M2 architecture by Mohamed Alkhateb

square meter architectural magazine

Issue 10 .Volume 2 . December 2014 . 20 L.E

Content 3

A New Art Capital, Finding Its Own Voice Inside Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Abu Dhabi ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The site of the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is desolate these days: just arid land and concrete pilings jutting out over a peninsula on Saadiyat Island, north of the city’s urban center here. But in about three years, it is poised to become an international tourist attraction, when a stunning museum designed by Frank Gehry, a graceful tumble of giant plaster building blocks and translucent blue cones, is scheduled to open

Students Head To Finland To Construct Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia From Ice A team of students from Eindhoven University are set to build a forty metre high model of Antonio Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia out of ‘ice’. The project, which follows their completion of the world’s biggest ice dome last year, will be constructed from pykrete and reinforced with wood

US Architecture Schools Express Interest in Conferring Licensure to Graduates

Samsung Commissions ChoonSoo Ryu to Design Vietnamese Community Center

The Mexican Moment: The Rise of Architecture’s Latest Design Capital

INTERIORS: Home Alone

2014a Great Year for Landscape Architecture

why New York city shouldn’t be a city for one precent

Rem Koolhaas Asks: Are Smart Cities Condemned to Be Stupid had a sinking feeling as I was listening to the talks by these prominent figures in the field of smart cities because the city used to be the domain of the architect, and now, frankly, they have made it their domain

words A New Art Capital, Finding Its Own Voice

Inside Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Abu Dhabi ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The site of the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is desolate these days: just arid land and concrete pilings jutting out over a peninsula on Saadiyat Island, north of the city’s urban center here. But in about three years, it is poised to become an international tourist attraction, when a stunning museum designed by Frank Gehry, a graceful tumble of giant plaster building blocks and .translucent blue cones, is scheduled to open Spanning 450,000 square feet, the $800 million museum will be about 12 times the size of the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright landmark in New York and will showcase art from the 1960s . to the present The collection is being assembled from scratch by Guggenheim curators following a “transnational” template, with popular symbols of American culture like Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes or Richard Prince’s photographs of the Marlboro Man juxtaposed with works by artists from .China, Asia, India and the Middle East Part of a $27 billion cultural and tourism initiative, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is one of three museums under construction that are being financed by the government of Abu Dhabi, .capital of the United Arab Emirates

Abranch of the Louvre, designed by Jean Nouvel, is opening next year. And the Zayed National Museum, lionizing a former ruler, designed by Norman Foster and created with the British Museum as a consultant, is expected to open its doors in 2016. Local officials bristle when asked about importing big Western brand names and

.expertise “ We have to begin somewhere,” said Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, a cultural adviser at the emirates’ Ministry of Presidential Affairs. “We know we cannot create culture overnight, so we are strategically building museums that in time will train our own people, so we can find our . own voice Hopefully, in 20 or 30 years’ time, we will have our own cultural elite, so our young people won’t have to go to London or Paris to ”.learn about art Mr. Nusseibeh pointed to the success of the Guggenheim Bilbao, which was paid for by the government of the Basque region of Spain and has been attracting about one million visitors a year since it opened in .1997

As recently as the 1950s, Abu Dhabi was little more than a cluster of tiny villages and date farms populated by fishermen, pearl hunters and nomadic .Bedouins It wasn’t until the advent of oil production in the 1960s that the emirate got its first paved roads; later, hospitals and schools .arrived Hanan Sayed Worrell, the Guggenheim’s senior representative in Abu Dhabi, stood overlooking the Guggenheim’s site on a 106-degree afternoon. “Ten years ago, there was nothing .here,” she said

Before 2006, “you would have had to come by boat,” she added. “There wasn’t a road or bridge. There was nothing but ”.sand A lot has happened in the eight years since the government of Abu Dhabi announced the project. There was the worldwide economic downturn of 2008 and the Arab Spring. There were also changes of leadership within the Tourism, Development and Investment Company, the government-run developers who are overseeing .the museums Between economic fears and political unrest, by 2012 work on the museum projects had frozen. “All the pilings were in, and then everything just stopped,” Mr. Gehry recalled. “Everybody was silent.” A year ago, he said, he heard from a new group at the development company that was determined to see the .projects through More recently, the region has been at the center of a worker-abuse scandal, focused in particular on the New York University campus in Abu Dhabi, which was built by migrant laborers who were forced to live and work under unspeakably harsh and abusive condi.tions

Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. Credit Richard Perry/ The New York Times

Fearing that history might repeat itself, the group Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction has led several protests at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, waving banners that call for .fair labor practices Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, who said he sees establishing a branch in Abu Dhabi as part of the museum’s worldwide mission, added that he was “deeply committed to fair labor ”.issues Although a contractor for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi has not been selected (a decision, officials there say, is imminent), the government of Abu Dhabi, through the development company, has already hired Pricewaterhouse Coopers to oversee the construction, which is expected to start next year, enlist-

ing monitors to keep watch over the pro.ject Even before the protests, Mr. Gehry said, he was contacted by Human Rights Watch. “I spoke to the emirates,” Mr. Gehry said in a telephone interview. “And they’re concerned about it, .too We’re going to make sure everything is done properly. We’re trying ”.to move the needle Unlike Doha (Qatar’s capital) — whose royal family has enlisted top flight advisers and spent what is rumored to be more than $1 billion to build a masterpiece collection including works by Cézanne, Picasso, Rothko, Twombly and Damien Hirst for its network of museums — Abu Dhabi has been modest in its acquisi.tions While no one at the

