In the latest Showcase feature Archinect highlighted, the Louisiana State Museum and Sports Hall of Fame by Trahan Architects. The building which opened this past June, is located in the oldest settlement in the Louisiana Purchase on the banks of the Cane River Lake.
The project engendered lots of commentary. vado retro stopped by to say "i'm planning on taking a drive down to check this out in the not too distant future. what impressed me most about this project is that some civic leaders had the vision to design this type of building in a historic district of the state's oldest city rather than a historicist pastiche".
While afrdzak was a little torn "As an object it's beautiful and I would love to walk through those spaces and touch the stone. By what I see in the photos it looks to be well crafted it really exemplifies good utilization and potential of technology while at the same taking stone to a new level of design (even though it's not structural. Yes I like structural stone). I think my discontent with this project is the way they talk about it and how it's being talked about as regional, more so ‘critically regional.’ Analogies to rivers, mountains, leaves, boats, etc. never makes it regional!". davvid summed up his feelings simply "This is a beautiful project".
News
Over at The New Criterion, James Panero penned a critique of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, a temporary public art now on view at Forest Houses in the Bronx. boy in a well chimed in "the new criterion makes cringe almost as much as hirschhorn makes me cringe. a perfect storm of cringey". For his part Brent White felt "Gramsci wrote about the ruling class defining social and political views of the world and forcing those below them to accept it. If Gramsci was alive today I think this is probably the kind of art he would create".
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the August ABI score was 53.8, up from a mark of 52.7 in July. This score reflects an increase in demand for design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 63.0, down from the reading of 66.4 the previous month.
LITS4FormZ was excited about the "MO-mentum".
While in the same vein came the news, that Raleigh-based firm, architect Frank Harmon, FAIA, went home with the F. Carter Williams Gold Medal, the highest honor the North Carolina Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA NC), as well as four other prestigious awards for projects at the 2013 AIA NC Design and Chapter Awards.
In response to a video of Jacque Herzog's recent Columbia Lecture, Quondam expounded "In separate contexts and almost just in passing, Herzog described both Stirling and Rossi as having "lost their [architectural designing] way" [as their careers matured]. This caught my attention because it is exactly the ‘lost ways’ of Stirling and Rossi that have interested me the most over the last 30 years. Sixty years ago, many critics thought Le Corbusier 'lost his way' with Ronchamp, yet it is exacly the late (unexecuted) work of Le Corbusier that is now often a paradigm for current architectural works (including some works by Herzog and de Meuron).Right now I'm wondering what projects will (or already do) indicated Herzog and de Meuron having lost their way. Perhaps Actelion Business Center is a leading indicator, or maybe it's the purposefully mis-described 'anchor' rooms of the Espacio Goya".
The education group that accredits the school has threatened to strip Taliesin of the right to award architecture degrees, spurring the school's leaders to discuss reforms to stay relevant while retaining the school's unique identity and Wright's legacy. As they weigh their options, they have suspended new student enrollments for this fall. Pascale Vonier provided a point of clarification "According to the USA Today article, NAAB is not the body threatening to strip the school's accreditation, it is the Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission".
Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) National began a new blog. In one of their first posts they plug an upcoming event "Architecture College + Career Expo in San Francisco on September 28 that the ACSA is hosting together with the AIAS. The event is free to attend, and there's a big list of schools there that are eager to meet new prospective students".
Jarego House in Cartaxo, Portugal by cvdb arquitectos and FEDA Confederation of Employers of Albacete Headquarters in Albacete, Spain by COR & asociados were just two of the projects found in the post Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Stairs" Pinterest Board.
In collaboration with LOLA Landscape Architects and building consultancy firm ABT, XML made a design for a UN campus situated at the historic site where until 1999 the (West-)German parliament convened.
onwards and upwards is the blog started by northeast, who is currently starting "my degree in Architecture in the UK".
Schools/Blogs
Lian Chikako Chang (although she has graduated from GSD) was back for a panel moderated by Shantel Blakely of Harvard GSD Public Programs called “Frontiers of Design Criticism” whose participants included; Mimi Zeiger, Alexandra Lange and Florencia Rodriguez and later GSD student writers and bloggers. After reading Lian Chikako Chang’s summary of the event, Darkman felt he had to clarify "Twitter and Instagram are not the future of Design Criticism".
Christopher Perrodin started a blog to document his "design research and degree project, providing commentary on my thought process at the time" while completing graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. In one of his first couple of posts he shared an image of one of the initial design inspiration, collage he made.
jesusmaldonado shared a few funny quotes from a Jacques Herzog lecture at Columbia University’s GSAAP. These included; "Design theory is irrelevant", "Hong Kong has no art" and "Good wine smells like cat piss". Plus, his reaction to a lecture Vishaan Chakrabarti, which was "such a well-constructed argument that the suburb grew at best as a misguided tool of political and economic equality but has now become a (not entirely) inadvertent way to limit social and economic mobility. No one could really make a stab against it". Also, his first studio review for which students "had to deconstruct a shell".
Discussions
cjard (a software engineer in England) started a thread, to get design pointers for and discuss the conversion of a 1920s former water treatment works into residences.
Donna Sink began by apologizing "I'm sorry that you're going to get a bunch of snarky responses, but the truth is you're asking for free design services...That said, I hope some people might chime in with some ideas. Personally, in my opinion this is exactly the kind of project we should be teaching in architecture school...Maybe some students will give you some advice. It's a good thought problem for them to take on, and that way it's more an opinion than a free commission...Good luck".
cjard clarified "I should make it clear wasn't asking for someone to design it for me, I was just asking for tips like ‘consider taking the arch top of the door and replicating it in the windows’ or ‘ the angles in the buttress stonework could be copied into a suite of diagonal cills to give an interesting shape to the windows’ or ‘take a look at this famous building that your building seems to get its styling cues from’.” jw468 (a student) jumps to the challenge "I wouldn’t center the windows like you’ve done in your example for a number of reasons…. If the windows are placed near the corners of the room, the sunlight will wash across the adjacent walls, allowing smaller windows to have a similar effect when compared to larger windows, as far as lighting goes, because the wall will essentially become a light source...With these thoughts in mind, I suggest placing the windows on the edges of the expanse of masonry wall on either side of the door and near the corners of the building".
deals on wheels asked Does anyone have any online resources for buying scale figures for models? IamGray wondered "have you considered laser cutting? That's what I did (acrylic/plexi in my case) when I wanted simple silhouettes rather than the standard Preiser figures with their goofy 80s hairstyles". Added Jonathan Culp "My icon picture is a laser cut thin chipboard scale figure painted grey. All Silhouettes has a great selection... I prefer the common people set".
Finally, amenapi who currently resides in CO was looking for an answer to an IDP question. Specifically, "If I landed a job / internship on a state such as South Dakota, could I still apply for IDP? and will the board of California / Colorado accept the experience I accumulated in South Dakota?". everyday intern answered "IDP is a national program, it is the same no matter where you are working in the US. You can work and earn hours in South Dakota and register in whatever state you wish. Different state boards will have different requirements when it comes to the education requirement and if they will allow you, in your particular situation, to pursue a license in that state".
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