Archinect - News

Philly's infamous police headquarters faces an uncertain future as a symbol of brutality

2023-02-06T18:51:00-05:00

The city of Philadelphia is prepared to release a report detailing a months-long community engagement effort officials say will inform the fate of the Roundhouse, the unusual concrete building that served as police headquarters for more than six decades. Many of the residents who participated in that process said they want to see the shuttered building at 7th and Race streets repurposed as a community hub that recognizes the site’s long history of police abuse.

Philadelphia has a long-frayed relationship between its police department and the community, including most notably the 1985 MOVE Bombing that claimed the lives of 11 activists while displacing another 250 people and destroying 61 homes. The Roundhouse has a central role in this fraught history, and now opinions are split over its proposed future redevelopment.

Robert Geddes, one of the building’s three designers has chimed in to say he feels it should be given a second life as a font for social justice activities and other types of community-based activism. The 125,000-square-foot Brutalist-style structure has also been floated as the potential site of affordable housing, though its layout remains difficult to convert by most estimates.

A final decision on its fate is expected sometime within the calendar year.

Miami's historic Deauville Beach Resort is demolished as a Frank Gehry-designed replacement fails to start

2022-11-15T18:15:00-05:00

The 17-story tower of the historic Deauville Beach Resort in Miami Beach was successfully imploded just after 8 a.m. Sunday. The oceanfront building at 6701 Collins Ave. crumbled to the ground in a matter of seconds after a series of thundering booms, marking the end of the road for a hotel that famously hosted the Beatles in 1964 and fell into disrepair in recent years.

The demolition brought to a close a tumultuous saga that saw local preservationists and the city government sue its owner Alex Meruelo over what they said was a wanton disregard for local heritage standards and other code violations more or less continuously issued since an electrical fire seriously damaged the Melvin Grossman-designed MiMo-style structure in July of 2017.

Previously on Archinect: Frank Gehry's Equinox Towers scheme is one step closer to reality in Miami Beach

Taking its place might be Frank Gehry’s proposed Equinox Towers scheme that is still awaiting approval before construction can begin on what has been labeled as a “passion project” for megadeveloper and Miami Beach native Stephen Ross. The plan was rejected by voters last week, leaving a void likely to be filled with a similar condominium design needed as a stopgap to the expected exodus brought about by the onset of new Surfside-inspired safety laws.

Today we lost the North Beach landmark Deauville Hotel due ...

Goin' glamping: HKS completes its Autocamp complex in Joshua Tree, California

2022-02-16T12:46:00-05:00

Just days after the firm’s extraordinary Super Bowl design fully acquitted itself on the national stage, HKS in collaboration with Narrative Design Studio has taken the SoCal spotlight again under the guise of a new, mid-century-inspired modern clubhouse retreat now completed in Joshua Tree, California.

Photo © Matthew Kisiday

Featuring a 55-key resort and 25-acre campsite, the new Autrocamp retreat is defined by its network of courtyards, firepits, passive design elements, pools, and walking paths that combine to enhance the area’s amazing natural desert landscape. Anchored by an arched Quonset hut clubhouse building, the site expands along a shifted axis to provide a seamless indoor-outdoor transition to visitors, who can each enjoy vistas of the surrounding National Park underneath an ample amount of wind and solar protection.

Photo © Matthew Kisiday

Per the architects: “One of the critical design drivers was to incorporate a feeling of both privacy and community on the property. I...

Beyer Blinder Belle renovates mid-century modern landmark church in Washington, D.C.

2021-11-01T17:17:00-04:00

New York-based architecture practice Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB) is known for projects that focus on the "planning, restoration, and the design of new buildings." Their latest project for the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., focuses on expanding and renovating one of D.C.'s historic mid-century modern church sites.

Designed by American architect Harold E. Wagoner in 1967, BBB continued with its 2016 master plan for the Church by designing two additions that offer new meeting rooms and added public space for members. According to firm Partner Hany Hassan, FAIA: "Our work introduces a contemporary entry and new central staircase, expressive and open in design, to draw people through all three levels of the Church."