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will talk officially about money, people close to the museum say they have a budget of about $600 million with which the curators, in collaboration with local officials, have so far purchased .about 250 works The curators’ goal has been to be inclusive in a way that will resonate with Abu Dhabi’s changing population and its visitors. About 10 million tourists came to the region last year, Mr. Armstrong said, with the local airport undergoing a major expansion so that by 2017, it will be able to handle an estimated 45 million passengers a year arriving there from Africa, Asia, India .and Pakistan There is also a large local population not used to having museums in their backyard, according to Sandhini Poddar, an adjunct Guggenheim curator

based in London, who is working with the curatorial team. The challenges are “how to make a collection that speaks to these art histories, to places like India, Pakistan, Asia, in a respectful, intelligent and eluci”.dating way It will take one or two generations be�” fore a museum like the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will soak into the quotidian part of life,” she said. “This is not just entertainment and spectacle but art, education, beauty, and it will take a while to feel ”.internalized and natural To address this melting pot of cultures, Mr. Armstrong said, he and his curators have been forced “to get away from the bipolarity of seeing art history from the point”.of-view of America and Europe Even when construction was frozen in Abu Dhabi, curators in New York were forging ahead. Instead of calling the museum global, which they say connotes money rather than art, they describe it as transnational, to reflect “the rich fabric of information being shared among cultures .in the Middle East,” Mr. Armstrong said Tucked in the back of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s offices in SoHo, there is an open space that at first glance looks like a preschool playroom. There are models the size of giant doll’s houses made up of futuristic shapes and miniature galleries hung with diminutive replicas of artworks from the new collec.tion “ We’re working against type,” said Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief curator. “We’re telling an alternative art history, weaving different stories together. It’s more nuanced than just buying work by a lot of big ”.names

The museum itself will consist of four levels of galleries, the first primarily for the permanent collection and the others dedicated to special exhibitions. The museum will also have different kinds of spaces, including giant exterior cones that provide shade for visitors. Mr. Gehry said he had devised them after spending time in

Mao Zedong plays host in Zhang Hongtu’s “Last Banquet” (1989). Credit Zhang Hongtu the Middle East. “I noticed that even though it’s hot, the men tended to hang out outdoors because the air-conditioning is so strong,” he said. His system of cones, somewhat like a tepee, vents hot air out the top. Eventually, he said, the curators plan to commission site-specific artworks within the cones. “It’s a big building, and the audience is not used to going to art museums,” Mr. Armstrong said. So the galleries will be organized thematically. There will be spaces that introduce visitors to abstraction and others that tell the story of figuration. There are also galleries that will explore key ideas that make up conceptual art and another to delve into the way artists during the 1960s drew ideas from .history in ways that reflected their own cultures The curators have included big names in contemporary American art: Warhol, Rauschenberg, Richard Prince, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Jeff Koons and James Rosenquist. But there will also be a significant focus on artists from the Middle East and Asia who are largely unfamiliar to American and European visitors. “We are finally breaking loose from that fixation of Europe .and North America,” Mr. Armstrong explained “ Seeing Through Light: Selections From the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection,” an exhibition of 19 artworks intended for the new museum, opened last month at Manarat, a visitor center on Sadyiaat Island, where thousands got their first glimpse of the collection. It explores artists’ use of light and includes one of Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Rooms,” a blackened galaxy of water and mirrors lit by minuscule handblown LED lights; a hanging light ball by Otto Piene, of the German Zero group, and a bronze sculpture by the Egyptian-born artist Ghada Amer,

along with work by California artists like Doug Wheeler, Robert Irwin and Keith Sonnier, who experimented with light and space in the 1960s .and ’70s Light is only one narrative in the collection. Valerie Hillings, who is leading the Guggenheim’s curatorial team, explained that she and her fellow curators had been grappling with different ways to tell interconnected stories, like how artists in various parts of the world were playing with themes like celebrity portraiture .and consumerism Alongside work by Western Pop stars like Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist will be art by Chant Avedissian, an Egyptian who marries images of Arab resistance with Ottoman textile patterns. His portrait “The Arab Resistance” features a photograph taken around the time of the Six-Day War, showing Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s second president, looking through binoculars as if contemplating the future as he surveyed the Arab world. Another painting, by the Egyptian artist Adel El-Siwi shows the singer Om Kalthoum with a gold-painted face like a .Renaissance Madonna “ These are as iconic as any Warhol,” Ms. Hillings said. Also on display will be “The Last Banquet,” by the Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu, a panel painting with Mao at the center. The collection also includes a wooden chair with a portrait of Warhol painted by Marisol, the French artist. “This portrait is made all the more real because it includes a pair of shoes that actually be.longed to Andy Warhol,” Ms. Hillings said We’re trying to look at popular culture across“ time and space,” she added. “These are differ”.ent points of reference, yet each is universal

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/arts/design/inside-frank-gehrysguggenheim-abu-dhabi.html?_r=1

news Students Head To Finland To Construct Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia From Ice

Reimagining the Sagrada Familia in ice. Image © Bart van Overbeeke / TU/e

A team of students from Eindhoven University are set to build a forty metre high model of Antonio Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia out of ‘ice’. The project, which follows their completion of the world’s biggest ice dome last year, will be constructed from pykrete and reinforced with wood .fibres

.January 2015 Read about their unique construction method and see photos of the pre.paratory work after the break

Thin layers of water and snow will be sprayed onto large, inflated molds. The pykrete - a combination of water (snow) mixed with 10% sawdust – will be immediately The fifty-strong team will head to absorbed by the snow before freezFinland on the 28th December 2014 ing. According to the designers, “the to begin construction of the impres- wood fiber content makes the material three times as strong as normal sive 1:5 scale model, which will be ice, and it’s also a lot built in only four weeks in order to officially open in the last week of

Thin layers of water and snow will be sprayed onto large, inflated molds. The pykrete - a combination of water (snow) mixed with 10% sawdust – will be immediately absorbed by the snow before freezing. According to the designers, “the wood fiber content makes the material three times as strong as normal ice, and it’s ”.also a lot tougher

