Weiss Manfredi: The Latest Architecture and News

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) has announced a three-year redevelopment of its 2-acre downtown Newark campus. The project, designed by architectural firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), and Weiss/Manfredi, has recently broken ground and is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2027. It integrates 350 mixed-income residential units, retail spaces, and a dynamic education and community center, in addition to rehearsal spaces, a new headquarters for jazz public radio station WBGO, and various outdoor gathering areas.

New York-based architecture office WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism has been named the 37^th recipient of the Louis I. Kahn Award, offered by DesignPhiladelphia. The firm, founded by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, is recognized for its wide range of projects, from cultural institutions to urban landscapes, all demonstrating and responding to contextual conditions, sustainability standards, and centered around the human experience.

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The Reimagining of the Dallas Museum of Art International Design Competition has revealed its shortlisted entries. Announced by the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), the six finalists selected from a total of 154 submissions worldwide are David Chipperfield Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Johnston Marklee, Michael Maltzan Architecture, Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, and Weiss/Manfredi. The museum just released images of the competition finalists’ design concepts, and the public is invited to comment on the different proposals.

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The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles (NHMLAC) announced the selection of Kossmanndejong (KDJ) as the firm that will lead the design of exhibition spaces and develop visitor experiences to reimagine the La Brea Tar Pits. As the world’s only active paleontological research site in an urban setting, KDJ will work through many design verticals, such as architecture, landscaping, and programming. KDJ, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, was chosen through an international search and competitive process to provide creative and interpretive strategies for the site-wide redesign in Hancock Park. KDJ will collaborate with the architectural and landscape design team led by WEISS/MANFREDI and Los Angeles-based Gruen Associates, who NHMLAC recently named Executive Architect of the Year.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

This week, the Museum of Modern Art officially launches a new series of exhibitions entitled Architecture Now. According to MoMA, “The first iteration of the series, New York, New Publics, will explore the ways in which New York City–based practices have been actively expanding the relationship of metropolitan architecture to different publics through 12 recently completed projects.”

The exhibition will showcase public-facing work, such as parks, community gardens, and pools, by Adjaye Associates, Agency—Agency and Chris Woebken, CO Adaptive, James Corner Field Operations, Kinfolk Foundation, nArchitects, New Affiliates and Samuel Stewart-Halevy, Olalekan Jeyifous, Only If, PetersonRich Office, SO – IL, and SWA/Balsley and Weiss/Manfredi.

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The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.

A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

This week David and Marina are joined by Marion Weiss, architect and co-founder of Weiss/Manfredi. Marion discusses her childhood interests in the arts, architecture, and landscape design, how her office was formed and its design process, working with clients on large cultural projects, how architecture can have a social impact beyond its physical footprint, and more. Enjoy!

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Multidisciplinary design practice Weiss/Manfredi has broken ground on the reimagined U.S. Embassy campus in New Delhi, India. Designed for the U.S. Department of State with the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations, the project aims to support the U.S.-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership with a new chancery building for the embassy. The project includes restoring Edward Durell Stone’s early modernist Chancery Building and remaking the 28-acre compound into a resilient campus.

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Trinity Park Conservancy has selected Weiss/Manfredi as the design architect to reimagine the Dawson State Jail in Dallas, Texas. Dubbed the city's "ugliest building", the project will be transformed with Malone Maxwell Dennehy Architects. The team has been asked to work with the Conservancy to integrate the building and its surrounding neighborhoods into Harold Simmons Park along the Trinity River.

Design practice WEISS/MANFREDI has won the 2020 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. Presented by the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, the award is one of four honors recognizing achievements in architecture, citizen leaderships, global innovation, and law. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals recognize the exemplary contributions of recipients to the endeavors in which Jefferson excelled and held in high regard.

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Weiss/Manfredi have been selected to lead the new La Brea Tar Pits master planning in Los Angeles. The team's ‘Loops and Lenses’ concept was developed to create new connections between "the museum and the Park, between science and culture, and envisions the entire site as an unfolding place of discovery." The team will work with NHMLAC on a multi-year process of public engagement, master planning, design and construction on the Tar Pits’ 13-acre campus.

