Displaying items by tag: Architecture

At the 11th hour, a British heritage organization has renewed a bid to save a major Brutalist building from destruction. Twentieth Century Society filed a report with English Heritage last week arguing for the preservation of Robin Hood Gardens, Dezeen reported. The Alison and Peter Smithson–designed social housing project in East London is slated to be torn down and replaced by a new residential development.

Built in 1972, the prefabricated concrete building is considered one of the prime examples of Brutalist architecture in the UK.

On March 19, Boston kicked off its second annual Design Week. The city-wide festival celebrates all aspects of design, including interior design, architecture, and landscape design. Produced by Fusco & Four Ventures LLC, Boston Design Week boasts over eighty events ranging from book signings and panel discussions to exhibitions and open houses. The goal of the festival is to increase public awareness and appreciation of design, foster recognition of the vital role that design plays in our lives, and bring new audiences to an array of design industries and organizations. While the flurry of related events can be daunting, we’ve selected a handful of not-to-be-missed Boston Design Week happenings.

Visit InCollect.com to read more about Boston Design Week events featuring leading interior designers.

Despite the sometimes irreconcilable differences that culminated in the Civil War (1861-65), Newport and other Northern cities maintained close social, economic, cultural, and artistic ties with the South from the Colonial period through the Gilded Age. The 2015 Newport Symposium, North and South: Crosscurrents in American Material Culture, invites a fresh look at regional differences in American furnishings, silver, textiles, painting, architecture, and interiors to reveal the complex exchange of ideas and enduring influences.

George Nakashima’s furniture explores the dichotomy between strength and fragility. Carved from magnificent pieces of rich, often rare, wood, his works are spare and elegant -- the result of a formal education in architecture as well as extensive exposure to European Modernism, Eastern religious philosophy, and Japanese craft traditions.

Nakashima’s profound reverence for wood dates back to his childhood in Spokane, Washington. It was there, amongst the towering forests of the Olympic Peninsula, that he developed an abiding admiration for the inherent beauty of wood.

Visit InCollect.com. to read more about George Nakashima.

During their 30-plus years in the design world, William and Phyllis Taylor, the husband-and-wife team behind the Miami Beach-based firm Taylor & Taylor, have cultivated a lush, tropical aesthetic that has become their signature style. William, a fifth-generation Floridian, creates architecture that forges strong connections between nature and the built environment, while Phyllis, a native New Yorker, designs interiors that complement and respond to the coastal climate and vibrant landscape.

The couple believes that Florida is not only a state but a state of mind. Inspired by the land’s indigenous elements, such as  light, pattern, and texture, the Taylors’ interpretation of Classic Florida Design is defined by a casual approach to living and an aesthetic that is at once refined and exuberant.

Fondazione Prada will open a new permanent exhibition space in Milan on May 9 with a range of planned artistic activities, some of which have been selected to create a bridge with its existing Venetian venue.

Robert Gober and Thomas Demand will create site-specific installations in response to the new building’s architecture, while director Roman Polanski will delve on his cinematographic inspirations with a new documentary and a screening of some of his films. A selection of artworks from the Prada Collection will also be curated around different themes.

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has announced plans to build a major museum honoring the Bauhaus School in Dessau, Germany. Founded by the modernist architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus stands as one of most influential design schools in modern history.

Gropius established the Bauhaus School in the city of Weimar, Germany, with a singular mission -- to “reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts.” In Gropius’ manifesto, Proclamation of the Bauhaus, he explains his vision for reversing the split between art and production by returning to the crafts as the foundation of all artistic activity and design. Gropius established the Bauhaus School and developed a craft-based curriculum to educate and train artisans and designers, giving them the tools needed to create functional and beautiful objects for the rapidly-modernizing world.

On the lunar landscape that is Saadiyat Island, the shape of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is gradually emerging from the sand. On the gigantic shorefront site, work continues around the clock. The 5,000-strong workforce is expected to swell to 7,500 over the coming months. “We shall deliver the building at the end of 2015,” its architect Jean Nouvel tells "The Art Newspaper." “Then a few months will be needed to set up the inner structures and hang the works,” he says. The museum’s official opening date, which has not yet been set, will be in 2016.

The building first has to meet the criteria of “excellence” shared by the architect, the Louvre and the emirate, meaning that the safety of the collections is ensured under extreme climatic conditions.

Frank Gehry’s 1987 Winton Guest House will go up for sale at auction on May 19, according to the seller, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The building currently stands on a 180-acre site in Owatonna, Minnesota, that the university sold to a health clinic last summer; the seller has until August 2016 to move the house from the new owner’s land. Chicago auction house Wright is organizing the sale, and is noted for previous sales of historic architecture — in particular for the successful 2006 auction of Pierre Koenig’s 1959 Case Study House #21 in Los Angeles.

Mike and Penny Winton commissioned Gehry to design a guest house on their lakeside property near the Twin Cities in 1982, in close proximity to a 1952 Philip Johnson brick-and-glass house that stood nearby on the same plot of land. Completed in 1987, Gehry’s structure is noted for geometric rooms arranged like individual homes; they project from a central 35-foot-tall pyramidal living room, and the entire house covers 2,300 square feet.

A highly-anticipated permanent replacement for the University of Iowa’s flood-devastated Museum of Art building now has an architect on board.

Project developer H+H Development Group of Iowa City has identified BNIM Architects of Des Moines and Kansas City as “architect of record” for the new museum, the university announced Monday.

The firm was chosen, in part, for its “wide range of notable projects, both nationally and internationally,” according to Rod Lehnertz, interim vice president of finance and operations and director of planning, design, and construction for UI Facilities Management.