Visualization. Image Courtesy of Eindhoven University of Technology

The project’s leader, Arno Pronk, has said that pykrete can be used to “build thinwalled temporary structures that are safe and low-cost.” They hope that their technique will encourage environmentally friendly applications such as seasonal storage in agriculture, the offshore industry and expeditions, as well as for recreational facili.ties According to Pronk, “the structures in the work of the architect Gaudí are scientifically the most interesting and although the ice building will have the same shape as the Sagrada Familia, it won’t have the same ”.decorative exterior http://www.archdaily.com/581003/students-head-to-finland-to-construct-gaudi-s-sagrada-familia-fromice/#more-581003

Burj Khalifa World Tallest Building

news

US Architecture Schools Express Interest in Conferring Licensure to Graduates Becoming licensed is no easy feat for the recently graduated architecture student. The combination of required internship hours and exam scores proves a daunting obstacle for most, often taking years of work after col.lege to surpass Now, however, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) is testing the waters for an alternative system that could grant licensure to students immediately upon .graduation

Samsung Commissions Choon-Soo Ryu to Design Vietnamese Community Center

requirements with bachelor’s degree .education Of the 38 universities that responded, 32 (accounting for 26 percent of the accredited architecture programs in the US) stated their interest in integrating licensure into their .curriculum More schools have also informally expressed their interest in restructuring the licensing .system

architectural cur.ricula The integrated framework would incorporate all elements of the licensure path, including full IDP compliance and access to the ARE divisions, within a NAABaccredited degree ”.program

Whether this means changing NCARB intends to IDP requirements release a Request for Proposals to ac- to fit within the credited programs typical five year dein January of 2015. gree time frame, or revamping school Ron Blitch, Chair of As Blitch stated, NCARB’s Licensure these proposals will curriculum to better suit the deTask Force, had need to provide mands of the ARE, NCARB recently this to say: “We are students with insent out a Request gratified that so ternship opportuni- .remains to be seen for Interest & Infor- many schools have ties to meet IDP remation to accredit- shown interest in quirements, as well The Licensure Task ed degree programs designing an addias prepare them to Force will be reviewing proposals to gauge interest tional path to litake the Architect for integration in in the possibility of censure that would Registration Exam combining licensing augment traditional .before graduating .June

http://www.archdaily.com/580916/us-architecture-schools-express-interest-in-conferring-licensure-tograduates/#more-580916

Samsung Electronics is spearheading a village development project in ThuyHoa, Vietnam, as part of a new social contribution program named “the Nanum Vil”.lage The Nanum Village is a project where the local government cooperates with residents of a village who are willing to develop

Courtesy of Samsung Electronics

their neighborhood, improving the public infrastructure and supporting local people’s initiatives for sustainable development .of the village This new com� munity center by Korean architect Choon-Soo Ryu will be built in 2015 as a result of .that initiative

http://www.archdaily.com/580539/samsung-commissionschoon-soo-ryu-to-design-vietnamese-health-and-communitycenter/#more-580539

place

The Mexican Moment: The Rise of Architecture’s Latest Design Capital On a recent trip abroad, architect and urban planner José Castillo was struck by a conversation with Mexico’s tourism .attaché in Asia Mexican tourism, the attaché remarked, has changed; it was the ancient pyramids and sandy beaches of the country that once drew .visitors to it

Today however, archi tecture and design—and .food—prevail The issue of food may be .of little wonder Mexican cuisine has indeed become more popular than ever in both the high and low ends of the culinary spectrum, and food in general is not only what one eats for dinner but also a hobby and an obsessive .conversation topic

and Carlos Gershenson,was recently chosen as the 2014 winner of the Audi Urban Initiative award—a lucrative prize of 100,000 Euros awarded biannually by the German car company to an innovative urban project. The team’s proposal, titled “An Operating System for the City”, reacted to complex mobility questions in Mexico City by combining original crowd-sourced traffic data with a physical and spatial understanding. “For a commuter,” Castillo explains, “it may take 90 minutes to travel between .two relatively proximate places

local character and focus more on importing global .brands Mexico, however, is a different case. It nourishes architectural education and innovation within, and

There is always a schizophrenic sense of simultaneous pleasure and frustration here: we love it and hate it. But these challenges, however problematic, call ”.for us architects to think of resolutions Challenges for architects and planners are abundant here. Beside its enormous size and continuous process of sprawling, its traffic, and its financial and political difficulties, law and order have a different .interpretation when translated to the local dialect Crossing border control in the city’s airport—an architectural mess soon to be replaced by a shiny new one designed by Norman Foster in collaboration with FR-EE (the practice of architect Fernando Romero)—a long drive through the notoriously known Periferico highway reaches the heart of the .city

Yet for local design to come to the same level of acclaim and reputation is, at any rate, quite astonishing. It may be, though, that food and architecture are not so .far apart These are both highly creative and productive professions, as well as ones with a rich history, a theory, and many lay.ers of tradition

The capital of Mexico is the country’s mecca for both of these contemporary attractions. It is a chaotic metropolis with over 21 million inhabitants living in high density within a volcanic valley. “In Mexico City, everything comes in ,”large amounts says Castillo who, together with a design team led by him, Gabri,ella Gomez-Mont

Urban palaces of faded colonial glory combine intimately with Aztec temples, modernist remains, and sparkling new buildings. A strong sense of appetite for updated architecture is felt almost everywhere here, and a rare and exciting energy to act, change, .move, and create Generally speaking, the spotlight of the architectural field has a tendency to shift over geographies and focus, for a while, on a particular place. In the nineties, for example,Holland was the go-to place for provocative contemporary architecture, with the likes of .OMA and MVRDV Switzerland shined later with Herzog and de Meuron and other practices, followed by Japan’s post-bubble scene with SANAA, Atelier Bow Wow, Kengo .Kuma, Toyo Ito, and later Junya Ishigami While China and the Arab Emirates make waves in the design world, they both fail to create a strong

