Interviewed in his Tokyo office, the Japanese structural engineer reflects on the dramatic turn his work has taken since Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque, nearly eight years ago. The seemingly random arrangement of columns at Sendai, as well as the organic inspiration of seaweed transformed digitally into structure, suggests a strong precedent for the so-called “flux structure” that Sasaki designed for Isozaki’s Florence train station. He implemented a new shape-analysis approach, broadly described at the beginning of this article, that he calls Extended Evolutionary Structural Optimization (EESO). This is Sasaki’s own version of ESO (he added “Extended”), which is a relatively
Interviewed in his Tokyo office, the Japanese structural engineer reflects on the dramatic turn his work has taken since Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque, nearly eight years ago.
Interviewed in his Tokyo office, the Japanese structural engineer reflects on the dramatic turn his work has taken since Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque, nearly eight years ago.
It wasn’t image consciousness or architectural publicity that convinced the board of the Hodgdon Powder Company to hire an architect to design its new production facility’s administration building near Herington, Kansas.
Project Specs An Office for Hodgdon Powder Company Herington, Kansas El dorado Architects << Return to article the People Architect El dorado Architects Principal in Charge: Josh Shelton Project Architect: Sean Slattery, AIA, LEEP AP Furniture Design and Fabrication: Brady Neely Engineer(s): Structural: Genesis Structures Metal Building Engineering: Steelmaster USA MEP: Lankford and Associates Landscape: el dorado inc Lighting: Derek Porter Studio General contractor: Kelley Construction Company Photographer Mike Sinclair, all photos Renderer(s) El dorado inc, all drawings CAD system, project management, or other software used: Vector Works the Products Wall and Roof system: Steelmaster USA; Qounset Profile applied
The California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) moved in December 2007 to allow the reclassification of potentially hundreds of seismically questionable hospitals in the state to avoid possible closure due to code noncompliance. The decision will likely ripple through the large market for health-care design and construction that developed following Southern California’s Northridge earthquake in 1994, which left many hospitals still standing, but structurally unsound. “This is giving hospitals more time to do what’s right,” says Chris Poland, a structural engineer and the president and C.E.O. of San Francisco–based Degenkolb Engineers. After the 1994 earthquake, Poland served on an advisory board
Robert Campbell, FAIA, is the architecture critic of The Boston Globe. Robert Campbell, FAIA Readers of Robert Campbell’s columns in our pages perhaps don’t know that The Boston Globe’s longtime architecture critic helped the General Services Administration select Thom Mayne and Morphosis to design the San Francisco Federal Building, completed in 2007. “I’ve never seen a building of his that didn’t have major flaws, but I felt he needed a client who could hold his feet to the fire,” Campbell says. He compares the U.S. to the Netherlands, where young architects have greater chances at larger commissions.
David Dillon is the architecture critic of The Dallas Morning News. David Dillon “Dallas is a very image-conscious place, and it has always been looking to headlines,” says David Dillon, who writes on architecture for The Dallas Morning News. Lately, the headlines have been filled with the starry names of the architects for the Dallas Arts District—an opera house by Norman Foster, a theater by Rem Koolhaas, and a science museum by Thom Mayne will soon join the existing sculpture museum by Renzo Piano and symphony hall by I.M. Pei. “It’s important to set the bar high,
Blair Kamin is the architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune. Blair Kamin “We now live in a culture of infinite choices,” says Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic, Blair Kamin. “You go to Home Depot and there are 60 different kinds of floors you can put in your basement, whereas in 1950 you would have had two. A lot of our architecture is like that.” Kamin is explaining how the boxy skylight vaults of Steven Holl’s sensuous Bloch Building at the historicist Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri [RECORD, July 2007, page 92], consist of myriad customized pieces
The California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) moved in December 2007 to allow the re-classification of potentially hundreds of seismically questionable hospitals in the state to avoid possible closure due to code non-compliance. The decision will likely ripple through the large market for health care design and construction that developed following Southern California’s Northridge earthquake in 1994, which left many hospitals still standing, but structurally unsound. “This is giving hospitals more time to do what’s right,” says Chris Poland, a structural engineer and the president and CEO of San Francisco-based Degenkolb Engineers. After the 1994 earthquake, Poland served on an advisory