Archinect - News

Cooper Union opens access to database of student work dating back to the 1930s

2019-12-03T09:30:00-05:00

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City has unveiled The Student Work Collection, a new online resource that highlights nearly 80 years' worth of architectural output with the aim of recording the "School of Architecture's pedagogy by documenting student work."

The comprehensive archival project includes over 4,000 student projects that are catalogued by student and and instructor names, as well as by course number, semester, decade, and design problem, among other topics. The collection provides a deep view into the early pen-on-vellum work of now-famous architects like Daniel Libeskind (class of 1970), Liz Diller (class of 1979), and others. The archive also offers a more complex perspective of the educational efforts of prominent architectural educators and theorists, including John Hejduk, Peter Eisenman, Toshiko Mori, Lebbeus Woods, and others.

Homepage of The Student Work Collection. Image courtesy of Cooper Union.

According to the site...

Nearly three decades old, Eisenman's (still laser-less) Greater Columbus Convention Center revisited

2019-01-09T14:35:00-05:00

With full theatrical trappings—nu-age Philip Glass music, smoke machines, mood lighting--the Eisenman team unveiled to the crowd a scale model of the building, which produced a light show to rival a Laser Floyd spectacular. These dozen red-hued Death Star beams [...] were to be placed on the building and neighboring structures, flashing, blinking, sweeping across downtown like some insane city-scale laser security system. Three years later, it was opened. Sans lasers.

Nathan Eddy, architecture documentary director and most recently a driving force to save Philip Johnson and John Burgee’s AT&T Building in New York, pens a delightful review of Peter Eisenman's 1990 competition-winning proposal for the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio.

"Forget the Bilbao Effect—today’s clients demand the Instagram Effect, with architects all but forced to include social media experiences into their designs," writes Eddy. "In 2018, a quarter century feels like forever ago, and Eisenman’s building, with its peculiar colors, slanted walls and cocky posturing, is still somehow both out of and ahead of its time, a futuristic anachronism."

Eisenman's House II Revisited

2018-01-15T12:50:00-05:00

Still, the house offers the rigor of thought and careful design and supports projection. Maybe we come to realize that it is our simple, logical certainties that have most misled us.

The advantage to coming to a well-known work late and as an outsider—I’m a writer, not an architect—is that I saw it fresh, away from the noise of adulation and reaction. Making a model of Eisenman's House II gave me a chance to experience it closely, over time, as well as provided a platform to think about our time and much else.

“The public realm has shrunk to an apologetic ghost but the private realm has not been significantly enriched; there are no references—either historical or ideal; and in this atomized society, except for what is electronically supplied or is reluctantly sought in print, communication has either collapsed or reduced itself to impoverished interchange of ever more banal verbal formulae.”

From Rowe and Koetter, Collage City.

This is our world now, where we vacillate between futuristic utopias and visions of apocalypse. Look at the language of the last election and the state of our verbal culture, at how much we have become fractured into narrow whims and abs...

SoapBox: Manifestos

2017-11-13T16:14:00-05:00

Soapbox is a new weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.

This week, in its first offering, we present. Manifestos. A selection of videos whose topics or purpose was to present if not reinforce, Manifestos.

1. GSAPP: What happened to the Architectural Manifesto Series

a. Enrique Walker, Felicity Scott and Anthony Vidler on the architectural manifesto. (2011)

b. Beatriz Colomina,...

Eisenman's iconic 'House II' is now on the market for $850K

2017-04-18T17:36:00-04:00

Built in 1970, ‘House II’ by Peter Eisenman is a major icon of structuralist architecture—and it’s now on the market for $850K.

One of ten experimental houses Eisenman designed, only four of which were built, House II is heavily influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky. The house comprises three two-story bays sheathed in plywood and intercut with skylights, partial walls, and openings in the floor. But the design wasn’t exactly contextually-appropriate: its flat roof didn’t mesh with the cold Vermont winters. So the original designers added a slightly sloped roof, floor grates, and expanded walls.

Even then, House II suffered from leaks and moisture-trapping paint. Eventually, in 2000, the rather deteriorated house was renovated and brought back to its original design “less as a practical dwelling than as a landmark of late-twentieth-century architecture”, according to the Society of Architectural Historians.

Now it can be yours! Situated on a beautiful 80-acre plot of land, it comes ...

