With a small staff based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, David Benjamin is taking his young, research-based firm, The Living, to the next level. Living Light, 2009The LivingSeoulThis permanent pavilion in a public park uses LEDs and data from government-monitored sensors to map air quality throughout the city. David Benjamin, the principal of Brooklyn-based firm The Living, is not one for convention. His research interests—mussels, slime mold, bone growth, to name a few—are not exactly mainstream. But his unusual design approach—the application of biological systems to architecture, coupled with a geeky software and programming sensibility—has led to collaborations with a
The newly completed tower along the Danube is the tallest in Austria. The tower, overlooking Vienna, has a facade of folded glass planes that appear to weave in and out. The heart of Vienna lies within its famous Ringstrasse—a circular road completed nearly 150 years ago punctuated with Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, and Neo-Gothic monuments, and later, icons of Viennese Secession architecture. Like most modern capitals however, Vienna has expanded well beyond its historic center. In recent decades, the city has embraced a part of its geography it had long shied away from—the fabled Danube River. Donau City, or Danube City, began
Two recent deals point to a growing number of mergers and acquisitions among design firms. The Anacostia Library in Washington, D.C. by The Freelon Group and R. McGhee & Associates. At the start of this month, two significant deals combining design firms were announced within days of each other. On March 4, Perkins+Will (P+W) and The Freelon Group—the Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, firm headed by Phil Freelon—said they would merge. The day before, Shanghai Xian Dai Architectural Design Group unveiled its acquisition of Wilson Associates, a 400-person interior design firm with headquarters in Dallas and offices around the
The New York Restoration Project Selects Architecture Firm Bade Stageberg Cox to Design a Flood-resistant Boathouse along the Harlem River. This article first appeared on GreenSource. Bade Stageberg Cox's winning design for an education center and boathouse along the Harlem River. Scarcely two decades ago, Sherman Creek, a tributary of the Harlem River in northern Manhattan, was choked by weeds and the wreckage of century-old boathouses. Now, the New York Restoration Project (NYRP) and Brooklyn-based firm Bade Stageberg Cox are on track to restore the area to the vibrant community hub it once was. On February 6, NYRP announced that
The project gives the Boston-based communications and arts school a permanent home on the west coast. Renowned for its communications, TV, and film programs, Emerson College has long been a presence in iconic Boston neighborhoods, first in residential Back Bay and more recently in the historic Theater District. Its newest building stakes out similar territory, but this time in Los Angeles on the famed Sunset Boulevard. Designed by architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis, the dynamic, aluminum-clad structure—really a self-contained campus—stands poised to become a symbol of its rapidly changing neighborhood. The college purchased the lot in 2008 and later tapped
Photo courtesy The Skyscraper Museum Rafael Viñoly discussed the design of 432 Park Avenue in the context of his high-rise work during a February 24 lecture hosted by The Skyscraper Museum. For Rafael Viñoly, running large offices in London and New York sometimes means putting out fires. Last summer, 20 Fenchurch Street, a Viñoly-designed skyscraper in the City of London, nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie, was blamed for incinerating a car—after its concave glass surface concentrated too much sunlight onto a parked Jaguar. The tabloids had a field day. Meanwhile, in New York, he may be best known for designing 432 Park
To adapt to a rapidly changing context, Andrew Berman updates a New York art space’s historic building, originally renovated by Maya Lin. A rendering of Andrew Berman's addition to and renovation of SculptureCenter's building, a 1908 former trolley repair shop in New York City. To get to SculptureCenter—the tiny but influential contemporary art institution in New York City—when it first moved to Long Island City, Queens, you used to turn down a narrow, mildly forbidding dead-end street in a low-rise industrial neighborhood. Alongside beat-up brick facades, plywood barriers, and chain link fences, a shimmering metal gate designed by Maya Lin
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
A drawing of a 19th-century bridge in Connecticut by New York architect Morgen Fleisig is the 2013 Holland Prize winner, the Library of Congress and National Park Service announced. The Leicester B. Holland Prize recognizes the best single-sheet, measured drawing of an historic building, site or structure prepared to the standards of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), or the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). It is an annual competition administered by the Heritage Documentation Programs of the National Park Service. The competition’s jury recommends winners to te Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering in
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