Well before Herzog & de Meuron expanded the Walker Art Center and Jean Nouvel dreamed up a new Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis had been home to contemporary architecture. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Orchestra Hall, built in 1974, is getting a makeover designed by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg. Related Links: Gardiner Museum When Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer completed Orchestra Hall on the city’s Nicollet Mall in 1974, for example, the daringly stripped-down design rejected the privilege associated with traditional symphony spaces. In 2013 the building will portray a new interpretation of Modernism when an expansion overseen by Toronto-based Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg (KPMB) opens
In its master plan for the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, the U.S.- and Shanghai-based landscape architecture firm SWA Group looked to the past as well as the future—an approach that earned it a much larger commission than anticipated. Image courtesy SWA SWA Group designed a master plan that uses canals and waterways for easy transportation. The firm was hired to design a master plan for three square kilometers on the outskirts of Guangzhou, a city of 6 million in southern China. The Asian Games village will include residential units, commercial space, and sports venues, with public open space interspersed throughout.
Ask architects what their favorite toy was growing up, and LEGOs will likely rank among their top picks. And they aren’t the only ones: The Denmark-based The LEGO Group, founded in 1932, distributes toy-building products to more than 130 countries and sells approximately seven LEGO sets each second.
Caroline Baumann has been named the acting director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York City. She replaces Paul Warwick Thompson, who has taken a job as rector at London’s Royal College of Art. Jeffrey L. Bruce, a Missouri-based landscape architect, is the new chairman of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. The Toronto-based group, founded in 1999, aims to increase awareness about the economic, social, and environmental benefits of “living architecture.” The AIA is accepting proposals through September 1 for its Upjohn Research Initiative, a program that provides funding for applied research projects. Four grants, between $15,000
Business Week and Architectural Record announce the winners of the 12th annual "Good Design is Good Business" Awards. An urban park in Houston, a law office in London, and a university restaurant in Los Angeles are among the winners.
Charles Gwathmey, the notable New York architect, once wrote, “I have always believed that constraints are the seeds of invention.” In that case, he was referring to his 1997 addition and renovation of the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle—a typically precise intervention of Modernism on a Beaux Arts structure.
Correction appended August 13, 2009 After a decade spent operating out of a pair of nondescript offices in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charity organization, is building a proper headquarters. Located a few blocks north of downtown—under the iconic Space Needle and across the street from the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project—the $500 million Gates Foundation headquarters will encompass an entire city block, approximately 12 acres. The project was announced in the fall of 2005 and is expected to open in the spring of 2011. Image courtesy NBBJ In Seattle, NBBJ
Robert A. Peck, FAIA, is coming back to the General Services Administration as the commissioner of the agency's Public Buildings Service, the GSA announced today. Peck served as PBS commissioner from 1995 to 2001, during the Clinton administration. He calls the public-buildings position "the best job in real estate.” It is certainly one of the biggest real-estate jobs in the country. PBS oversees design, construction, leasing, management, and security for the 354 million square feet of space that the federal government owns or leases. Peck, who expects to begin work at the GSA during the week of August 17, told
Lifestyle doyenne Martha Stewart, more at home with comforters than cars, likely never dreamed her commuting-to-work routine would inspire a way of living, which could be called insider parking.
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