For Paul Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki and David J. Lewis, the section “is often understood as a reductive drawing type, produced at the end of the design process to depict structural and material conditions in service of the construction contract.” A definition that will be familiar to most of those who have studied or worked in architecture at some point. We often think primarily of the plan, for it allows us to embrace the programmatic expectations of a project and provide a summary of the various functions required. In the modern age, digital modelling software programs offer ever more possibilities when it comes to creating complex three dimensional objects, making the section even more of an afterthought.

With their Manual of Section (2016), the three founding partners of LTL architects engage with section as an essential tool of architectural design, and let’s admit it, this reading might change your mind on the topic. For the co-authors, “thinking and designing through section requires the building of a discourse about section, recognizing it as a site of intervention.” Perhaps, indeed, we need to understand the capabilities of section drawings both to use them more efficiently and to enjoy doing so.

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The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC) have unveiled three new concepts for a master plan of the La Brea Tar Pits. The proposals were designed to improve the entire 12-acre site, which has not been renovated or considered comprehensively since it opened more than forty years ago. The three proposals were made by Dorte Mandrup, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and WEISS/MANFREDI. The concepts aim to create a more integrated experience of the museum and the landscape in Hancock Park.

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Weiss/Manfredi has unveiled their design for the re-envisioned U.S. Embassy campus in New Delhi, India. The first phase of a long-term masterplan, the scheme features a New Office Building, a support annex, and connected landscape offering a secure campus for America’s mission in India. Included in the design is the restoration of the early modernist Chancery Building by Edward Durell Stone.

As the Durell Stone-designed embassy reaches its sixtieth anniversary, the scheme offers a sustainable vision for the Embassy’s future that builds on the legacy of the historic campus to create a new foundation for American diplomacy in India.

The innovative Cornell Tech campus has officially opened on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. Master planned by SOM and featuring buildings and landscapes by Morphosis, Weiss/Manfredi, Handel Architects, and James Corner Field Operations, the campus represents a new vision of a campus for the digital age. Two years after breaking ground in 2015, the campus now houses some of the most environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient buildings in the world.

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With construction nearing completion ahead of its September opening date, the first building at the new Cornell Tech campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island has been dubbed “one of the most environmentally-friendly buildings in the world” by the university, as they revealed their aspirations for the building to reach Net Zero and LEED Platinum status.

Designed by Morphosis, The Bloomberg Center (named for Emma and Georgina Bloomberg, daughters of former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg) will employ a range of strategies including solar power; geothermal ground source heat pumps; a dynamic energy-efficient facade which balances transparency and opaqueness to maximize building insulation; and an array of smart building technologies that monitor lighting and plug load use, among other metrics.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Public Design Commission have announced the winners of their 2016 Awards for Excellence in Design. Established in 1983, the award has been bestowed annually to projects from the city’s five boroughs that “exemplify how innovative and thoughtful design can provide New Yorkers with the best possible public spaces and services and engender a sense of civic pride.” Both built and unbuilt projects are considered for the award. Previous winners have included Studio Gang’s Fire Rescue 2 (2015), the Louis Kahn-designed Four Freedoms Park (2014), and Steven Holl’s Hunters Point Library (2011).

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The New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) has selected 26 architecture firms to be pre-qualified to design new public projects throughout the city’s five boroughs. In effect until 2019, these firms will be given exclusive access to Request for Proposals (RFPs) for public works projects with an estimated budget of $50 million of less. These projects will include new constructions, additions and renovations of existing public buildings, parks and plazas.

The program, known as the Design and Construction Excellence 2.0 Program, was established in 2005 to increase the efficiency and quality of procuring design services. Recent successes of the program include the Times Square pedestrian plaza by Snohetta, Dattner and WXY’s Spring Street Salt Shed, Studio Gang’s Fire Rescue 2, and BIG’s 40th precinct police station in the Bronx.