Displaying items by tag: Architecture

The future of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has divided the institution named for the iconic designer. The quest to keep its accreditation status has some school board members concerned the degree program will end, while its foundation denied the school is in danger of closing.

The Scottsdale-based Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which operates the school, announced last week that it would not independently incorporate the school as a way to stay accredited. The Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission, which accredits degree-granting colleges and universities in 19 states, changed its bylaws two years ago to prohibit accreditation for schools that operate as divisions of a larger organization.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston has installed a recently acquired bronze sculpture by the renowned Italian artist Giuseppe Penone. “Albero Folgorato (Lightning Tree)” (2012), which stands over 36 feet tall, was cast from an oak tree that had been struck by lightning. It will reside on the museum’s verdant South Lawn in the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden. Created by sculptor Isamu Noguchi, the sculpture garden features masterworks of 20th- and 21st-century sculpture by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Dan Graham, Henri Matisse, and Auguste Rodin. The garden also includes a variety of plants and trees that were selected by Noguchi with assistance from the Houston-based landscape architect Johnny Steele.

Houston’s “Albero Folgorato” is the third and final version of the monumental bronze sculpture, which had its internationally acclaimed debut at the Palace of Versailles in France in the summer of 2013.

The New York Review of Books on Monday night issued a retraction from its architecture critic over an article criticizing British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid for her attitude to construction worker deaths in Qatar.

The magazine published a statement on its website in which the author of the article, Martin Filler, said he regretted his error.

Hadid began proceedings for defamation against the magazine and Filler at Manhattan supreme court last week.

Zaha Hadid, an award-winning architect known for futuristic designs, sued The New York Review of Books and the architecture critic Martin Filler on Thursday over alleged defamatory statements about her in a recent book review.

Hadid, who was born in Baghdad and is now a British citizen, claimed that Filler falsely implied she was indifferent to the alleged difficult working conditions of migrant workers on high-profile construction projects in the Middle East, including her own.

 After a two-stage competition, New York-based architecture firm Thomas Phifer and Partners has been selected to design Poland’s forthcoming Warsaw Museum of Modern Art. The company beat out eleven competitors, including Foster + Partners (New York), Henning Larsen (Copenhagen), and UNstudio (Amsterdam). The 161,000-square-foot museum will be located in Warsaw’s Parade Square, one of the largest city squares in the world. The museum, which will feature a large performance space for the TZ Warszawa theater, is expected to significantly boost Poland’s presence in the contemporary art world. 

Phifer and Partners’ proposal included plans for a glass-walled museum that will promote transparency to the public and connectivity to the overall city. In his design, Phifer followed the idea that the institution is “a building that reveals all it has.”

 The Hamptons region of Long Island, New York, has long been a popular destination for the stylish, wealthy, and influential. Thanks to its astonishing natural beauty, it has also been a popular retreat for creative types, including pioneering artists like Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning. A new book by architectural publisher and art critic Anthony Iannacci showcases nineteen private houses in the fabled enclave, giving readers an unprecedented glimpse of some of the most beautiful architecture, interiors, and gardens in the country.

“Design in the Hamptons” features works by celebrated designers, including Jonathan Adler, Simon Doonan, John Barman, Fox-Nahem, Thad Hayes, Tony Ingrao, Todd Merrill, Roman & Williams, and Joe d’Urso.

“For a long time, the Cultural Department has followed the development of the institution and pointed out a need for a change,” Sweden’s cultural minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth says.

Damien Hirst the Turner Prize winning British artist has purchased one of London’s blingiest homes for a reported £34 million ($57 million). The mansion, a five story, 14 bedroom, white stuccoed building was designed by John Nash, in the Regency style of architecture. It was Commissioned in 1811 by the Prince Regent and located in the park of the same name. The Grade I listed building is set in a half-acre garden plot.

The former YBA has added this jewel to his property portfolio to complement his North Devon, 24 acre holdings where he plans to build a new town with 750 homes. The artist also owns the 19th century Toddington Manor which sports 300 rooms. Hirst, who has a reported £215 million in personal weath is  the most successful living artist of his generation.

Sometimes it's not the "what" that makes architecture such a challenge, it's the "where." And for Jeff Sheppard, location added monumental pressure to the task of designing the new Denver Art Museum Administration Building.

The Bannock Street lot was humble and squeezed right between the two highest-profile pieces of modern architecture in the city: DAM's $110 million Hamilton Building addition, designed by Daniel Libeskind in 2006, and the $29 million Clyfford Still Museum, a concrete wonder dreamed up by Brad Cloepfil in 2011.

How does a local guy — even, arguably, Denver's most creative, budget-conscious, building designer — compete with that? With an $11 million budget?

The Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla are teaming up to develop careful approaches to help conserve one of Louis Kahn’s most iconic buildings -- the Salk Biological Institute campus plaza. Commissioned by Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the Polio vaccine, in 1959, the Salk Institute was completed in 1965 and remains one of the most celebrated pieces of modern architecture.

Constructed mainly of concrete and wood, the structure’s close proximity to the Pacific Ocean poses unique conservation challenges -- particularly for its unique teak “window walls,” one of the building’s defining architectural elements.