Reinier de Graaf: "The western architectural ivory tower has become a theatre of the absurd"

2015-11-05T18:02:00-05:00

As the evening progresses, the event turns into a painful X-ray of the current state of American academia: a strangely insular world with its own autonomous codes, dominated by some antiquated pecking order with an estranged value system and no hope of a correction from within. The often grandiose character of the debate stands in stark contrast to the marginal nature of that which is being debated.

Reinier de Graaf, partner at OMA, delivers a scathing takedown of the current state of architecture academia as represented by the participants of the ArchAgenda Debates, a panel in which he was also a participant. Alongside Jeff Kipnis, Patrik Schumacher, Peter Eisenman, and Theodore Spyropoulos, de Graaf was meant to discuss "a potential agenda for 21st-century architecture." The panel was a periphery event of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

But for de Graaf, the all-male panel of architects "from a part of the world to which – unless all current indicators are completely misgiven – the 21st century will not belong" failed to deliver an agenda or achieve relevance. Check out the op-ed on Dezeen.

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...

Editor's Picks #415

2015-05-14T09:32:00-04:00

Nick Cecchi penned a review of ‘Lina Bo Bardi: Together’ on view at the Graham Foundation through July 25th. He found the

"narrow focus wisely limits Together to investigating the conditions and experiences that helped shape Bo Bardi’s mature approach to architecture...Bo Bardi’s work and life resist reduction and compartmentalization into terms easily digested. To experience and understand Together is to experience the sum of conflicting experiences, opinions, and buildings Bo Bardi brought into this world".

midlander commented "that drawing of chairs is beautiful! I love her work. It's rugged and big without being standoffish. Knew nothing about her background - interesting".

Plus, Nicholas Korody published Getting Lost in the Ozone, the third installment of the recurring feature Architecture of the Anthropocene.

News
This week at the AIA National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, NCARB aims to settle the debate over the title “Intern Architect” with an address by CEO Michael Armstrong ...

Let's talk about money in architecture

2015-02-25T13:00:00-05:00

Although money is often seen as a taboo topic in art schools, a group of Yale alumni is urging professional architects to place more value on the relationship between money and architecture. The Yale Architectural Journal’s latest edition, titled “Money,” discusses the controversial role of money in the field of architecture. [...] ranging from Frank Gehry to Yale School of Architecture Professor Keller Easterling, the issue urges architects to reconsider the financial side of their work.

More about Perspecta 47: Money here.

Editor's Picks #403

2015-02-03T11:20:00-05:00

Archinect Sessions still wants you to share your client horror stories!, (Inspired by the insane Just lost a-hole clients thread from a earlier this month) which you can do via twitter #archinectsessions, email or call us at (213) 784-7421.

News
Stephen Burgen traveled to the newly opened Museo Universidad de Navarra, designed by Rafael Moneo. Mr_Wiggin was disappointed "To me, Moneo's best works are those that are inserted into a place built up 100+ years ago....this, standing alone in the middle of a verdant green, looks like failure of planning".

The NYT reported on the latest developments regarding Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in Goshen, N.Y. Thayer-D lamented "I know this building is a maintenance nightmare, but it's truly one of the more interesting brutalist buildings out there. A lot of ideas to cull from it".

Orhan Ayyüce shared a quote/story from Esther McCoy's 1981 memorial to Konrad Wachsmann, wherein both Corbu and Konrad praise the Pont Transbordeur as ...

Editor's Picks #372

2014-06-18T18:54:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Editorial Manager for Archinect, talked with director Kelly Anderson about her documentary "My Brooklyn" and the “incredible, derogatory, racialized way people talk about the space". The film will air multiple times as part of PBS World's America ReFramed series, starting Tuesday, June 19, at 8pm (EST).

Plus, the eighteenth edition Screen/Print featured an excerpt from Judith K. De Jong ’s new book, New SubUrbanisms, which touched on Flattening: Formal and Spatial Practices.

citizen complained "The author seems to proclaim as breaking news the complex connectivity of central & peripheral parts of metropolitan regions...This isn't new...others have been working for decades now with the premise of a metropolitan system in which the urban/suburban binary is less and less meaningful".

News
Archinect discussed François Roche claim that Rem's Venice Biennale (is) "Obscene". boy in a well responded "Is the Biennale a good place for a soap box because the event is organi...