National Presbyterian Church Image © Alan Karchmer/Courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle

The new buil...

Virtual events to join today and over the weekend include an open house for UC Berkeley and a mid-century modernism tour of Chicago

2020-05-15T08:00:00-04:00

Today's featured virtual event happenings, from Archinect's Virtual Event Guide, are hosted by UC Berkeley and the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Are you hosting a virtual lecture? Presentation? Tour? Interview? Happy Hour? Submit it for consideration by clicking here.

Are you an expert in an arena that's especially important right now? Let us know if you would like to work with Archinect to host an online event.

College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley presents a Virtual Gallery Open House
Friday, May 15, 2020 | 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PDT
As we move to remote learning this summer, we will utilize immersive technology including virtual and augmented reality to explore the latent potential of digital platforms for creativity and collaboration. A Disc*2020 Virtual Reality Gallery Open House to experience first hand what design pedagogy in a post-studio landscape can look like.
Click here to attend and/or register

CAC Live: Mid-Century Modernism Tour
Sunday, May 17, 2020 | 1:00 PM – 2...

Paul Rudolph's Walker Guest House in Florida heads to auction

2019-12-04T18:45:00-05:00

The Walker Guest House, completed by Rudolph in 1952, will be part of Sotheby's Important Design auction on December 12, with an estimated value ranging from $700,000 to $1 million. The midcentury structure was previously on the market for a reported $6,795,000, an endeavor that ultimately ended with no sale.

The pavilion-like guesthouse makes use of a square plan, split into four quadrants: one with a living room, another a dining room, a bedroom, and and finally section shared by a kitchen and bathroom. Rudolph incorporated 12 large panels around the perimeter of the structure, three on each of the four sides, allowing the flexibility of privacy and shade coupled with light and a connectedness to the surrounding landscape.

“With all the panels lowered the house is a snug cottage, but when the panels are raised it becomes a large screened pavilion,” Rudolph said about the home. “If you desire to retire from the world you have a cave, but when you feel good there is the joy of an op...

Consortium Led by Getty Trust Purchases "Ebony" and "Jet" Photo Archives

2019-07-25T14:22:00-04:00

The Chicago-based company Johnson Publishing, which filed for bankruptcy in April, has sold the archive of images from Ebony and Jet Magazine to the J. Paul Getty Trust, which, according to court documents filed Wednesday night, paid $28.5 million at auction in the Windy City yesterday. The archive includes millions of iconic images of African American figures like Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., and Billie Holiday.

A consortium led by the Getty Foundation has acquired the iconic Ebony and Jet magazine archives. The group includes the Ford Foundation, the Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Julie Bosman of The New York Times reported via Twitter that the group has pledged to donate the archive to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Getty Research Institute so that its contents can become available to the public, researchers, and scholars. The acquisition is pending court approval and the closing of the sale.

In a press release announcing the sale, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker said, “We’re thrilled with the outcome. This archive is a national treasure and one of tremendous importance to the telling of black history in America. We felt it was imperative to preserve these images, to give them the exposure they deserve and make them readily available to the public.”

In 2018, Chicago-based Rebuild Foundation a...

Ebony Magazine's psychedelic test kitchen to embark on nationwide tour

2019-05-22T20:02:00-04:00

After facing an uncertain fate in recent years following the bankruptcy of the Johnson Publishing Company and the sale of the firm’s historic Chicago headquarters, the psychedelic Ebony test kitchen, where the magazine’s iconic A Date with a Dish recipes were developed and tested, has found a home—At least for now.

The kitchen was acquired, documented and disassembled by the preservation group Landmarks Illinois in 2018 as part of an effort to save the space. The group issued a request for proposals earlier this year in search of a steward for the installation. This week. Landmark Illinois announced that following this process, the kitchen will now head to New York City’s Museum of Food and Drink, where it will be showcased as part of the traveling exhibition African/American: Making the Nation’s Table.