Foster + Partners and FR-EE’s design for the new Mexico City Airport. Image Courtesy of DBOX for Foster + Partners

attracts international firms at the same time. “MeMo”, short for Mexican-Moment, is a term invented by local architects. When did this city, until recently famous for its corruption, violence, and drug trafficking, become the world’s leader in contemporary ?design Jose Castillo and his firm, Arquitectura 911sc, are relatively young members of a large group of Mexican architects that have been gaining increasing .international acclaim in the last decade Most of these designers, like Tatiana Bilbao, Fernando Romero, Alberto Kalach, Enrique Norten, Isaac Broid, Michel Rojkind, and Mauricio Rocha, successfully established practices with a strong aesthetic .language and a defined character Some of them have also extended their reach, and opened branches of their practices in different countries. There are few other places in the world today, however, with such a long list of dominant design.ers “ I believe there is rather a special sense of generosity in Mexico, sort of like a Latin family”, says Wonne Ickx, one of four founding partners of the Mexico City based architecture office ‘Productora’. “For ex

ample,” Ickx continues, “in 2008, Tatiana Bilbao was invited to participate in the international project ‘Ordos 100’ in ”.China The project, curated by artist Ai Wei Wei and architects Herzog and de Meuron, commissioned 100 international architects to design 100 villas for a new residential .development Bilbao did not keep the cards to herself, but chose to connect the project’s leaders to nine other Mexican offices, with Productora includ.ed Later on, Ickx and his office continued to collaborate with different .local firms A current project on their boards, for instance, is a winning competition entry for a new cultural auditorium in Cuernavaca, Morelos, on which they worked with Isaac .Broid The project’s triangular shape echoes that of the Aztec Teopanzolco Pyramid, situated right across .from it The clean-cut form of the project is characteristic of Productora’s work, which Ickx calls “objective” – referring to both neutrality and formal .objectification

La Tallera / Frida Escobedo. Image © Rafael Gamo PRODUCTORA’s Auditorio Cuernavaca, with the Teopanzolco Pyramid in the background. Image Courtesy of PRODUCTORA

Frida Escobedo, a 34-year-old architect who established her own practice for architecture and public art projects in Mexico City, reaffirms the communal notion of the local scene. “I don’t really think there is a clear hierarchical age division between archi.tects here There are mutual preoccupations that connect us, an approach towards architecture and its relation to public space, and to the aging of materials .and ideas”, she says After studying at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Escobedo went back to continue her practice in Mexico, which she finds

fertile as a ground for young architects to actually .get their designs executed She, too, had a chance to collaborate with numerous other firms, while also completing a large number of .ambitious individual projects and exhibitions Her recently completed Hotel Boca Chica (Acapul� co) and La Tallera Siqueiros museum (Cuernavaca, Morelos), displayed exceptional material sensibility and historical understanding, and established her as a .prominent young voice in her country and abroad

Decades have passed since Mexico last received architectural recognition prior to this current wave. Luis Barragan, the country’s most influential modern architect, was honored with a Pritzker Prize in 1980, years after the completion of his master .works Barragan, whose own house is a museum today and a pilgrimage site for many architects internationally, was the only Mexican to receive the .Pritzker, ever After traveling all over Europe and briefly meeting Le Corbusier in France, Barragan practiced in Mexico City from 1936 until his death in 1988. He developed a language that became synonymous with

Mexican Modernism, and is regarded as an unparalleled genius that connected modern and archaic, universal and local, saturated colors and exposed materials, art .and architecture Yet Barragan, too, liked .to collaborate Perhaps less with architects and more with artists, he learned about light manipulation and mixing color pigments, eventually coming to the specific effects that his sculptural spaces achieve – spaces so unique they can only be fully under.stood in person Despite his singular recognition in his generation, modernism in Mexico spanned far beyond Barragan. This was a prosperous period for local architecture,

with phenomenal designers like Mario Pani, Juan O’Gorman, Felix Candela, Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, Agustin Hernandez, Ricardo Legorreta, Mathias Goeritz, .and more Many modernist buildings stayed in tact and are worth visiting, in order to perceive the city’s complicated past beyond the extraordinary houses .of Barragan The UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico) campus includes various impressive projects and is a good example of largescale axial planning, in which the ornamented central library by Juan O’Gorman is a highlight. Other notable examples include ‘Parroquia de la Medalla Milagrosa’

church and ‘Los Manantiales’ restaurant (Felix Candela), ‘Torres de Satélite’ sculpture (Luis Barragán, Jesús Reyes Ferreira, and Mathias Goeritz), the National Museum of Anthropology (Pedro Ramirez Vazquez), ‘Torre Insignia’ (Mario Pani), Hotel Camino Real (Ricardo Legorreta), and the Diego Rivera studio house (O’Gorman) – for its architecture, if the art .alone wasn’t enough Dozens more projects, from Mies van der Rohe’s Bacardi office building to the remains of the 1968 OlympicGames stadiums and facilities, could go into .this list as well Mexico is one of the“ only countries to have had a successful 20th century revolution”, says

Diane E. Davis, a professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University who has written extensively on Mexico City, including the book ‘Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century’ (1994). “The political shift in Mexico City, in any case, was fairly recent”, she continues. “People could elect their own mayor only since the nineties, while before that this was an appointment made by the coun.try’s president New people came into power, with ideas and will to do things in a new and different way. Today, there are many architects and creative professionals in governance posi.tions I think one of the exciting things about Mexico City is that it tries to move forward to a more modern future, to insert itself into the global-city branding game, but it is doing so in great attention to its culture and its history, and in innovative ”.ways Walking along the northern edge of the fashionable Polanco neighborhood, an unusual vista opens up: situated across from each other, two relatively new museum buildings show off stark architectural contradiction. On the one side, there is the virtuosic

cultural spaces in Mexico City, and are currently collaborating with Fernando Romero on a future design gallery .’called ‘Archivo Mexico City could be“ quite violent, but in architecture it is certainly going through a transformation”, says Emmanuel Picault, who runs a practice with his partner .Ludwig Godefroy

