Love ‘em or hate ‘em, school rankings are influencing prospective students’ decisions on where to apply, and architecture firms’ decisions on whom to employ. RECORD looks at this year’s survey and asks people in academia and the profession what it all means. View the 2010 Rankings Every fall since 1999, DesignIntelligence — the bimonthly journal of the Design Futures Council (DFC), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose executive board includes representatives from some of America’s most widely known design firms, schools, and manufacturers — has published rankings of the best architecture schools in the nation. Each year, as the public
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, school rankings are influencing prospective students’ decisions on where to apply, and architecture firms’ decisions on whom to employ.
Dia Art Foundation is having a homecoming. On November 6 the nonprofit organization announced it will construct an exhibition space at 545 West 22nd Street, just steps from a facility it shuttered five years ago. Currently Dia’s staff and board are writing a program for the new building. Its director, Philippe Vergne, says architect selection should take place within several months. Photo courtesy Dia The site of Dia’s future home in Chelsea. Related Links: Dia Art Foundation Plans New Gallery Dia: Beacon High Line Park Whitney Unveils Piano Designs for Downtown Branch Dia was established in 1974 to support large-scale,
It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.
Manufacturers are rushing toward the light—specifically the diffuse, uniform light cast by organic light-emitting diodes. They are encouraging consumers to move toward it, too, by commissioning projects that demonstrate the technology’s applications to specifiers. In 2008, for example, Osram Opto Semiconductors unveiled limited-edition OLED table and pendant lamps by Ingo Mauer. Months later Osram competitor Royal Philips Electronics launched its own OLED equipment, called Lumiblade, and this year the Dutch company has taken its application show on the road. Photos courtesy Royal Philips Electronics Royal Philips Electronics recently launched two new OLED applications: Lumiblade Mirrorwall (top) and Lumiblade Markerlight (bottom).
Images courtesy One New Change Work is progressing on Jean Nouvel’s One New Change in central London. Related Links: New Retail and Office Center by Nouvel Nouvel Wins 2008 Pritzker Prize Nouvel's First California Project on Hold While construction launches have come to a virtual halt in central London, highly visible projects that predate the economic downturn are coming to fruition. A trio of wind turbines that will crown the 43-story Castle House designed by London-based architecture firm Hamiltons are being fabricated in Sweden. The tropical-colored ceramic skins of the Renzo Piano–designed Central Saint Giles have begun wowing tourists strolling
“It’s just a part of an architect’s work, but I do turn down a lot of this stuff,” Frank Gehry, FAIA, says of product-design commissions. When the French shoemaker J.M. Weston approached the Los Angeles–based architect to collaborate on a limited-edition shoe in early 2008, it was Gehry’s family members who wouldn’t take no for an answer. His son, the artist Alejandro Gehry, admits to a long-held interest in shoe design.
Just days after the July 1 opening of Citygarden in St. Louis, landscape architect Warren Byrd observed people using the sculpture park in ways he hadn’t quite imagined. A father and daughter waded in an 18-inch-deep reflecting pool while other visitors, unencumbered by do-not-touch regulations, interacted with some of the 24 sculptures by artists such as Jim Dine and Martin Puryear. “There’s a real hunger,” Byrd says, “for these amenities in this context.”
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
