Archinect - News

Buro Happold has been tapped for an ambitious Twin Cities climate resiliency plan

2021-09-09T16:27:00-04:00

An industry leader in sustainability approaches has once again been selected for a project that will define the Minneapolis-St. Paul region in the 21st century.

Buro Happold has been named the winner of the competitive RFP process for the Metropolitan Council’s Climate Action and Resilience Plan that aims to lay a foundation for regional planning policy for years to come.

The firm has done other significant projects in major cities around the country, including Los Angeles, and Cambridge, MA. A 2017 research project for the C40 organization revealed that an estimated 223,000 lives could be saved if the prescribed actions included in Buro Happold’s report were taken.

Protesters gather outside the statehouse in St. Paul, MN for a demonstration against the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline in 2018. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Fibonacci Blue (CC BY 2.0).

“The plan aims to support ongoing mitigation and resilience efforts in the region, including for its most vulnerable communities...

Update: Frank Gehry's Winton Guest House auctioned for $750,000

2015-05-19T13:14:00-04:00

UPDATE: The Winton Guest House sold for $750,000 today at Wright's "Design Masterworks" auction in Chicago. During the approximately 40-minute livestream that began promptly at noon Central Time, the Winton Guest House was auctioned among several furniture pieces including a Charles Eames & Eero Saarinen Chair and Table, and a George Nelson Marshmallow Sofa. Although Wright's website listed $850,000 as the starting bid for the Winton Guest House, the bespeckled auctioneer Richard Wright opened up its bidding lot at $500,000 and increased it by $50,000 increments. As silence filled the room, the auctioneer nearly deemed the house as Pass/Unsold until a phone bidder named Michael purchased it for $750,000. "This is a bargain on an architectural masterpiece," Wright commented. Not too surprisingly, the pacing of bids for the Guest House was neither as competitive nor as enduring compared to the furniture pieces. However, the House's bidding lot closed on a small celebratory note as att...

Hitoshi Abe on place-making and layered formalism at UCLA

2013-11-05T17:11:00-05:00

How can we understand a place, and seek to define it? What elements do we identify as components of that place, and how do they interact with each other? In a recent lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, Hitoshi Abe, chair of UCLA’s Architecture and Urban Design department, approached these questions through a study of Atelier Hitoshi Abe, his design practice located in both Los Angeles and Sendai, Japan. Drawing on Japanese ideas of place-making, Abe conceptualizes his structures not as monoliths of positive and negative spaces, but as a system of layers that collectively define the building.

The concepts of “space” and “place”, as conceived by Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida, are part of the objective reality that an individual uses to define themselves -- but instead of that objective reality being based on discrete physical forms, the sense of self arises from a reactive relationship with the space, rather than in opposition to it*. Highlighting internati...