Los Manantiales Restaurant / Felix Candela. Image via www.rkett.com

Soumaya Museum designed by Fernando Romero – a digital-looking organic shape cladded by aluminum tiles; on the other, the more traditional but nonetheless bold Jumex Museum, designed by British architect David Chipperfield. An interesting relationship exists between the two structures, which seem to enjoy .and defy each other’s presence simultaneously As two private art museums, funded by two different and extremely wealthy patrons, the museums symbolize the extreme economic gaps that exist in Mexico, and underline many problematic aspects of spatial and cultural dominance. And yet, they also stand for Mexico City’s mutual appreciation and support of both local and international designers, as well as its openness toward new and daring .architecture Mexico City is a phenomenon in both the local and the international level. An increasing number of architects have moved here to practice in the last few years. Some explain it with the lack of work in other Spanish-speaking countries. Others come because of love for the city and its lifestyle, and acknowledge the .ambitious opportunities that this architectural scene provides Christoph Zeller and Ingrid Moye, for example, are a young architect-couple that are splitting their practice between Mexico City and Berlin. “Ingrid is Mexican”, Zeller explains, “and we met while working together at SANAA and at Herzog .and de Meuron When we decided to open our own practice, we thought Mexico City would be a good base. We felt there is more room here for experimentation – in theory and practice. In Europe, and especially in Berlin, there is a lot of critical reconstruction. The historical context is dominating and new projects are cautious with a .heavy responsibility of repairing Here, there are other problems of course. The city is out of control, but it is also free. It welcomes an international direction like ours, and also maintains a strong cultural identity.” Zeller and Moye have designed numerous galleries and other

The two are both originally from Normandy, and only met after moving to Mexico City .separately M. N. Roy’, a nightclub‘ they designed together, is one of the more surprising and impressive .interior spaces Cladded almost completely by wooden strips, the club resembles a dark tribal temple with a pyramid shape. “We like to call it ‘Neo-Pre.’Hispanic

Beside his job as an architect, Picault owns a Mexican furniture gallery in the city, called ‘Chic by Accident’. Among other designers, he sells pieces by Luis .Barragan This is a constantly“ surprising and inspiring place”, he says. “If you live here, it is not only because it’s cheap, but because you love it and feel a strong link to this ”.city

M.N.ROY Club / Emmanuel Picault & Ludwig Godefroy. Image © Ramiro Chaves

We’re proud to use local materials, vernacular techniques, and to draw from the architectural history of this place”, .adds Godefroy After their success with M. N. Roy, the two designed a series of restaurants and private projects in Mexico City and in .Paris Zeller & Moye and FR-EE’s “Archivo”. Image Courtesy of Zeller & Moye

http://www.archdaily.com/578245/the-mexican-moment-the-rise-of-architecture-s-latest-design-capital/#more-578245

INTERIORS: Home Alone

plans of space, as well as all the time that we spend in various rooms throughout the home, it’s interesting to note

In terms of production design, warm colors pervade the interior spaces. The home is made up of reds and greens, attributing and heightening the feel of Christmas and further emphasizing the absence of Kevin’s .family

Courtesy of INTERIORS Journal

In their first collaboration together as writer and director, John Hughes and Christopher Columbus produced Home Alone (1990). This quintessential Christmas film is a prime example of a “movie home” — a home that is made iconic and famous with its appearance in a popular .film The film concerns itself with Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), a young boy whose family accidently leaves him home alone after leaving .for a vacation In this small suburban town, on Christmas, their home is targeted after a string of successful break-ins in the neighborhood. The McCallister Residence as a result becomes the central space where the majority of the action in the .film occurs The production used an actual home for the setting of the film. The home’s location is 671 Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka, Illinois, north of .Chicago The majority of the interiors were filmed on location, including most of the first floor, while several rooms were recreated and filmed on a sound stage. Interiors visited the location in July .2014

that the audience never sees Kevin’s bedroom. In this sense, Kevin doesn’t have a space of his own and he never really finds his place with his family. Kevin is subjected to the attic, but also finds salvation in his .tree house

The opening minutes of the film are very dynamic. The use of rapid editing, quick cuts and blocking of the actors in early moments of the film results in a great deal .of energy

The film brings out the architect in Kevin. In preparation for the break-in, Kevin draws up a floor plan of his own, which he titles the “Battle Plan.” The drawing notes the traps that he has planned throughout the interior of the .home

This fast-paced quality is a stark contrast to the scene that follows, where Kevin wakes up and discovers he is home alone. The emphasis here is on the silence and emptiness .of the house The film further underscores his family’s absence with an exploration of the space of the house. There are shots of Kevin walking around his home, in each of the main .rooms of the house These are mostly played in wide shots, which show off the space of the interior of the home, whereas the scenes prior were all sporadic. In fact, for all of the exploration

Courtesy of INTERIORS Journal

Kevin’s floor plan of his home is surprisingly consistent with the actual floor plan of this home. The room to the right of the dining room is never used or shown in the film, and as a result, is excluded from Kevin’s .own drawing In our floor plan of the McCallister Residence, we examine the break-in that Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) plan, showing them at the .back door

