Archinect - News

Brooke Hodge named Palm Springs Art Museum's first Architecture & Design Director

2016-04-05T18:29:00-04:00

The Palm Springs Art Museum has named Brooke Hodge as their very first Director of Architecture & Design. Hodge comes by way of the Cooper Hewitt in New York, where she served as the Deputy Director since 2014, but is already well-versed in the southern Californian architecture and design milieu, having also been the Director of Exhibitions and Publications at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, as well as the Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

Hodge's name may also be familiar for her curatorial work at other institutions. Last year, she curated "Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio", displayed at the Hammer in Los Angeles, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, and the Cooper Hewitt. She has also curated shows featuring the works of Frank Gehry and Dame Zaha Hadid.

Palm Springs is itself an architectural treasure chest, generously populated with midcentury modern homes styled with the distinct flair o...

Archinect Sessions Episode #20: Three Funerals and a Curator

2015-03-12T18:01:00-04:00

Ten minutes before we sat down to record this week's episode, the Pritzker Prize Laureate was announced – posthumously. The winner, Frei Otto (1925 - 2015), was a German architect whose impressive work and research with lightweight and sustainable structures influenced countless architects through the 20th century to today. Otto was informed of the prize before his death in Germany this past Monday, March 9, prompting the Pritzker committee to make the formal announcement the day after.

This episode, we reflect on Otto's remarkable life and the Prize's announcement in the midst of his passing. We also examine the uncertain fate (and value) of Frank Gehry's Winton Guest House, which will be up for sale on May 19, and consider whether architects should shoulder the cultural and emotional weight of deciding how we bury our dead.

And on the heels of Google's announcement that BIG will collaborate with Heatherwick Studios on their campus expansion, Amelia spoke with curator Brooke Hodge i...

LA Forum talks with Brooke Hodge, curator of "Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio"

2015-03-11T14:54:00-04:00

"From the beginning, I wanted to give a sense of the variety of scale of the studio’s projects, from the more intimate objects like the Christmas cards to large-scale mockups like those for the Paternoster Square vents. [...] Thomas is trained as a designer and not as an architect and he has always made things as a way to test his ideas. He often mentions how unusual it is that most architects have never actually made anything themselves." – Brooke Hodge

When news broke that Heatherwick Studio would be collaborating with BIG on Google's campus expansion, many were hearing Thomas Heatherwick's name for the first time. "Provocations", the first exhibition devoted to Heatherwick Studios to be shown in North America, will make sure that Heatherwick becomes a name in the states not just for the Google project, but for a significant catalogue of distinct work. Brooke Hodge, the curator of "Provocations", recognized Heatherwick's unique status in architecture and design long before Google's announcement, and now the timing couldn't be better to get to know Heatherwick.

Currently the Deputy Director at the Cooper Hewitt's National Design Museum, Hodge casts Heatherwick not as architect or designer per se, but as an inventor – the tinkerer who sets out to solve problems, not develop a style. The LA Forum interview posted here is a quick overview of Hodge's organizational strategy for the exhibition.

"Provocations" is currently on display at ...