Archinect - News

Vito Acconci, pioneering artist and architect, is dead at 77

2017-04-28T13:35:00-04:00

Vito Acconci, pioneering conceptual artist and architect, passed away today at the age of 77. After starting his career as a poet, Acconci gained recognition for his influential performance and video works. A man of many parts, he then transitioned into working with audio/visual installations before beginning to work primarily as a landscape architect and designer.

During the early ‘80s, Acconci created works like Instant House, a sculpture that assembles into an inhabitable structure when a person sits on a swing, with each interior wall covered in an American flag, and on each exterior wall, a Soviet flag. In 1983, Acconci made his first permanent installation, Way Station I (Study Chamber) at Middleburg College, a sculpture so controversial (it likewise juxtaposed the flags of capitalist countries with communist states) that it was burned down. Later, it was reinstalled.

By the late ‘80s, Acconci had founded Acconci Studio and focused on designing furniture as well as theoretical d...

TriBeCa Synagogue’s Memorable Building and Stubborn Architect

2015-03-11T21:08:00-04:00

William Breger’s roster of memorable buildings is short: just one. But it is a building that has caught the public’s eye for three generations, that has accommodated, challenged and defined an ever-evolving religious community. Many architects die having achieved far less.

The architect, who could be difficult, objected to changes made years ago to “his” building. He was angered by the design of a mechitza, or partition, installed to separate women and men during worship. (Rabbi Glass had it changed.) He was infuriated when the original landscaped plaza by M. Paul Friedberg and Partners was paved over.

More recently, when he learned that a ground-floor reception area, designed by Claire Weisz, had been built without his knowledge, he warned Rabbi Glass that if he did not like what he saw, he would cut the synagogue off from any bequest.

What he found was a front desk that, with its shallow S shape, paid homage to his bow-fronted design. Rabbi Glass said Mr. Breger paid it a high compliment: “I don’t hate it.”

‘Thresholds’ marks the unmarked at Kent cemetery

2013-09-05T14:20:00-04:00

“It is amazing to realize you could walk around the site not knowing if there is a body underneath you,” Nelson said. “How do you commemorate that?”

Of the approximately 200 people buried at Saar Pioneer Cemetery, there are 89 unmarked graves, each unable to inform visitors of their presence and the role they played in Kent history. Collaborative artists Frances Nelson and Bradly Gunn seek to mark the unmarked by creating a series “thresholds” to walk under and pass through, as an acknowledgement of the final resting place of Kent’s founding pioneers.

THRESHOLDS is generously supported by 4Culture’s Site Specific Program and the University of Washington’s College of Built Environment’s Digital Fabrication Lab, with additional support from McLendon Hardware, Dunn Lumber and Miller Paint Co.

The Dead Architects Society

2013-03-01T09:17:00-05:00

In Santa Barbara, Calif., the hot architect in town is George Washington Smith. In Charlottesville, Va., it's Eugene Bradbury. And in the small town of Washington, Conn., homes by Ehrick Rossiter are prized. These architects have a few things in common: They're long dead, they're relatively unknown outside the small, affluent pockets where they practiced in the early 20th century and they've all made a comeback.

John M. Johansen, Last of ‘Harvard Five’ Architects, Dies at 96

2012-10-28T16:10:00-04:00

John M. Johansen, a celebrated Modernist architect and the last surviving member of the Harvard Five, a group that made New Canaan, Conn., a hotbed of architectural experimentation in the 1950s and ’60s, died on Friday in Brewster, Mass. He was 96.