Hirshhorn Museum to Renovate Gordon Bunshaft-designed Lobby

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by Deane

Removal of dark window filters will increase the transparency of the Hirshhorn Museum’s lobby, allowing views through the museum’s ground floor. © Deane Madsen

Japanese architecture firm New Material Research Laboratory (NMRL) will reimagine the Hirshhorn Museum’s Gordon Bunshaft–designed lobby in what will be the first cohesive redesign in the museum’s 42-year history, according to a press release issued Monday. NMRL, which unifies the work of artist Hiroshi Sugimoto with that of architect Tomoyuki Sakakida, aims to enhance the museum’s arrival experience with updated digital signage, new custom furnishings, and a sculptural light installation, Your oceanic feeling (2015), by artist Olafur Eliasson. The renovations will also include the addition of a 20-foot-long coffee and gelato bar by local proprietor Dolcezza, which has operated a pop-up shipping container shop in the Hirshhorn’s courtyard since February of this year.

Sugimoto’s inspiration for the Hirshhorn lobby stems from the intertwined roots of an ancient Japanese nutmeg tree, and responds to the museum’s cylindrical shape (locals affectionately refer to it as the Brutalist Doughnut). “I became fascinated by the roots of an enormous tree, which fanned out to form a large circle, and I decided that this was the circle I would install in the Hirshhorn lobby—a symbol of life,” Sugimoto explained in the release. “All art takes its inspiration from the power inherent in nature, and my hope is that as visitors enter the museum, they will experience the balance of the man-made and natural circles.”

Read the full story at Metropolis Magazine.

Winter Winners: A Pair of Washington Museums in ArchitectureDC

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by Deane

The Winter 2017 issue of ArchitectureDC Magazine

The Winter 2017 issue of ArchitectureDC–the quarterly publication of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|DC)–features winners of its 2017 Design Awards. It was my honor to write about two projects that earned Awards of Excellence from AIA|DC: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and the Smithsonian National Gallery East Building Renovation and Expansion. Both are projects that have been enormously influential in challenging the status of architecture in Washington.

The Winter 2017 issue of ArchitectureDC Magazine

Excerpts on each winning project are below, but be sure to pick up a copy of the ArchitectureDC Winter Issue at the District Architecture Center, which will host its 2017 Awards Show from Dec. 11-Jan. 26.

National Gallery of Art East Building Renovation and Expansion:

Restoring internationally acclaimed architecture–and expanding it from within–is no easy task, but that’s exactly the assignment Hartman-Cox Architects received from the National Gallery of Art for its 1978 East Building. Read the full story at ArchitectureDC. 

NMAAHC:

Occupying what may be the last buildable site on Washington’s Mall, the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) mediates the ground between museums and memorials by itself serving both purposes through a program that celebrates culture while recalling the painful history of slavery. Read the full story at ArchitectureDC.

 

Living Large in Small Spaces by ‘Making Room’

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by Deane

A terrace provides a second entrance to the 1,000-square-foot Open House at the Making Room exhibition at the National Building Museum.

Over the last few decades, our lifestyles have changed, but the types of homes in which we live have not. That’s the driving thought behind Making Room: Housing for a Changing America, a new exhibition that examines possibilities for better housing, which opens at the National Building Museum (NBM) in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. Through analysis of residential and zoning codes, case studies, and a centerpiece 1,000-square-foot demonstration home constructed within the NBM galleries, museum visitors will gain insight into flexible living arrangements that suit a variety of scenarios now more common than the nuclear family.

The exhibition begins with an analysis of current housing conditions by the Citizens Housing & Planning Council (CHPIC), conveyed through infographic charts and introductory text. Despite a marked decline in nuclear families—or married couples with children—much of the housing stock is still geared toward this family type. However, lifestyle changes have reduced nuclear families (now only twenty percent of current national households), and increased other modes of living. Single people make up a much larger demographic proportion; yet only 11.63 percent of housing stock is one-bedroom, with studios making up just 0.87 percent. The other 87.5 percent of housing stock comprises two-, three-, four-, and five-bedroom houses.

To address this imbalance between housing type and lifestyle, the exhibition team—led by Pierluigi Colombo, art director of Italian furniture producer Clei, Lisa Blecker, marketing director of Resource Furniture, and exhibition curator Chrysanthe Broikos—created the Open House, a roughly 1,000-square-foot installation of a home, furnished by Clei, that will display three living scenarios over the course of the exhibit, on view until September 16, 2018.

Read the full story at Architectural Record. 

Cooper Hewitt National Design Award winners embrace the creative spirit

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by Deane

Winners of the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards discuss the impact of design. L-R: Susan Chin, Mary Ping, Susan Szenasy, and Caroline Baumann.

Members of the design community welcomed three of the winners of the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, for a panel discussion on the importance and impact of design.

The awards program, now in its 18th year, honored 11 winners, including panelists Susan S. Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis Magazine, who won the Director’s Award; Mary Ping, founder of New York-based label Slow and Steady Wins the Race, for fashion design; and the Design Trust for Public Space, for corporate and institutional achievement, represented by executive director Susan Chin, FAIA.

The National Design Awards underscore the significance of design in an era where arts funding is increasingly at risk. According to Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton, the awards program is “a chance for solutions or optimism at a time when optimism toward seemingly intractable problems seems elusive.”

Elaborating upon that sentiment, Szenasy spoke of design and architecture as acts of hope: “Whatever you put out there is about future use of something,” she said. “The creative spirit in human beings is the most important spirit alive.”

Read the full story at Topic Architecture. 

Groundbreaking ceremony for Eisenhower Memorial

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by Deane

Members of the Eisenhower family and Memorial commission, along with Frank Gehry (center) break ground on the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C.

It was my great honor to cover the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial groundbreaking ceremony, which was held in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 2. Descendants of the former president as well as Memorial commissioners and members of the design team–including architect Frank Gehry–were on hand to mark the start of construction for a memorial that has been held up in contentious legislative battles for most of a decade.

“We’ve waited so long and [have] been through so much on it,” Gehry said after the ceremony. “But compared to other memorials, I think we’re half the time! [With] everything that went on, I always believed in the Eisenhower family.”

Gehry also spoke of his personal connection to Eisenhower in an official press release from the Eisenhower Memorial Commission; many of his family members lost their lives in Germany leading up to World War II:

“This project has been an enormous honor for me both professionally and personally. I was 16 years old when Eisenhower defeated the Nazis and led American to victory in WWII. I had lost 33 members of my family in the camps, so his victory was all the more meaningful to me. His leadership in peacetime was as inspiring. He led the country with strength, but also with great humanity and humility. I hope that these values are captured in the memorial, and that it will be a place to honor and to learn from one of the greatest heroes that the world has ever known.”

Read the full story at Architectural Record. 

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