Archinect's round-up of the week's architectural critiques

2015-09-16T13:36:00-04:00

What is the role of creative exploration in architecture? From the L.A. Times to The New Republic, this question is very much on critical minds. In a piece entitled "How to Make Architecture Human," Anna Wiener reviews Witold Rybczynski's latest collection of essays, Mysteries of the Mall, which sets out to explore the "mundane" locales of architecture and quickly proclaims a distaste for the avant-garde in favor of lasting value.

Wiener notes that "Rybczynski is right to call out architects who submit designs for cities they have little relationship to, but work that favors experimentation—in aesthetics, in use, in design process—occupies a valuable space in the culture, too. 'Lasting value' is subjective and arbitrary; it serves a culture well to explore its desires and curiosities, however eccentric, and expand beyond the mainstream comfort-zone." Her review delves further into the problems of outdated and out of touch criticism: many of the essays contained in the book were origi...

Now and Then: Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi on Archinect Sessions' season finale

2015-07-30T11:00:00-04:00

Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi join us to discuss their recently published book, Haiti Now – a herculean resource on post-disaster urbanism in Haiti, published by their urban think tank, the NOW Institute.

The rest of this episode takes a look back at the first forty episodes of Archinect Sessions, as we wrap up season one. Each new episode has expanded, and sharpened, our idea of what the podcast can and should be. We've spoken with some pretty heavy hitters, including Denise Scott Brown, Kevin Roche, Patrik Schumacher, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Bjarke Ingels, Thomas Heatherwick, Christopher Hawthorne and Michael Rotondi, as well as some up and comers, like Andrés Jaque (winner of MoMA's 2015 YAP), Jimenez Lai, and Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki (winners of the Guggenheim Helsinki competition).

It's been a blast, but moving forward, we want to tighten up, dig deeper and move the proverbial furniture around. We'll start up season two in the coming weeks, but while we're on hiatus...

Ray Bradbury's old house has been reincarnated as bookends

2015-07-08T14:09:00-04:00

While not exactly preserved in situ, Ray Bradbury's former home in Cheviot Hills is getting a second life in an appropriate, if nonconventional, form – bookends. When Thom Mayne bought the property last year, with plans to build his own house, he had the modest yellow home carefully deconstructed by The ReUse People (TRP), so the lumber could be salvaged and reused. TRP then used the home's 2x6's to make a custom, limited set of 451 rustic bookends, nodding to Bradbury's bestseller, Fahrenheit 451.

The bookends were listed at $88.50 (they have since sold out), with a fraction of the proceeds going to Indiana University's Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. From there, the funds are to be used in a reconstruction of Bradbury's home office.

Prior discussion of the history and preservation of Bradbury's home:

h/t The ReUse People and scpr.org

Thom Mayne's Vals Tower Draws Criticism

2015-04-02T15:47:00-04:00

Release a rendering of a very tall, very shiny glass tower looming over an idyllic mountain village and the Internet goes bananas. That's what happened earlier this week when Morphosis Architects of Los Angeles released its design renderings for a new luxury hotel in Vals, a low-key spa town in the Swiss Alps. The design, conceived by Morphosis founder Thom Mayne, would check in at a whopping 1,250 feet, making it the tallest building in the European Union.

Morphosis turns Vals into "Skyscraper Village"

2015-03-25T14:36:00-04:00

Plans for a 381m high luxury hotel tower in a sleepy Alpine village have just been unveiled – and the designer is convinced it will fit right in. But is it any more than a castle in the air? [...] The new hotel tower, designed by Pritzker prizewinner Thom Mayne’s practice, Morphosis, will shoot up 381m into the clouds (almost a third taller than the Shard), a looming spectre visible for miles around the tiny alpine village. It is a gigantic mirror-clad middle finger aimed at the region [...].

Session 14: His bjark is BIGger than his bjite – A chat with Bjarke Ingels at the opening of BIG's "Hot to Cold" exhibition

2015-01-29T15:25:00-05:00

This episode is a doozy. Paul and Amelia left the temperate sunshine of Los Angeles for Washington, DC's frigid monumentality, to interview Bjarke Ingels on the eve of his "Hot to Cold" exhibition at the National Building Museum. The 40-year old architect shared some quick-won wisdom about scaling a business, the Danish condition, and the indispensability of humor and play in architecture.

Donna and Ken joined Paul and Amelia to speak with Lian Chang about her recently published visualizations of the Archinect Salary Poll for the ACSA, in charming emoji-based data sets. The Sessions co-hosts also discuss Aaron Betsky's new appointment as the head of the deeply troubled Taliesin West, and what Thom Mayne's demolition of Ray Bradbury's house means for architecture preservation and sentimentality.

And for another climatological analogy, Paul and Brian Newman, Archinect Sessions's legal correspondent, poke at the tip of the iceberg concerning issues of copyright in architecture.

A remind...

