Herzog & de Meuron's "Pirate" Seizes Hamburg's Skyline'and Its Imagination A warehouse on Hamburg’s waterfront is being transformed into the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, the architectural equivalent of Greta Garbo or a pirate ship—take your pick of these analogies, the former offered by future tenant Christoph von Dohnányi, chief conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra, and the latter by architect Jaques Herzog, of Herzog & de Meuron. Images: Courtesy Herzog & de Meuron As contradictory as they might seem, both analogies are apt. Von Dohnányi says that the design, like the famously shy film star, “is very beautiful, but it doesn’t
Housing Takes Root in Former Grain Elevator Silo Point has been the tallest structure on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor industrial waterfront since 1923—and, thanks to zoning ordinances, will likely remain that way for many years to come—but it is gaining a new use. Parameter, a local architect, is transforming this 290-foot-tall grain elevator into more than 200 condominiums. Images: Courtesy Parameter The 430,000-square-foot complex consists of the reinforced-concrete elevator tower and an adjacent 130-foot-tall building that is ringed by metal grain silos. Turner Development Group, a Baltimore-based firm that purchased the site from Archer Daniels Midland in 2003, initially envisioned converting
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download A plan to save Paul Rudolph’s Cerrito House, in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, has fallen apart and, in an exclusive, Paul Rudolph Foundation coordinator Nepal Asatthawasi tells RECORD that the 1956 residence was demolished yesterday. ArchitecturalRecord.com reported last month that a pair of New Yorkers was offering to move the house to the Catskills—a complicated deal, it turns out, that would have given
Boots Motel along Route 66 in Carthage, Missouri Photo: Courtesy Jim Ross/National Trust for Historic Preservation The National Trust for Historic Preservation released its 2007 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Places today. It includes everything from individual buildings, such as the abandoned Brookline, Massachusetts, residence of the 19th century architect H.H. Richardson, to entire landscapes threatened by the construction of new power transmission lines in seven Mid-Atlantic states. Since initiating the list of Endangered Places in 1988, the Trust has successfully worked to save 52 percent of sites from destruction. A few of the places on this year’s
Paul Rudolph’s 1960 Blue Cross/ Blue Shield Building in Boston broke aesthetic and technical ground while respecting the scale of a historic streetscape. But the developer of a proposed new skyscraper has sketched it out of the picture, and the building’s fate is now uncertain. In Cleveland, meanwhile, county commissioners approved plans this spring to demolish Marcel Breuer’s 1971 Cleveland Trust Tower. Although these buildings have their admirers, they challenge entrenched notions of historic preservation and highlight an ongoing debate about saving Modern buildings. They also serve as reminders of lingering hostility toward much postwar architecture. “It’s difficult for people
RMJM, an Edinburgh-based architecture firm with 700 employees and 11 international offices, is set to acquire Hillier Architecture, based in Princeton, New Jersey, reliable sources tell Debra Rubin, of RECORD’s sister magazine, Engineering News-Record. RMJM says that it has projects in more than 15 countries worldwide in a wide range of industry sectors, including education, commercial, industrial, residential, scientific research, healthcare, and public buildings. Hillier, which had $69 million of revenue in 2006, declines to confirm the transaction—but sources tell Rubin that it has been on the block for some time. The deal is set to be announced June 19.
The fate of the Miller House, in Lexington, Kentucky, is in doubt after vandals have attacked it. Designed by Le Corbusier protégé José Oubrerie, it has been described as one of the finest residences of the 20th century. Intruders entered the now-vacant property several times this spring and painted graffiti, broke windows, and knocked in much of the plaster. Repairing the damage, Oubrerie estimates, could cost $300,000. Photos: Courtesy Michael Jacobs José Oubrerie, second from left in photo, inspects damage inside his iconic Miller house. The Miller House was finished in 1991 for Robert Miller and his wife, Penny. After
On Friday, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) plans to announce the winners of its “Green Community” international competition, which drew 260 entries from 15 different countries. The competition was conducted in collaboration with the National Building Museum (NBM) in Washington, D.C., whose current exhibition of the same name (on display through October) features examples and analysis of 14 green communities located throughout the world. Taking its cue from the exhibition, the competition’s call for entries asked students to reimagine a specific area in their towns, considering issues such as reuse, remediation, conservation, sanitation, and water management, among
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