In July, Autodesk acquired the experimental New York design firm The Living, led by architect David Benjamin, in order to enhance its research capabilities. This union is just one effort by the software leader to engage in wide-reaching discussions about the future of design. Last year it opened Autodesk Workshop at San Francisco’s Pier 9, a 27,000-square-foot playground for employees and partners to explore advanced manufacturing resources. And, more recently, a summer-residency program charged participants with writing science fiction. “We have an extraordinary talent base that can make stuff,” says Jeff Kowalski (left), “but we also need those folks who
The Weidlinger House in 1953. Restoration of renowned structural engineer Paul Weidlinger’s Wellfleet, Massachusetts, vacation residence has been completed. According to the Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT), which led the preservation project, the house is unique among its counterparts. “Compared to other Modernist houses on Cape Cod, which express local building vernacular and relate to nature closely, this building is uncompromisingly rationalistic,” says CCMHT founding director Peter McMahon. Weidlinger, who had an expertise in special structures and was closely linked to the pioneers of 20th-century Modernism, designed his own three-bedroom cottage, completed in 1953. One of those famous peers,
Last month the Related Companies founder and chairman gave $30.5 million to the World Resources Institute (WRI), where he serves on the board of directors. Ross spoke with RECORD about his donation and the accompanying launch of the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Last year, real estate magnate Stephen M. Ross began a spending spree of the most public and benevolent kind. In September, several months after signing the Giving Pledge to donate at least half of his wealth to charity, the chairman and founder of Related Companies—the real estate company currently executing the $20 billion redevelopment of
Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Ohio, is one of this year's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Stunning architecture—as well as no architecture at all—have earned slots on America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2014. Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has been issuing this watch list of historically significant buildings and sites for which neglect, natural disaster, development pressure, and other phenomena put their continued existence at risk. This year’s newly released selections reveal the full breadth of preservationists’ interests. They are: Battle Mountain Sanitarium; Hot Springs, South DakotaBay Harbor’s East Island; Miami-Dade County, FloridaChattanooga State Office
In Prague, global business is largely conducted in the central historic district of Nove Mesto, but a superblock in nearby Pankrác Plain has long promised to become its modern high-rise counterpart—the Czech equivalent of Pudong or Canary Wharf. Skanska's $10.8 million purchase of the City Green Court project from the real estate investor ECM in 2010 was a milestone in the Pankrác Plain transformation. As part of the sale, ECM included a schematic design and zoning permissions for the eight-story office building it had commissioned from Richard Meier & Partners (RMP). Yet Skanska's vision, which embraced sustainability, was in marked
A design exhibition in New York introduces a neglected genre. Installation view of the exhibition, Norwegian Icons, in Manhattan. Of all the places where modernism put down roots, Norway provided particularly fertile ground: with its union from Sweden dissolved as recently as 1905, a new international language signaled independence. Recovering from World War II occupation, the country harnessed the principles, technologies, and idioms of modernism to return to normality quickly and affordably. Modernism bloomed, but unlike the distinguishable and celebrated work of its 20th-century architects—think of the functionalism of Erling Viksjø versus Arnstein Arneberg’s conservatism, or the fame of
Students and alumni from Savannah College of Art and Design have designed the SCADpad, a 135-square-foot micro dwelling that can take up residency in under-used parking facilities. Designers claimed eight parking spots to create the three micro dwellings, with amenities such as a raised, edible garden. America’s population surges have historically produced new housing types: balloon-frame houses helped settle the Midwest; garden apartments posed a healthier alternative to burgeoning tenements; Levittown emblematized the Baby Boom. If 70 million millennials represent the largest youthquake to date, then what new residential paradigm will appear for it? Gen Y-ers affiliated with the Savannah
For 242 State Street, Kundig conceived a 16-by-10-foot guillotine window that can open the 2,500-square-foot interior entirely to the outdoors. Just as the Internet boom has produced winners and losers, so the spoils of Silicon Valley’s growth have been distributed unevenly. Palo Alto, for example, today is home to a Burberry store and SoulCycle fitness studio. Meanwhile, the small commercial core of Los Altos looks ostensibly unchanged from analog days, and struggles to find its footing against larger commercial developments nearby. In 2009, a progressive local business called Passerelle Investment Company was founded to turn the tide in Los Altos’
Rafael Viñoly's exhibition scheme for Spring Masters New York, which will take place at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, challenges art fairs’ status-quo rectangular grids. The Park Avenue Armory has long been a New York powerhouse. The 1881 behemoth was built for the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard with money donated by the city’s resident elite. Today the armory is a bastion of creative strength: as a venue for art and performances; subject of an ongoing restoration led by Herzog & de Meuron; and, later this spring, Rafael Viñoly’s laboratory. On April 30 Artvest Partners will launch Spring