The sky is falling! Weekly News Round-Up for January 12, 2015

2015-01-19T18:05:00-05:00

Friday, January 16:

Architecture for Humanity to shut down: The San Francisco HQ has laid off all employees and will file for bankruptcy, however it's unclear how this will affect operations of the many national/international AfH outposts that function through volunteers.
Work at Manhattan's 432 Park Ave tower ordered to stop after pipe falls from 81st floor: The latest in a recent series of similar incidents, including a bolt falling from London's cheesegrater, falling art in Mons, the 2015 European Capital of Culture, and concrete panels dropping from Zaha Hadid's library in Vienna.

Thursday, January 15:

Norm's Coffee Shop, an LA Googie icon, is temporarily saved from demolition: Along with the first Taco Bell being in peril of demolition, part of southern California's architectural heritage is being considered.

Wednesday, January 14:

Jean Nouvel boycotts opening of his Philharmonie de Paris: Despite the restaurant and exhibition space not being fully complete, Nouvel's Philharmonie hel...

Thom Mayne razing Ray Bradbury's house to build his own

2015-01-14T13:11:00-05:00

[Ray Bradbury's] Cheviot Hills house ... hit the market last May, and sold in a little over a month for $1.765 million [...] the buyers were Pritzker-Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, of the firm Morphosis, and his wife, Blythe Alison-Mayne. [...] the new property owner's plan is to demolish Bradbury's house to put in a new house with three underground levels—one of which will hold a swimming pool—and two stories above ground.

CurbedLA also points out that, according to Morphopedia, this will be Mayne's first residential project in LA in more than ten years.

More photos via File 770.

Look back, move forward: Weekly News Round-Up for November 3, 2014

2014-11-10T18:55:00-05:00

Friday, November 7:

8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin Wall: A 10 mile chain of balloons will line the path where the Wall previously stood, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its demolition.
First Ever Chicago Architecture Biennial Taking Shape for 2015: The Biennial's theme of "The State of the Art of Architecture" (named after Stanley Tigerman's 1977 conference), is starting to take shape, and will include a photo exhibition on Chicago from Iwan Baan.

Thursday, November 6:

Massive Hollywood project sits atop quake fault: The California Geological Survey confirmed that the Millenium Hollywood skyscraper sits on top of an active fault, despite the fact that the developer's consultants find no evidence of an active fault in their analysis of the data. LA's Department of Building and Safety will ultimately determine whether the Millenium can be built.
Centre Pompidou To Open Design and Architecture Gallery: Upon the opening of its new photography gallery, the renowned Parisian...

Photo of the Week: Michael Rotondi and Thom Mayne

2014-11-04T16:29:00-05:00

As two old friends and comrades Michael Rotondi and Thom Mayne give each other the warmest hug ever as photographed by Cal Poly Pomona student Jacklin Lee after the Neutra Award was presented to Michael Rotondi on Monday night November 3 rd.

On the ground: UCLA's year-end student expo, RUMBLE, includes flying robots, seceding cities and much more

2014-07-08T18:13:00-04:00

The big catharsis for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design comes by way of RUMBLE, an all-school expo held at the end of the academic year, that includes student work, final reviews, program installations, and lectures. Mixing content from students, practitioners, critics and faculty, the event spans a full week in June, and gives the public a chance to peek into A.UD's world. This year’s RUMBLE included work from studios led by Neil Denari, Frank Gehry, Craig Hodgetts, Greg Lynn, Thom Mayne and many more, showcased across two campuses for the first time in A.UD history.

In addition to their facilities on the main campus in Westwood, UCLA acquired a giant airplane hanger in Playa Vista for its satellite Hercules campus, now home to SUPRASTUDIO, UCLA’s M.Arch II program. You can read more about the goings-on at Hercules from our visit in December. Similar in parts to Blue Tape, USC’s big-bang showcase for its entire architecture school, RUMBLE offers the public a unique chance to see th...

On the Ground: UCLA's new IDEAS campus

2013-12-03T19:12:00-05:00

Archinect recently took a field trip to Playa Vista, a quiet community minutes from the ocean in west Los Angeles, to check out UCLA’s new satellite architecture campus, IDEAS. Entirely housed within a 13,000sqft airplane hangar, the campus is used by architecture students in the university’s SUPRASTUDIO program, a one-year MArch II that pairs students with industry and non-profit leaders to focus on an advanced research project. Since its first run in 2008, SUPRASTUDIO has tripled in size and offerings, now composed of 41 students working in studios led by Gehry Partners/Gehry Technologies, Greg Lynn, and Thom Mayne/The Now Institute.

A far cry from the hilly green labyrinth of UCLA’s Westwood campus, the IDEAS hangar formerly belonged to famed aviation magnate Howard Hughes, and now plays neighbor to Los Angeles’ YouTube Space (and nearby Google in Venice). The Playa Vista community is still very new, first developed in the early aughts as part of President Bill Clinton’s init...