Cornell University has named J. Meejin Yoon as the next dean for the School for Art, Architecture and Planning. Yoon, co-founder of Boston-based practice Höweler + Yoon, is the first woman to be named dean in the school’s 122-year history. She moves to Cornell after serving as dean for the architecture School at MIT, where she has been on faculty since 2001.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has selected eleven recipients in its 2018 Small Projects Awards. Established fifteen years ago by AIA’s Small Project Practitioners, the program “recognizes small-project practitioners for the high quality of their work” and “aims at raising awareness about the value and design excellence that architects can bring to projects, no matter their size or scope.”
Höweler + Yoon Architecture, in collaboration with OFIS Arhitekti, has unveiled its design for a new building for The Circus Conservatory, which will house America’s first accredited degree program in the Circus Arts. Located in Portland, Maine, as the anchor tenant of a peninsula, the project aims to transform an undeveloped part of the city into a “vibrant artistic center complete with public performance venues and recreational facilities.”
Inspired by the historic circus shape—a circle with a radial audience—the design proposal utilizes a radial viewing strategy “in order to similarly activate the educational community.” Furthermore, in the design, acrobatics, performance, and classroom spaces are treated equally, “[challenging] the viewing relationship crucial to a circus and academic settings.”
This article originally appeared on guggenheim.org/blogs under the title "Nine Guggenheim Exhibitions Designed by Architects," and is used with permission.
Exhibition design is never straightforward, but that is especially true within the highly unconventional architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. Hanging a painting in a traditional “box” gallery can be literally straightforward, whereas every exhibition at the Guggenheim is the reinvention of one of the world’s most distinctive and iconic buildings. The building mandates site-specific exhibition design—partition walls, pedestals, vitrines, and benches are custom-fabricated for every show. At the same time, these qualities of the building present an opportunity for truly memorable, unique installations. Design happens simultaneously on a micro and macro scale—creating display solutions for individual works of art while producing an overall context and flow that engages the curatorial vision for the exhibition. This is why the museum’s stellar in-house exhibition designers all have an architecture background. They have developed intimate relationships with every angle and curve of the quarter-mile ramp and sloping walls.
Former US President Theodore Roosevelt once said that play is a fundamental need — so much so that playgrounds should be provided for every child, just as schools are.
In countries around the world, architects are becoming increasingly innovative to create environments where children can explore their imaginations.
Today, playgrounds can float entirely on the ocean, or take the shape of an enormous, colorful crocodile.
Keep scrolling to see some of the best playground designs around the world that will make you want to be a kid again.
In Boston, playgrounds are no longer just for kids. Twenty LED-lit circular swings have been installed outdoors as a part of "Swing Time," Boston's first interactive sculpture installation. The hanging, glowing orbs are a twist on traditional rubber-and-rope swings, dangling from a minimal steel structure similar to those used in conventional playgrounds. LED lights embedded in the swings activate and change color as each swing moves, returning to a dim white light when static. The piece is designed to blend Boston's design community with its expanding technology sector while playfully engaging residents.
Take a seat in "Swing Time" with more photos and info after the break.
OMA, Höweler + Yoon, NEXT Architects, and Cooper, Robertson & Partners are amongst four interdisciplinary teams competing to design Washington D.C.’s first elevated public park. As part of a six month nationwide competition, the shortlisted teams have just released their preliminary design proposals for what will be known as the 11th Street Bridge Park.
Suspended over the Anacostia River, the multi-use park aims to re-connect two disparate city districts and re-engage residents with the riverfront by offering a 21st century civic “playscape.” Education and performance spaces, as well as a cafe and water sport areas will all be included in the masterplan.
A preview of the four shortlisted schemes, after the break…
The winners of the 2013 AR+D Awards for Emerging Architecture have been announced! The awards, presented by The Architectural Review and now in its 15th year, have seen "projects from locales as diverse as Bloomsbury and the Himalayas." This year over 350 entries were discussed by four esteemed judges, including Sir Peter Cook, and have led to four winners who will share a prize fund of £10,000. See both the four winning entries and the ten highly commended schemes after the break...
Last year interdisciplinary architecture firm Höweler + Yoon Architecture were announced the winners of the Audi Urban Future Award for the project Boswash:Shareway 2030. The City Dossier in Boston, held this May, was organized as a series of workshops between Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Audi experts in developing steps to realize aspects of the Boswash: Shareway vision. Part research project, part feasibility study, part road map to the future of mobility - the focus of the workshops is to propose a pilot project that can be tested in the proposed region of Boston - Washington.
We featured the project last year as it highlights how the landscape of urban development has changed. The focus of "Shareway" is the string of high-density metropolitan areas, their suburbs and ex-urbs along I-95 between Boston, MA and Washington, DC. The I-95 corridor caters to some fifty million inhabitants, many of whom commute into metropolitan areas for work. Mobility and transportation are critical to the economic vitality of these urban areas; "Shareway" proposes an intentionally re-engineered "highly orchestrated and deliberately produced platform from which we might imagine alternate paths, different trajectories, or new cultural dreams" whereby imagining an "alternate life for the road" is imagining a new American Dream.
Read on for more on the progress of this project after the break.
Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon of Höweler + Yoon Architecture have been announced as winners of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012, an international architecture competition focused on the future of urban mobility in the five metropolitan regions Boston/Washington, Istanbul, Mumbai, Pearl River Delta, and São Paulo. With “Shareway”, the Boston firm’s winning proposal called for the reinvention of the Boston-Washington, D.C., metropolitan region called “Boswash”.
Höweler+Yoon Architecture was one of the five architectural offices that were selected for the competition. Other participating firms were Superpool (Istanbul), CRIT (Mumbai), Node Architecture & Urbanism (Pearl River Delta), and Urban-Think Tank (São Paulo).
We had the chance to interview the practices and ask them about the role of the architect in our society. We also talked to Eric Höweler about this project during the awards ceremony, video coming soon.
Project Description by Höweler+Yoon Architecture:
The Boston Society of Architects plans to move from its current location on 52 Broad Street to a new space at Atlantic Wharf, as part of a major transformation of the 1867 institution. As part of an open design competition, the BSA selected Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s proposal entitled: Slipstream Public Exchange. Images of the proposal, a fly through video and an architects description after the break.
The title “Expanded Practice” comes from how Höweler + Yoon Architecture / My Studio have named their design methodology. And in this book it’s not just a title, as the book is really a guide on how this young firm conceives their projects rather than a mere catalog of works.
Their works can’t be grouped in types of buildings, instead their works are grouped in envelopes, natures, formats, interactions and media, as they range from a Möbius strip dress, to a responsive park.
What caught me while reading this book is the effective use of technology developed by this practice, not just mere eye candy as we are used to. It clearly shows how the architects’ experimentation with small electronic components could be derived into interactive spaces through a methodological work. And I have to repeat “metholodogy” as it is the most important part of this book, which makes it a learning tool instead of a construction catalog as we are used to on typical monographs.
More information about this book after the break.
.jpg?1528168523 "Grand Lake Pool House / Allford Hall Monaghan Morris. Image © Timothy Soar")
