March 31st, 2008

Jean Nouvel Named 2008 Pritzker Prize Laureate
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
We're still recovering from last week's art fair overload, but the Pritzker Architecture Prize waits for no one. Your 2008 winner? Jean Nouvel! The 62-year-old Frenchman will be presented with a $100,000 grant (a paltry 63,347 Euros) and a...

Starchitecture is easy
David Sucher in City Comforts
It's a nice idea, The Serpentine Pavilions:. The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion commission was conceived...in 2000. It is an ongoing programme of temporary structures by internationally acclaimed architects and individuals. It is unique worldwide and presents the work of an international architect or design team who, at the time of the Serpentine Gallery's invitation, has not completed a building in England....Each Pavilion is sited on the Gallery’s lawn for three months and the immediacy of the process - a maximum of...

Engineering Architects.
Christoph in anArchitecture
In the 2007 survey among Austrian self employed architects (Berufsfeld Architektur 1.0) nearly half of the participants identify building construction classes as the only practical teaching at University. Consequently courses like art history, architectural theory, art, design and even energy design are far behind. Austrian architectural practices seem to be primarily focused on engineering – other competences seem unnecessary. This attitude is mirrored in Austrian job offers: offices are exclusively looking for people doing approval planning (“Einreichung”) and construction documents (“Polierplanung”).

Grand Rapids Art Museum: First LEED Gold Certified Museum
Mike Chino in Inhabitat
One of the oldest museums in the Mid-West was recently relocated to an elegant new LEED Gold certified structure, garnering accolades from art aficionados and sustainability advocates alike. Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architecture designed the new Grand Rapids Art Museum to be as beautiful as the artworks within, placing a premium on public space and ultra-efficient modern design. Situated downtown amid Maya Lin’s “Ecliptic” park and Alexander Calder’s “Grand Vitesse”, the museum is an impressive addition to the renowned architecture of the “sculpture city”.

Kithaus K3
sabine7 in MoCo Loco
Kithaus recently installed one of their K3 Modernist modules in Big Sur, California. Designed by Tom Sandonato and Martin Wehmann, the K3 is a 9’ x 13’ pre-wired prefab module that is made of a lot of lightweight anodized aluminium that does not require heavy equipment to get it to the installation site. Interestingly, along with the Airstream CCD, the Kithaus K3 is available through DWR.

How modern art became history
Michael Archer in Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - art
For today's audiences, 20th-century art is old and 19th-century art - ancient. Can galleries overcome this challenge?

Ellsworth Residence
ArchitectureMNP
Designed by architect Michael P Johnson, the Ellsworth residence sits on a desert hillside in Cave Creek, Arizona. With no neighbors in site, Johnson was able to take a modernist approach - creating a long rectilinear volume resting on the hill, with two long walls made entirely of glass. These movable partitions open the house to the desert landscape, creating views to the surrounding hillside while blurring the lines between ‘in’ and ‘out’.

Escraper, Imbuing Green in Vertical Design [S2]
Preston D K in JETSONGREEN.COM
Imagine you are tasked with creating an innovative skyscraper that takes into consideration historical and social context, the existing urban fabric, human scale, and the environment.  Your skyscraper design can take any height or shape on any site in the world, but it must be technologically feasible and environmentally responsible.  Any ideas?  Evolo Architecture held a skyscraper competition with the above constraints and announced three winners and six mentions.  Of those nine, Daekwon Park has received some attention in the last week.  It's a pretty interesting concept.  I also like the escraper by Sohta Mori and Yuichiro Minato.