On the legacy of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies

2014-01-13T16:59:00-05:00

I wish that it still existed. — Frank Gehry It would be the world's biggest nightmare if the Institute were still alive. — Mark Wigley It was the moment for something to happen. — Diana Agrest //

In 1967 Peter Eisenman founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and until it closed in 1985 the Institute — a heady mix of think tank, exhibit space, journal publisher and cocktail party — was one of the centers of American architecture culture. Belmont Freeman describes the new documentary by Diana Agrest, The Making of an Avant-Garde, as a remarkable contribution to the record, and a fascinating glimpse at the early years of many of today's stars: "There is something almost (almost) touching about listening to today’s titans of corporate and haute institutional architecture remind us that once upon a time they were young, idealistic, radical thinkers."

Containers without Content

2013-07-22T12:33:00-04:00

Far from being anchored in the local context, the project (the disastrous City of Culture of Galicia outside Santiago de Compostela, designed by Peter Eisenman) has decapitated Monte de Gaias and replaced it with a phony landscape with curves like those of a fun-fair roller coaster. These cynical intellectual manipulations cannot mask the reality of structures resembling supermarkets twisted about with algorithms and camouflaged with a thin veneer of granite (imported from Brasil!).

In a short sweet and illustrated article writer historian William J.R. Curtis puts several Bilbao effect projects in the trash can. It might as well be called "f..k content."

Eisenman's House VI, Venturi's Philadelphia House, and Louis Kahn’s Esherick House all set to hit the market

2013-05-01T18:18:00-04:00

Three of the most important modernist houses in the Northeast, including the 1964 house Robert Venturi designed for his mother, have been (or will soon be) put up for sale by their long-time owners, two of them without covenants that would ensure their preservation.

Venturi's Philadelphia House

Louis Kahn’s Esherick House

Three Entries Share First Prize in Istanbul’s Yenikapı Design Competition

2012-04-13T17:50:00-04:00

In the international design competition for Yenikapı Transfer Point and Archaeo-Park Area in Istanbul, Turkey, three First Prizes have been announced this week. The jury selected the top project teams Eisenmann Architects/Aytaç Architects, Atelye 70/Francesco Cellini/Insula Architettura E Ingegneria, and Cafer Bozkurt Architects/Mecanoo Architects from nine shortlisted teams, including MVRDV and other international firms.

Is There a Jewish Architecture?

2012-02-02T20:13:00-05:00

Within the parameters of the building art there cannot be artists like Saul Bellow and Philip Roth or like Sidney Lumet and Woody Allen, who in books and movies probe the excruciating details of the Jewish encounter with American capitalism and lifestyle. Architecture cannot tell stories about one’s Jewish mother or one’s Jewish nose. Especially in the era of high modernism, architecture possessed limited expressive resources for detailed cultural critique.

Is there a type of Jewish architecture that unifies the work of Louis Kahn, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind?

Architectural historian Mitchell Schwarzer reviews Gaven Rosenfeld's ambitious book, Building After Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust, and comes away unconvinced.

Building of the Week: City of Culture of Galicia

2011-07-06T17:07:00-04:00

Archinect's Building of the Week series is brought to you by our friends at OpenBuildings.com, the web's most comprehensive directory of buildings.

As I set on writing about the City of Culture of Galicia, I was baffled by the amount of papers, articles and comments on the subject and their diversity. I should have seen this coming, as the project's scale, budget and implications have stretched far beyond the initial expectations and urged a furious debate among architects, journalists, politicians and locals.

Commissioned in 1999, after an invited competition featuring a constellation of starchitects (Libeskind, Koolhaas, Nouvel, Perrault, Steven Holl and Ricardo Bofill, to name a few), the winning project of Peter Eisenman originally featured eight buildings (later reduced to six) composed in a complex, three-dimensional undulating terrain merging harmoniously with the environment.

Eisenman himself admits that "there is no question that the Santiago project is a res...

Eisenman addresses admitted students, talks time and space

2011-04-14T12:09:00-04:00

Immanuel Kant said that human beings make sense of our experiences by using the concepts of space and time. Famed architect and School of Architecture Professor Peter Eisenman said that architects tend to pick one or the other.

KATARXIS Moment: Peter Eisenman and Leon Krier, on dishwashing...

2009-06-30T23:18:00-04:00

Vintage 1983... Based on real and virtual quotes, the debate is fictitiously edited by KATARXIS.
Peter Eisenman: "Leon, come on, you cannot build this way anymore today!"
Leon Krier: " You can't, but I can! "
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