The floor plan features a dotted line for each of their routes throughout the robbery; each time a trap occurs on the first floor, we have drawn a .silhouette of them Kevin’s “Battle Plan” is very architectural in the sense that he devises a trap in every main room or space of the house. Kevin defends this personal space with traps that are devised around the perimeter of the house; every entrance is rigged: icy external stairs, a heated door knob on the front door, ornaments under the window, .and a nail on the basement stairs Kevin also anticipates potential routes during his plan. Harry and Marv separate after they attempt to enter through the back door, but the ultimate plan that Kevin has for them is having .them meet at the foyer and travel up the stairs The break-in begins with Harry and Marv arriv.ing to the house They attempt to enter the home from the back door that is connected to the kitchen. Kevin shoots them both through the dog door, sending them on separate routes. They then attempt to enter from the front door (Harry) and the base.)ment (Marv Harry is unsuccessful because of the traps on theoutside of the home: the ice water on the stairs and the fiery door knob). Marv, however, discovers that the basement door is unlocked and is unsuccessful because of the traps on the inside of the home: an iron that falls down trash .chute and the tar and nails on the stairs The next obstacle Harry faces is the fire torch

that is rigged in the kitchen. He then successfully penetrates the space after rushing through the door and .breaking in with force Harry finally makes contact with Kevin as he enters the dining room. Marv successfully enters the house through the living room .window He steps on ornaments, which pierce his feet only because he had previously taken his shoes and socks off in the base.ment This could have only worked if one of them had attempted to enter through the basement before the living room showing us that, for the most part, Kevinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan could only be successful if executed .as Kevin has intended

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opinon 2014

A Great Year for Landscape Architecture

By all accounts 2014 has been a great year for landscape architecture, and not just because of the completion of the final phase of the High Line by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations. Previously published by the Huffington Post as “2014′s Notable Developments in Landscape Architecture,” this roundup of the year by the President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation Charles A Birnbaum finds plenty of promising developments, marred only slightly by some more backward-looking desci.sions This year there was a cultural shift that saw landscape architecture and its practitioners achieve an unprecedented .level of visibility and influence This year the single most notable development came courtesy of the New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman who wrote: “Great public places and works of landscape architecture de”.serve to be treated like great buildings Landscape architecture and architec.ture on equal footing. Let that sink in Kimmelman was writing about another notable development, the expansion plans at New York’s Frick Collection, which would destroy its elegant Russell Page-designed viewing garden. When the plans were first announced in June, the garden was at best a peripheral con.cern

Now, as a recent New York Times article points out, it’s the focal point; and the coalition Unite to Save the Frick has lined up numerous organizations, prestigious individuals and collected thousands of

signatures all in opposition – among them, Robert AM Stern, architect and dean of the Yale University School of Architecture, who said: “Gardens are ”.works of art Fortunately, enlightened rather than endangered accounts for the remaining notable developments – well, .almost In Houston, TX, 2014 marks the climax of two decades of activity spurred by the 1995 Olin Master Plan for Hermann Park. Long known as the city without zoning, Houston has turned a corner – by engaging many of the nation’s leading landscape architects, the city’s patrons and stewards are showing a deep commitment and belief in the power of transforming the civic realm through the design, construction and renewal of parks and the creation .of connected green spaces

Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park. Image © Wade Zimmerman, courtesy Thomas Balsley Associates the roster of practitioners and projects is impressive: Design Workshop and Reed Hilderbrand at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center, Nelson Byrd Woltz at Memorial Park, Michael Van Valkenburgh at the Menil Collection, SWA at Buffalo Bayou Park, Hoerr Schaudt at Centennial Gardens in Hermann Park, and Hargreaves Associates at .Discovery Green Forty years ago the great critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: “Houston is the place where money, power, and patronage are coming together in a city of singular excitement … If Houston has found the formula for turning prosperity and growth into beauty and elegance, it is indeed the city of the future.” Thanks to national design talent, visionary political leadership and successful public-private partnerships, Houston is transforming from .the City of Petroleum to the City of Parks Inspired urban transformations in Atlanta, GA and Queens, NY also deserve attention. In the vein of Rails to Trails and the High Line, which have recreated abandoned railroad lines, the BeltLine, as the New York Times reported, is transforming “22 miles of vine-covered railroad into parks, housing and public transit around Atlanta,” linking 45 neighbor.hoods in the process In addition, “It would add 40 percent more parks to Atlanta. Only 4.6 percent of Atlanta is parkland, compared with 25 percent in New Orleans and 19 percent in New York.” Last month, thanks to an $18 million TIGER V grant from the US Department of Transportation, .ground was broken on the West Side Trail, a new three-mile section

dedicul landscape architecture projects throughout the United States and internationally.” Bill’s inspiring and estimable legacy, which includes important Postmodernist projects, is worthy of .emulation

Modernism got a big boost. Mellon Square in Pittsburgh, PA, the first park over a parking garage, reopened following an extensive restoration by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and Heritage Landscapes, as detailed in Susan Rademacher’s new book Mellon Square: Discovering .a Modern Masterpiece Designed by landscape architect John O. Simonds, of Simonds and Simonds, in collaboration with architect James Ritchey, of Mitchell and Ritchey, the plaza – called a “[M]odernist jewel” by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Marylynne Pitz – was paid for by the Mellon family foundations and conceived as an oasis, a gathering space in the midst of dense corporate .buildings The Thomas Church-designed General Motors Technical Center in Warren, MI, Church’s only know collaboration with architect Eero Saarinen, joined an elite group when it was declared a National .Historic Landmark Design reviewers hold great sway over aesthetic decisions, no more so than at the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that reviews “design and aesthetics” of construction .within Washington, DC For the past two years, the presidentially appointed seven-person commission has included Elizabeth Meyer, the University of Virginia’s dean of the school of architecture and a professor of landscape architecture. In 2014 two landscape architects, Mia Lehrer and Liza Gilbert, filled two vacancies at the commission – a historic event as it’s the first time landscape architects, let alone three women landscape architects, have served as .commissioners at the same time The Commission oversees development on such iconic places as the National Mall, so participation by these thoughtful and considerate professionals is extreme.ly important

