Archinect - News

Reed Hilderbrand signs on for a $22 million sculpture park at Louisville's Speed Art Museum

2023-08-15T17:54:00-04:00

A new three-acre sculpture park design for Louisville, Kentucky’s Speed Art Museum has been unveiled by Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture in a preview of the project, which is expected to host some 500,000 visitors a year after it opens in 2025.

The firm’s $22 million Speed Outdoors makeover will recreate an area surrounding the museum with native flora, a water management system, and 150 new trees in coordination with the adjacent University of Louisville and with a 13-artwork bequest from local collectors.

Image courtesy of Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture

The Museum’s Director, Raphaela Platow, said it will also instill Frederick Law Olmsted’s "dream of a Louisville connected by public parklands" while serving as a "welcoming forum for the whole community to connect with art, nature, and each other for generations to come."

Image courtesy of Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture

The sculptural work of Zaha H...

Calming Down and Speeding Up in Louisville with Steven Ward, on Archinect Sessions #78

2016-08-25T17:48:00-04:00

This week's show is dedicated to Louisville, and we're delighted to share the mic with longtime Archinect favorite Steven Ward. Steven is an architect and partner at Studio Kremer Architects, teacher and architecture critic/cheerleader for the local independent paper LEO Weekly. We discuss his recent writings, in particular his survey of the recently completed Speed Art Museum, and the differences between local architecture criticism vs national criticism. We also find out what's going on with OMA's Food Port project.

Listen to episode 78 of Archinect Sessions, "Calming Down and Speeding Up in Louisville":

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Shownotes:

Steven's writings at LEO Weekly

OMA...

It looks simple. Effortless. Crisp.

2016-04-11T12:37:00-04:00

As an experienced architect, able to extract from drawings an understanding of what they communicate, even I couldn’t fully assess the project from the images published. A perverse wisdom in wHY’s vague, non-photo-realistic choice of rendering style: It doesn’t limit the eventual choices, leaving room to operate as the design is brought to realization. This is brilliant because...

Archinect's own Steven Ward wrote about the newly opened Speed Art Museum expansion by wHY.

The childhood home of Muhammad Ali is about to get a $250,000 facelift

2015-07-01T13:52:00-04:00

The Louisville house where boxing legend Muhammad Ali – then known as Cassius Clay Jr. – first began training at the age of 12 is about to undergo a $250,000 restoration. Currently in a dilapidated state, the small house on Grand Avenue was purchased by real estate investor and boxing fan Jared Weiss. The project seeks to restore the home to its original appearance, including a pink paint job. In 2012, a historic marker was placed in front of the site.

A program called Jesus and a Job that provides jobs to former felons will be in charge of the labor. When the restoration is finished, the house will open to the public as a museum, joining the Muhammad Ali Center in commemorating one of Louisville's most notable athletes.

OMA to master plan a "Food Hub" in Louisville

2015-04-03T14:00:00-04:00

[OMA's] design knits together a complex program of green industry and public engagement. A new master plan just released by Seed Capital shows a zigzagging complex that is expected to be under construction later this year. [...] Heine said Seed Capital, founded by Heine and Stephen Reily, selected OMA to design the Food Hub following a limited request for proposals that generated interest from five firms. [...] OMA is working with the Louisville office of GBBN Architecture on the project.

In case you aren't familiar with the concept of a "food hub", from Broken Sidewalk:

“A regional food hub is,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, storage, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.” But Louisville’s $46 million food hub is expected to be much more than a distribution hub for local farmers, with plans for on-site farming, processing, recycling, education, and retail.

Apparently the Louisville food hub was one of the sites focused on by students in OMA's ongoing GSD studio, looking at the relationship between food, design and architecture. A couple of students had already focused research and design work on the site by the time OMA was selected.

About the fertile relationship between architects and second-tier cities

2015-01-26T14:07:00-05:00

New York, Boston, Chicago, and other major metros have a lot of construction activity, but also a lot of architects. It's a competitive field made more so by the sheer number of talented firms in the same handful of cities. That contributes to the culture of stress and overwork that many architects bemoan [...]. By contrast, an ambitious architecture practice can carve out a niche for itself in a second-tier city, where the scene is often dominated by "legacy" firms that play it safe.

Bike Louisville implementing Neighborways, a city-wide bike boulevard system

2014-11-11T14:06:00-05:00

Louisville is currently implementing such a system, what the city’s bike department, Bike Louisville, is calling “Neighborways.” The city hopes these new bike boulevards will encourage and enable bicyclists and pedestrians to take advantage of alternate-route options for moving safely around the city—and eventually lead to an uptick in biking overall.

h/t StreetsBlog

DRIFT wins Pavilions Design Competition

2014-06-20T09:49:00-04:00

DRIFT proposes a triangular arrangement of eight foot diameter balloons that create a dynamic canopy over bourbon tastings, educational spaces for children and other groups. Jurors praised the project for its unexpected playfulness and relationship to historic river imagery. The design was interpreted by the panel of jurors as a type of inverted raft with romantic allusions to the journeys of Huckleberry Finn as well as the flatboats that once populated Louisville’s wharf in great numbers.

On October 15, 2014, Louisville will host the Centennial Festival of Riverboats to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Belle of Louisville. During the summer of 2013, the Waterfront Development Corporation announced an international design competition for a series of temporary pavilions to be used during the celebration. Designs were required to accommodate a variety of uses and relate conceptually to the event while adhering to a stipulated material budget and public safety requirements.

Interest in the project was far-reaching, attracting a variety of established firms and creative practices from thirteen countries including twenty United States.

The winning entry, DRIFT, was submitted by Brooklyn-based design practice stpmj. Design team members Seung Teak Lee and Mi Jung Lim are both natives of Seoul, Korea. Stpmj has an impressive track record with inventive design projects as evidenced by works such as Invisible Barn, a reflective structure proposed for the Socrates Sculptu...

So what is Louisville doing now?

2012-09-26T18:54:00-04:00

As for the notion that expanding the interstate tangle and adding the sister bridge next to the Kennedy might bring more people and jobs into the city, I can only say that 40 years after the interstates supposedly started pumping life into Louisville’s downtown, the streets here looked pretty empty, especially at night.

Michael Kimmelman criticizes plans to add to Louisville's "Spaghetti Junction" by increasing the capacity of downtown highways and building a second bridge next to the Kennedy Interchange. He considers it especially foolhardy, in light of recent efforts in cities across the globe, to repair the damages done to their urban fabric, by postwar highways.

Louisville's Speed Museum expansion by wHY Architecture Presented

2011-04-15T12:50:15-04:00

Louisville’s Speed Art Museum has unveiled plans for a new addition designed by Culver City, CA-based wHY Architecture with Reed Hilderbrand landscape architects. Located on the campus of the University of Louisville, the museum hopes to increase connections with the city and the university along with increasing gallery and educational space.