The St. Petersburg Pier, a long-adored and long-outdated West Florida cultural attraction, has unveiled the semi-finalists in its international redesign competition. Of the twenty-three qualified inquiries received, nine were chosen to move forward in the contest. The competition attracted big names in the architecture world; BIG, West 8 Urban Design, James Corner Field Operations, and HOK Architects were among the participants.
More on the St. Petersburg Pier after the break.
We are happy to share that our friends from New York-based Weiss Manfredi will be recognized at the 2011 AIA Honor Awards Ceremony in New Orleans this May. The firm’s Diana Center for Barnard College has infused the urban campus with a new sense of vitality as the vertically organized quad unites landscape and architecture with interior and exterior spaces. While the building contains 98,000 sqf of mixed use functions, the project also strongly emphasizes the constant connection between urban user and nature as a grand diagonal slash through the building creates a double-height glass atria to provide inward, as well as outward views. The slipped atria and an unfolded glazed staircase bring in natural light and eliminate visual boundaries between the College and the city, while providing spaces for informal interaction to encourage collaboration and dialogue across disciplines. The building has achieved a LEED Gold certification and Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College explained, “The Diana Center has not only transformed the way our community interacts, but through its environmentally responsible design and function, has inspired us to become active participants in sustainability efforts. The project was also named a winner of ArchDaily’s Building of the Year Award for 2010 [be sure to view our full coverage of the Diana Center previously on AD].
Some time ago we visited New York City based Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism, to interview founding principals Marion Wesis and Michael Manfredi. The multidisciplinary firm has distinguished themselves with their holistic design approach, successfully integrating the disciplines of architecture, art, infrastructure, and landscape design.
Our friends from Manhattan-based Weiss Manfredi have shared their museum design for Ithaca, New York’s Paleontological Research Institution, which houses one of the United States’ largest paleontological collections. Situated in the Finger Lakes region, the natural landforms of the site inspired the architects to take advantage of the existing gradual 40 ft slope – a feature which resulted from a receding ice sheet more than 20,000 years ago. Rather than considering the site as distinct and separate from the museum, this project creates a new topography: a continuous, terraced landscape that fuses architecture and ecology into a cohesive expression of the geologic processes involved in the region’s formation.
More images and more about the museum after the break.