Garden Design Magazine, long a staple

Mellon Square. Image © Richard Schiavoni, courtesy The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy for informative stories and great photography, has been resurrected by publisher Jim Petersen. The new, advertising free quarterly, continues the magazine’s tradition with gusto under the direction of editor in .chief Thad Orr Finally, this year saw the passing of two exceptional people who deserve to be much better know. Conrad Hamerman, a selfless Modernist designer, devoted the greater part of his career to bringing his friend and colleague, Roberto Burle Marx, to the forefront of landscape architecture .in the US Although the bulk of Hamerman’s career focused on teaching and mentoring,

he also completed a significant body of built work including his own magical garden in Philadelphia, which is worthy of .preservation William Callaway, known as Bill, who spent his 45-year career at SWA (originally known as Sasaki Walker Associates), was considered an “icon of post-World War II design” by Peter Walker, one of the field’s most influential practitioners .and educators A statement issued by SWA said: “Bill’s enormous talent and

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As I put the finishing touches on this article, the following appeared in the Chicago Tribune: “Final push for Obama library bids ahead of Thursday deadline.” Among the sites being considered for the presidential library are two historic parks - Washington and Jackson - designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and Calvert Vaux, of .Central Park fame This comes on the heels of recently announced plans to build, what Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin calls, George Lucas’ “ridiculously overscaled mountain of a museum along ”.Lake Michigan

Why

New York city shouldn’t be a city for one precent

In recent years, it’s been difficult to miss the spate of supertall, superthin towers on the rise in Manhattan. Everyone knows the individual projects: 432 Park Avenue, One57, the Nordstrom Tower, the MoMA Tower. But, when a real estate company released renders of the New York skyline in 2018, it forced New Yorkers to consider for the first time the combined effect of all this new real estate. In this opinion article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “On New York’s Skyscraper Boom and the Failure of Trickle-Down Urbanism,” Joshua K Leon argues that the case for a city of the one percent doesn’t .stand up under scrutiny

?What would a city owned by the one-percent look like New renderings for CityRealty get us part way there, illustrating how Manhattan may appear in 2018. The defining feature will be a bumper crop of especially tall, slender skyscrapers piercing the skyline like postmodern boxes, odd stalagmites, and upside-down syringes. What

opinon they share in common is sheer unadulterated scale and a core clientele of uncom.promising plutocrats The renderings instill a depressing sense of inevitability toward projects that should have been fought off. I don’t just mean one or two of these luxury towers, but all of them. Some of these designs threaten to mar the skyline for .generations One 57 is supposed to look like a waterfall, altogether failing. The “Nordstrom Tower” emerging on West 57th Street is plain enough to complement the suburban mall ethos of its eponymous tenant. 125 Greenwich offers another variant on .tall, thin, and bland The placeless, overscaled Hudson Yards complex earned itself the label “Hong Kong ”.on the Hudson To be fair, other designs aren’t so bad. Among the best: Raphael Viñoly’s 432 Park Avenue cuts a distinguished profile comprised of seemingly countless right .angles

Jean Nouvel’s eye-catching MoMA Tower on 53rd Street has a slightly off-kilter pyramidal form. Its lower floors will feature Museum of Modern Art exhibits, making it the rare luxury .building capable of fostering joyful moments for the non-elite Some observers praise the sheer scale of this construction for helping the city recover its purported bygone virility. The Atlantic’s Kriston Capps asserts that New York can—quoting Nicolai Ouroussoff—once again be a “great citadel of capitalism” like Dubai, Singapore, and Beijing. (Must capitalism’s great citadels all be authoritarian?). That newfound urban vitality will register proudly in postcards but flatline up close. The fact that many top-end buyers .seldom live in the city promises some pretty dead blocks An ideology of trickle-down urbanism justifies the immoderate scope of this construction. Our erstwhile mayor explains it best: “If we can find a bunch of billionaires around the world to move here, that would be a godsend,” argued Michael Bloomberg. “Because that’s where the ”.revenue comes to take care of everybody else But do we absolutely need, as Bloomberg insisted, a built environment that caters first and foremost to the absurdly rich? The argument ignores the fusillade of social supports flowing upward, paying for elite home and work lives. As the New York Times explains, buyers of ultra luxury units get massive tax breaks. Developers take advantage of heightened demand for .these safety deposit boxes in the sky Vast public sums also underwrite the corporate economy upon which the highest strata thrive. This includes skyscraper construction around the city. For example, the World Trade Center, Bank of America Tower, and Goldman Sachs headquarters are creatures of state as well as market. (Their exclusive benefits are extensively documented by Good Jobs New York’s useful .)reportage on city subsidies My point here is that the luxury city is a policy choice rather than free market inevitability, and there are always alternatives. Public housing faces vast backlogs in basic repairs. Why not ?place scarce municipal spending power there instead Proponents of trickle-down urbanism still hold up luxury construction as a social good, promising to alleviate housing scarcity by increasing overall supply. This ignores segmentations in the housing market. Solving a housing crisis by building penthouses would be like trying to solve an automobile shortage by manufacturing Bentleys. Left to its own devices, the “free .market” is producing the wrong kind of housing Even if the overall supply mattered, luxury condo buildings are still wonders of inefficiency. 432 Park, the tallest residential skyscraper in the Western hemisphere, will have only 104 units. A similar design by Viñoly at 125 Greenwich Street, which will be 1,358 feet tall, plans just 128 units. One57, which peaks at more than 1,000 feet, adds a paltry 92 units to the city’s housing stock. By comparison my relatively small thirteen-story building, built in 1957 on the .Upper East Side, has 119 apartments The massive contradiction here is that the city is building so much to sell, yet so little to use. Should New York City developers—whom you’d think would be obliged to produce actual liv?ing spaces—be in the business of wealth storage When it comes to the investment demands of the global one-percent, no subsidy is too conspicuous, no height or sales records are safe. Could trickle-down urbanists ever advocate meeting social challenges with equally bold ambition? What these buildings really reflect is the impoverished political imagination of the times. They will tell posterity how we reinforced steep .social hierarchy http://www.archdaily.com/577034/why-new-york-shouldn-t-bea-city-for-the-one-percent/#more-577034

opinon APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC

Rem Koolhaas Asks: Are Smart Cities Condemned to Be Stupid

I had a sinking feeling as I was listening to the talks by these prominent figures in the field of smart cities because the city used to be the domain of the architect, and now, frankly, they have made it their domain. This transfer of authority has been achieved in a clever way by calling their city smart – and by calling it smart, our city is condemned to being stupid. Here are some thoughts on the smart city, some of which are critical; but in the end, it is clear that those in the digital realm and architects will have to work .together

REGIME $€¥ Architecture used to be about the creation of community, and making the best effort at symbolizing that community. Since the triumph of the market economy in the late 1970s, architecture no longer expresses public values but instead the values of the private sector. It is in fact a regime – the ¥€$ regime – and it has invaded every domain, whether we want it or not. This regime has had a very big impact .on cities and the way we understand cities With safety and security as selling points, the city has become vastly less adventurous and more predictable. To compound the situation, when the market economy took hold at the end of the 1970s, architects stopped writing manifestos. We stopped thinking about the city at the exact moment of the explosion in urban substance in the developing world. The city triumphed at the very moment that thinking about the city stopped. The “smart” city has stepped into that vacuum. But being commercial corporations, your work is changing the notion of the city itself. Maybe it is no coincidence that “liveable” – flat – cities likeVancouver, Melbourne and even Perth are replacing traditional metropolises in .our imaginary

The smart city movement today is a very crowded field, and therefore its protagonists are identifying a multiplicity of disasters which they can avert. The effects of climate change, an ageing population and infrastructure, water and energy provision are all presented as problems for which smart cities have an answer. Apocalyptic scenarios are managed and mitigated by .sensor-based solutions

rhetoric of the smart city: it is very attractive to be a smart mayor. The book If Mayors Rules the Worldproposes a global parlia.ment of mayors This confluence of rhetoric – the “smart city”, the “creative class”, and “innovation” – is creating a stronger and stronger argument for consolidation. If you look in a smart city control room, like the one in Rio de Janeiro by IBM, you start to wonder about the extent of what is actually being .controlled

Smart cities rhetoric relies on slogans – ‘fix leaky pipes, save millions’. Everything saves millions, no matter how negligible the problem, simply because of the scale of the system that will be monitored. The commercial motivation corrupts the very entity it is supposed to serve… To save the city, we may …have to destroy it When we look at the visual language through which the smart city is represented, it is typically with simplistic, child-like rounded edges and bright colours. The citizens the smart city claims to serve are treated like infants. We are fed cute icons of urban life, integrated with harmless devices, cohering into pleasant diagrams in which citizens and business are surrounded by more and more circles of service that cre.ate bubbles of control Why do smart cities offer only improve� ment? Where is the possibility of transgression? And rather than discarding urban intelligence accumulated over centuries, we must explore how to what is today considered “smart” with previous eras of knowl.edge

IF MAYORS RULED THE WORLD The smart city movement is focusing on the recent phenomenon that more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in .cities Therefore mayors have been targeted as the clients or the initiators of smart cities. Mayors are particularly susceptible to the

In the late 1970s, “we stopped thinking about the city at the exact moment of the explosion in urban substance in the developing world.” This can be seen in the New Urbanism movement, which from the early 1980s attempted to restore traditionalist urban design principles. Shown here, Seaside, Florida began construction in 1981. Image © Flickr CC user Paigeh

COMFORT, SECURITY, SUSTAINABILITY

POLITICS

Because the smart city movement has been apolitical in its declarations, we also have to ask about the politics behind the improvements on offer. A new trinity is at work: traditional European values of liberty, equality, and fraternity have been replaced in the 21st century by comfort, security, and sustainability. They are now the dominant values of our culture, a revolution .that has barely been registered

The rhetoric of smart cities would be more persuasive if the environment that the technology companies create was actually a compelling one that offered models for what the city can be. But if you look at Silicon Valley you see that the greatest innovators in the digital field have created a bland suburban environment that is becoming increasingly exclusive, its tech bubbles insu.lated from the public sphere

COURTROOM The car is a key element in the smart city. It is now being equipped with increasingly complex monitoring devices. On the one hand, the devices improve the driver’s behaviour, but on the other hand they create a high degree of surveillance. I’m not convinced that the public will welcome this degree of monitoring. I prefer the car not to .be a courtroom FARADAY CAGE In the past two years we have, with the Harvard Graduate School of Design, looked at the architectural elements – like the wall, the floor, the door, the ceiling, the stair – and seen how they are evolving in the cur.rent moment If the city is increasingly a comprehensive surveillance system, the house is turning into an automated, responsive cell, replete with devices like automated windows that you can open but only at certain times of the day; floors embedded with sensors so that the change in a person’s position from the vertical to the horizontal, for whatever reason, will be recorded; spaces which will not be warmed in their entirety, but instead will track their inhabitants with sensors and.cloak them in heat shields Soon a Faraday Cage will be a necessary component of any home – a safe room in which to retreat from digital sensing and .pre-emption

There is surprise that the digital move� ment is encountering opposition on its own doorstep. Smart cities and politics have been diverging, growing in separate worlds. It is absolutely critical that .the two converge again