Photo courtesy Eva Franch i Gilabert Eva Franch i Gilabert Following a four-month international search, the Storefront for Art and Architecture has named Eva Franch i Gilabert its new director. The announcement came on May 10, after the organization’s board vetted more than 70 contenders, according to Storefront’s Web site, acknowledging the “overwhelm[ing] breadth and depth of candidates who applied from around the world.” A Catalan architect, researcher, and teacher, Franch i Gilabert, 31, is founder of the solo practice OOAA (office of architectural affairs). During the past two years, she directed the Masters Thesis studio at Rice University, where
The designer, thinker, and IDEO founder takes on an entirely new role as director of the Cooper-Hewitt. Photo Courtesy of IDEO / Nicolas Zurcher Bill Moggridge If you’re reading this on a laptop, take a second to admire Bill Moggridge’s work. His design for the GRiD Compass—a 1979 personal computer that enclosed a keyboard and screen in a clamshell-like, fold-open case for the first time—set the mold for the contemporary machine in front of you. U.K.-born Moggridge, 66, founded his first design firm in 1969, and over the next two decades the practice created innovative forms for many high-tech products.
Image courtesy Dennis Findley 'Architects in the U.S. are not looked to for leadership the way they were in the early part of the 20th century or the way they still are in European countries,' says Dennis Findley, AIA. If you follow the prevailing Washington metaphors, the United States sounds like a nation of frustrated drivers. We need a “road map” for everything from the Middle East to Afghanistan to health care. But to the McLean, Virginia, architect Dennis Findley, AIA, we’re actually more like clients with a tricky building project. Instead of a road map, he would like us
Whether they’re for septuagenarians who can get around on their own or older people struggling with bed-confining illnesses, senior-living communities have surged in number in the past two decades, as the country’s retirement-age population has swelled. Indeed, those aged 65 and older now represent 12.4 percent of the population, according to census figures, which is three times what it was at the turn of the last century. By 2050 that number will spike to 20.2 percent, the data show, and the supply of senior-living communities should continue to grow to match an increased demand, says Nancy Thompson, a spokeswoman for the American
The social and professional networking capabilities of the Internet enabled this growth, allowing scores of local chapters to develop programs modeled on Sinclair’s initial project.
When Bay Area architect Chris Downey lost his sight last year, he refused to consider a career change. Though surgery for a benign tumor near his optic nerve had left him blind, he returned to work just a month later. “I could hardly walk around,” says Downey, 46, who at the time was running a green modular-housing firm. But, he recalls thinking, “There’s something worthwhile if you can figure out how to do it.” Photo ' Curt Campbell 'You might pick a material that looks great, but so what? [That doesn't matter] if it doesn't feel good,' says Chris Downey
Ten emerging firms have dressed up the bare concrete courtyard outside New York’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center since the institution, housed in a former public school building in Queens, and its Manhattan affiliate, The Museum of Modern Art, began the Young Architects Program in 2000.
Nearly two decades ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art completed the 1970 master plan by Kevin Roche, FAIA, of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates (KRJDA), for its building in New York City’s Central Park. Since then, the museum may not expand up or out on its site. Yet it continues to reconfigure interior spaces to accommodate changing curatorial needs and increased attendance. The latest installment in this ongoing process, the second phase of a three-part renovation of the museum’s American Wing, was unveiled on May 18 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony presided over by First Lady Michelle Obama. Photo courtesy
LY: Another problem with the former design is that people had trouble finding the galleries upstairs. When did you first notice this? MH: In 1924, when they placed the earliest galleries and period rooms on the top floor. It was always a problem for people to get to the beginning of the sequence. The principal goal of our effort was to clarify patterns of access—pathways for visitors. And the 1980 design did not solve the linkage issue between the 1924 structure and the rest of the building. At that time, they tried to integrate the wing with the main building,
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