Archinect - News

Buildings Speak: NPR special will explore the impacts of women on American architecture for International Women’s Day

2024-03-06T13:57:00-05:00

For this year's International Women’s Day on March 8, NPR is airing a special one-hour documentary produced with help from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF). The piece aims to shed light on the overlooked contributions of women in architecture to an American mass audience for the first time.

Narrated by the great Oscar-winning actor and producer Frances McDormand, ‘Buildings Speak: Stories of Pioneering Women Architects’ is a collaboration with producers The Kitchen Sisters. The special draws three of the figures (Julia Morgan, Amaza Lee Meredith, and Natalie de Blois) featured in the BWAF’s unmissable New Angle: Voice podcast series, the third season of which also premiers on International Women’s Day with a special focus on the architecture of the 1970s.

Tizziana Baldenebro, the new executive director of the BWAF, commented: “They are trailblazers, groundbreakers, skyscraper visionaries — women who changed the skyline and the built environment that surrounds us tod...

SOM completes restoration of Lever House, a midcentury Manhattan office icon

2023-11-17T15:14:00-05:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has announced the completion of a recent restoration project that’s meant to breathe new life into their historic Lever House design in Manhattan.

The scope of their work entailed the creation of a new lobby, ground-level public plaza, installation of an entirely new modernized building system, and 15,000-square-foot Lever Club hospitality suite in addition to redesigned interior spaces from Marmol Radziner.

Image: Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM

The brief called for repairs affecting the material character of the building (terrazzo flooring, refinished exterior columns, and a glass mosaic tile wall) and fixes to water-damaged ceilings. Reed Hilderbrand has also contributed a comprehensive new landscape program for the building that connects the plaza area to third-floor terraces. Costs for the project were around $100 million.

Image: Lucas Blair Simpson © SOM

“This renovation brings Lever House into the 21st century,” SOM Partner Chris Cooper said in a statement...

The 11 most threatened modern sites across the U.S.

2022-04-29T15:44:00-04:00

In response to the recent surprise demolition of Marcel Breuer’s Geller I house on Long Island, modernist conservation group Docomomo US has released its first-ever list of the 11 most threatened modern sites in the United States.

Working on the advice of its chapter members, the group selected 11 sites across the country in danger of seeing the same fate as Breuer’s first post-war residential project beginning with Miami’s Marine Stadium, which is still currently awaiting word on a publicly-funded restoration effort.

Washington state was a popular location, with Space Needle architect John Graham Jr.’s Lloyd Center and the Weyerhaeuser International Headquarters both making the list.

Massachusetts is also well-represented with the “Long House” prototype cotta...

Planned demolition of SOM-designed JPMorgan Chase HQ draws criticism

2018-02-22T13:48:00-05:00

Earlier today, news broke that the De Blasio administration has hashed out a deal with JPMorgan Chase to demolish its existing headquarters at 270 Park Avenue, and replace the structure with a shiny new 70-story building. The deal was negotiated in the wake of the Midtown East rezoning, which loosened zoning regulations for the area in exchange for developers providing street-level and infrastructure improvements.

Not so fast! said architecture critics and preservationists when news broke that the midcentury 270 Park Avenue tower in Manhattan's East Midtown, currently home of banking giant JPMorgan Chase, had quietly been selected—not for landmark designation—but for the chopping block.

Designed by SOM's Natalie de Blois as Union Carbide Building, the 50-story skyscraper was completed in 1961 and is considered an important example of female-led midcentury corporate architecture.

Editor's Picks #327

2013-08-07T11:36:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Editorial Manager for Archinect, reviewed the exhibit Never Built: Los Angeles, currently on display at the Architecture and Design Museum in L.A. She concluded "When Los Angeles appears so often but rarely as itself, Andersen’s piece honors the city’s ability to be a kind of transforming icon -- each destination in conversation with its inhabitants. It's impossible to know exactly what Los Angeles would be like today were these projects successful, but that isn't the point of "Never Built" -- it captures the collective consciousness of a city in the unrealized language of iconic architecture".

News

Justine Testado Archinect’s Editorial Intern highlighted the work of CARDBORIGAMI™, an effort started by Tina Hovsepian to "provide temporary, transitional shelter and connections to social services to help get people off the streets". Her Cardborigami shelter is currently on display at the Berkshire Museum's latest exhibit, "PaperWorks: The Art and Sc...

An Architect Whose Work Stood Out, Even if She Did Not

2013-08-01T16:05:00-04:00

Almost invisibly in her own day, Natalie de Blois, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, helped guide the design of three of the most important corporate landmarks of the 1950s and ‘60s — the headquarters of Lever Brothers, Pepsi-Cola and Union Carbide — whose suave steel-and-glass facades still exude the cool confidence of postwar Park Avenue.