The eye-catching kitchen was designed by Palm Springs-based mid-century modern interior architects William Raiser and Arthur Elrod for the magazine as part of a larger interiors proj...

The Modern Urbanism of Cook's Camden

2018-01-23T14:08:00-05:00

The council housing designed 50 years ago for a progressive London borough remains a potent symbol of the achievements of postwar social democracy.

Prompted by Mark Swenarton's recent book, Cook's Camden, Douglas Murphy looks at the radically experimental public housing estates built by the London borough from 1966 to 1975, and the reevaluation of these extraordinary projects currently underway in our own era of unaffordable cities and triumphant privatization.

Beverley Thorne, last Case Study architect, dies at 93

2017-12-11T17:16:00-05:00

Beverley "David" Thorne, the last of the Case Study architects and the designer of Dave and Iola Brubeck’s modernist California and Connecticut homes, died December 6 in Sonoma, Calif. He was 93. [...] Bev designed Harrison House, Case Study No. 26, in San Francisco in 1963.

Case Study House #26. Photo via csh26.info.

The Case Study #26 "Harrison House" Thorne designed in San Rafael, California is the only Case Study House in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The designer that Columbus, a film featuring numerous Modernist icons, forgot about

2017-08-25T16:11:00-04:00

The Miller House and Garden, now owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, is acknowledged as one of the greatest Modernist collaborations. This thirteen-acre property was developed between 1953 and 1957 as a unified design through the close teamwork of Kiley, architects Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche, interior designer Alexander Girard (who is acknowledged in the film), and clients J. Irwin and Xenia Miller.

The recent film Columbus is centered around a love story of a son of a renowned architecture critic stuck in a small Midwestern town and a 'young architecture enthusiast' who works at the local library. Taking place in mid-century Modernism mecca, Columbus, IN, the motion picture spares plenty of spectacular views of iconic Modernist sites: the Miller House, North Christian Church (1964), Cummins Inc. Irwin Office Building (1954), First Christian Church (1942), and Columbus Regional Hospital Mental Health Center (1972). The characters, surprisingly, do not fail to acknowledge the architects at each location—there are mentions of Eero and Eliel Saarinen, James Polshek... However, Dan Kiley, whose landscapes are often the movie's pivotal settings, got left out and never once credited.

Kiley designed more projects in Columbus than any architect—over thirty landscapes which among many others include the Art Institute of Chicago, South Garden (1962), Jefferson National Expansion Expansio...

The Parker Center is set for demolition, what other midcentury icons are next?

2017-05-22T20:12:00-04:00

The Parker Center, depending on who you ask, is either a midcentury icon, or a powerful symbol of Los Angeles' racist past. Located downtown, the building was home to the LAPD up until 2009 when they relocated due to expensive retrofits needed on the site. Designed by Welton Becket—the architect behind some of LA's greatest identifiers such as the Capitol Records Building, the Theme Building and the Cinerama Dome—the former LAPD headquarters is seen by historic preservationists, particularly the LA Conservancy, as a historical landmark due to its midcentury stylings. However, beyond being an architectural landmark, the building, as home to the LAPD during an era of racist policing, also serves as a sobering reminder of LA's troubling past. The land upon which the center was constructed had been seized from Japanese property owners less than a decade after Japanese Internment and William H. Parker himself, whom the building was named after, was associated with ushering in policies of...

Left to rot: abandoned Swedish mid-century modern homes

2015-07-20T13:01:00-04:00

Swedish furniture designer and architect, Bruno Mathsson, built two summer houses between 1960 and 1965, that have slowly decayed into disrepair. Mikael Olsson has photographed both houses over the past decade [for his] book, Sodrakull Frosakull.

Bruno Mathsson's furniture designs are perhaps most recognizable by their mixture of curved wood and woven textile, and his architecture led Sweden's modernism movement. Two of his major works are his own homes, Frösakull and Södrakull, for which Olsson's book is named.

Take a peek inside the abandoned homes by perusing a selection of photos from Sodrakul Frosakull: