I’m very happy to see all the works on display, and we’re busier now than we were then. We’re looking at things that we’re doing in the future. I think it’s good to be able to share so much of the work we have done that people wouldn’t otherwise come in contact with it. The exhibitions are good in that respect. We have all this stuff. Why keep it in the office? Send it out. — Artinfo
NBBJ, a global architecture and design firm, today announced that it has appointed Tim Leberecht as its Chief Marketing Officer. Leberecht joins NBBJ from Frog Design where he led the marketing organization from 2006 to 2013 and helped transform the company into one of the world’s foremost... View full entry
Architecture and journalism, like politics, sometimes make strange bedfellows. — Los Angeles Times
"Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, the great Mexican builder who died April 16 at age 94, was responsible for many of the monumental public works that defined the Modernist look and aspirations of his country in the post-World War II era. Among his projects were the stunning Museum of Anthropology in... View full entry
The Modernism worth pursuing — worth protecting — is the one where Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into a large insect, and ends up with an apple embedded in his carapace, which is exactly what the Folk Art Museum is to the Museum of Modern Art, right now, right where it is. — Places Journal
On Places, David Heymann presents an incisive critique of MoMA's decision to raze the Folk Art Museum building, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. From a quiet beginning — "Here is why I think the American Folk Art Museum is a great Modernist building" — Heymann works his way to... View full entry
Over at the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne reported on LACMA Director Michael Govan’s plan’s for $650-million new building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor...Eric Chavkin commented "New construction has always been fundraising tail that wags the museum dog. Big names to draw bigger money...Now that AMPAS is leveraging it's Oscar prestige to be a part of LACMA, a new name to entice donor dollars is Zumthor, a name that means absolutely nothing to most.
NewsMichael Z Wise reviewed the newest edition of Albert Speer, Architecture by Léon Krier for the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Wise concluded his review "Though he is again bemoaning a contemporary inability to regard classicism in a detached manner, it is Léon Krier who is in a... View full entry
Frank Gehry has pulled out of a major architecture exhibition set to open June 2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, a move that could force the show to find a new venue or face the prospect of being canceled altogether.
The exhibition... is an exploration of the last 25 years of Los Angeles architecture, with work by Gehry, Thom Mayne, Michael Maltzan, Barbara Bestor, Lorcan O'Herlihy and many younger architects.
— latimes.com
The highly anticipated expansion to the Kimbell Art Museum, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) and Kendall/Heaton Associates, opens to the public on Wednesday, November 27, 2013.
Renzo Piano’s colonnaded pavilion stands as an expression of simplicity—glass, concrete and wood—surrounded by elms and red oaks, some 65 yards to the west of Louis I. Kahn’s vaulted, luminous museum of 1972.
Similar in scale to the Kahn building, the 300-foot-long, 22-foot-high building is composed of two parallel wings stretching from north to south, connected by two glass passageways. To the rear, the west wing will have a green sod roof, which appears to rise out of the ground with berms on either... View full entry
Women make up almost half the graduating architecture classes, but only 17 percent of architecture-firm leadership. Even as women have made great strides in the field over the last several decades, that disconnect hasn’t gone away. — csmonitor.com
The exhibition was planned as an exploration of the last 25 years of Los Angeles architecture, with work by Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Michael Maltzan, Barbara Bestor and many younger architects.
It was funded in part by a Getty Foundation grant of $445,000. No other single show in the PSTP series received a grant as large, according to a Getty press release. A 272-page catalog, co-published by Rizzoli, is already complete.
— latimes.com
Facing delays in finishing the installation of the show, the show will be canceled, or, at best, delayed. View full entry
At university, students from other courses felt that we in architecture weren’t really studying at all; to them the studio seemed like some kind of uber-kindergarten, legitimated for academic credit.... The architecture profession seemed from the outside, and perhaps even to us on the inside, to promise an idyllic eternal childhood of balsa and glue and gee-whiz drawings on computers. — Places Journal
On Places, Naomi Stead discusses the popular conception of architecture as a kind of "child's play." What do dollhouses and architectural models have in common? Why should we care about Lego Architecture and Architect Barbie and the romantic depiction of architects in Hollywood movies? She... View full entry
UC Davis today announced that it has selected an emerging New York-based design firm, SO – IL, to design the campus’s planned art museum, envisioned as a regional center of experimentation, participation and learning. The firm will work with team members Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a prominent architectural firm with offices in San Francisco, Seattle and Pennsylvania, and contractor Whiting-Turner, a national construction firm... — news.ucdavis.edu
The new museum advances the way museums and architecture are approached in the 21st century. Designed by SO - IL in partnership with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and built by Whiting-Turner, the design incorporates a 50,000 square foot steel structure that floats atop a series of interconnected... View full entry
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, an acclaimed Swiss architect is hoping to pull off what an acclaimed Dutch one could not.
Next month LACMA will publicly unveil a $650-million plan by Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor for a dramatic new museum building along Wilshire Boulevard.
— latimes.com
It may seem surprising that a Canadian was chosen to design a Russian state-funded match for the historic Mariinsky Theatre. Gergiev, general and artistic director of the theatre, visited Diamond’s Four Seasons Centre, home of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, and was wowed. When Gergiev and Diamond met for dinner the following year, the two saw eye to eye on everything from acoustics to street continuity. — music.cbc.ca
Jack Diamond, of Diamond Schmitt Architects, takes CBC on a tour of the new Mariinsky Theatre, to open tomorrow in St. Petersburg. More about the Mariinsky II can be found on D+S's website. View full entry
Some of the most densely populated cities across the globe are tackling population growth and food shortages by establishing more rooftop farms. Vertical farms are popping up on unused rooftops in cities across the globe and the outcome is extremely positive. — DesignBuild Source
Rem Koolhaas has been announced as this year's recipient of the Dutch state prize for the arts, the Johannes Vermeer Award. The jury made a unanimous decision, citing Koolhaas’ critical contributions to architecture and urbanism since his career began with the publication of Delirious New York in 1975. — bustler.net