Tribune slams Children's Museum land grab "travesty", Germania on Landmarks agenda
Lynn Becker in ArchitectureChicago PLUS
The Chicago Tribune's Sunday editorial The Grant Park land grab capably dissects the Chicago Children's Museum's curdled campaign to deploy raw political muscle to ram a new building into Grant Park against overwhelming "public revulsion . . . Is there no voice of reason and courage in their ranks?" the Trib asks. The editorial's final paragraphs puts the situation in a clear light:

March 29th and 30th, 2008

The Nautilus House, by Arquitectura Organica
Mohammad Fahmi Tri Wahyudi,ST in Best House Design
The Nautilus House, Mexico City, 2006 by Arquitectura Organica
Harmonic space in three dimensions where the continuous dynamic of the fourth dimension when journeying in spiral is perceived on the flight of the steps, with the sensation to float on the vegetation
This Nautilus House put together using ferrocement construction, a technique involving a frame

Solar Panels and the Quest for $1/Watt
Michelle Bennett in Green Options
If solar panels cost $1/watt, you can sell them (installation included) for $2/watt. Coal (installation included) costs $2.10/watt. To date, solar is still reaching to compete with coal, but the margins are closing. To (over)simplify how this works, you need to ignore issues like subsidies, qualitative costs, or kinks in the supply chain, and [...]

Ant Farm
Regine Debatty in WorldChanging
The Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla is currently running an exhibition dedicated to Ant Farm, a group of experimental architects and critical artists active mostly in the '70s. The exhibition includes videos, models, original drawings, inflatables and all the quiet you can expect in a cultural center located inside a stunning monastry on the bank of the Guadalquivir River, the Monasterio de la Cartuja de Santa María de Las Cuevas.

Angel Reprieved as Soft Market Fells First Giant
Lynn Becker in ArchitectureChicago PLUS
The increasingly unsettled real estate market has claimed its first Chicago megaproject. The Chicago Sun-Time's David Roeder is reporting today that a planned 67-story high skyscraper, Canyon Ranch Chicago, has been canceled. The rounded tower, designed by Destefano+Partners, was to have risen on the current site of Episcopal Center, a mid-rise Miesian structure at 65 E. Huron, behind the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago's St. James Cathedral on Wabash. A tightening of lending restrictions and a paucity of buyers were the reasons cited for deep-sixing Canyon.

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion
Young in Architecture
Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Penang should be another place of interest for visitors in Malaysia.
"Through the lavish doors to the venerable Blue Mansion were first thrown open in as early as the 19th Century, the tradition of architecture and craftsmanship applied to the building's construction dates much further back - a precipitious 3000 years to the Su Chow dynasty, to be exact. Built in the Hakka-Teochew style on sturdy foundations of Southern Chinese building typologies and materials, the Blue Mansion - commissioned by Cheong Fatt Tze in the face of a trend in the construction of modern Anglo-Indian abodes- stands today as a model of the traditional prardigm Chinese courtyard house."

Event Guide: Past, Present & Future of our Brownfields
Shawn Micallef in Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape
The Toronto Society of Architects would like to invite you to join their upcoming monthly meeting, featuring a discussion on the Past, Present & Future of our Brownfields — How can we do a better job in revitalizing these critical lands?
WHEN: Tuesday 1 April, 6:30 to 8:30 pm
WHERE: Arts and Letters Club – 14 Elm St, 3rd floor studio
WHO: Ken Greenberg – Principal, Greenberg Consultants Inc * Jeffrey Seider – Principal of MKI, Senior Economic & Strategic Planning Policy Advisor * Robert Freedman – Director of Urban Design, City of Toronto * Paul Bedford – Member of Metrolinx, former Chief Planner for the City of Toronto

Expanding Green Building Elements Blogroll
Philip Proefrock in Green Options
We have a few more interesting and useful websites added to our blogroll for you to check out for more information about green building and design.  If you have come across a particularly useful or interesting site with a strong emphasis on green building and sustainable design, drop us a note about it at [...]

Philippe Starck, Designer
Harry in MoCo Loco
At MoCo Loco we don't editorialize often, ok at all, but every once in a while we gotta say something. Via PSFK and swissmiss, uber designer Philippe Starck, in an interview in Germany's Die Zeit weekly, answers a question we've been asking of designers for a while now; The world is already full of 'stuff' – as a designer, why do you choose to create more? His answer: “I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact. Everything I designed was unnecessary. I will definitely give up in two years’ time."