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Design

Secret Cities Exhibition Preview in Metropolis Magazine

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by Deane
Secret Cities exhibition at the National Building Museum | © Deane Madsen

Secret Cities exhibition at the National Building Museum | © Deane Madsen

If you’ve never heard of Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; or Hanford and Richland, Washington, you’re not alone. In fact, the clandestine nature of these places is by design. But the upcoming exhibition Secret Cities: The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project, opening May 3 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., aims to reveal much of their history and built forms.

As part of the U.S. war effort in the early 1940s, the federal government built facilities for the development and testing of atomic weapons. Alongside these, it also constructed housing for the involved scientists and technicians in semi-urban communities as secretive as their work.

Read the full story at Metropolis Magazine. “Secret Cities” runs May 3, 2018—March 3, 2019 at the National Building Museum.

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. 

Practice Innovation Lab tackles the future of architecture

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by Deane

Participants in the AIA Practice Innovation Lab strategize elevator pitches for new models of practice.

Sixty architectural thought leaders looked ahead to strategize new models of practice

With so much of the world in flux, through changes to climate, technologies, and construction techniques, how will architects adapt ways of practicing to advance the profession? That was the question put to a group of 60 professionals—architects, designers, and practitioners from related fields—at the Practice Innovation Lab, held in mid-October and hosted by the AIA’s Young Architects Forum.

Over the course of the program, attendees heard experiences and examples from innovators before forming smaller teams and brainstorming ideas to evolve architectural practice. Interspersed between these discussions, addresses on the topic of innovation demonstrated means of breaking new ground in fields such as interaction design and public interest design. The smaller teams later reconvened to pitch their proposals to each other before voting on the best practice models.

The Practice Innovation Lab crammed an intense level of consensus-building into a short timeframe, and was designed to get architects out from behind their desks to strategize rather than theorize. Organizers Evelyn Lee, AIA, and Milan Jordan, Assoc. AIA, and moderator Laura Weiss, Assoc. AIA, kicked off the event with a challenge to elevate and propel the profession through the development of new practice models that “make inspiration actionable,” according to Weiss. “[We’re] laying the framework to elevate the profession and move it forward,” she said. Lee called upon emerging professionals to be the vanguard of practice by “pushing boundaries to see values that we bring as architects to the broader community.”

Read the story at AIA.org. A full report from the summit will be available in late 2017.

Infusing contemporary design thinking into historic libraries

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by Deane

Rendering of the renovated Johnson Building (Courtesy Boston Public Library)

The Boston Public Library is the oldest urban library in the United States, and it features the work of three renowned architectural practices in its Central Library on Copley Square. The original Renaissance Revival building, designed by Charles McKim of the preeminent firm McKim, Mead & White, was completed in 1895. McKim intended the library as a “palace for the people” and included moments of delight and surprise, such as Guastavino tile vaulting and an inner courtyard wrapped on three sides by an arcade replicating that of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome.

Three-quarters of a century later, in 1972, Philip Johnson and John Burgee, along with collaborators from Architects Design Group, celebrated the opening of an addition that matched the McKim building’s roofline and material—Milford granite—but swapped out palazzo architecture for Modernism, in which Johnson was fluent. The Johnson Building, as it is now known, comprises 170,000 square feet divided into 10 floors, four of which are suspended from 16-foot-deep trusses at the seventh level; three of its levels connect to the McKim Building. Less than a year after it opened, architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable’s New York Times review of the Johnson Building was full of praise:

“It poses, and solves, a number of functional, structural, environmental and esthetic problems with mastery, and represents the kind of utility of program and solution that is what the best architecture has always been about.”

While both buildings have been granted landmark status, the latter had not seen any significant improvements since its opening. And in the intervening years, changes both in the surrounding neighborhood and in the way people use libraries rendered original design elements—such as vertical granite barriers at the sidewalk edge—obsolete. Local firm William Rawn Associates was tasked with updating the 1972 building with a $16 million, two-phase renovation that was finished last year and received a 2017 AIA/ALA Library Building Award. Those street-level barriers have been removed, and ground-floor mirrored glass has been replaced with clear glazing and new entrances that reinforce the library’s connection to the street life around it.

Read the full story at Topic Architecture. 

Three big warm-weather home renovations to consider

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by Deane

Home improvement projects often ramp up in the warmer months, and for good reason. With longer days and fewer chances of inclement weather, summer is the perfect season for renovations, from replacing windows to installing shading devices and optimizing your home’s energy efficiency. Get started with these three options, which can raise the value of your home while also cutting cooling costs.

Shading devices: As much as you might appreciate views from expansive walls of glass, you might also notice during long summer days that your house is too bright and too hot from solar gain. Consider the addition of exterior shading devices; your architect can select the right shading device for you, based on your home’s specific geography, to take advantage of seasonally varying sun angles. For some regions, the approach might be over-window shading devices that block high-angle summer sunlight while still admitting low-angle winter sun. In other regions, perforated shutters that block midday sun but can be opened to take advantage of softer evening tones might be the better option.

Cutler Anderson Architects used the latter approach for a Pennsylvania Farmhouse, a recipient of AIA’s 2017 Housing Awards. Barn doors might seem like an obvious choice for a farmhouse, but those installed at the Pennsylvania Farmhouse serve as shutters for the south-facing, double-height windows, providing nighttime privacy for the occupants and reducing daytime solar gain. When the sliding shutters are closed, slits allow ample daylight to reach the interior but temperature reductions are in the range of 20 degrees Fahrenheit, according to anecdotal evidence provided by the contractor.

Thermal transfer: If you noticed any draftiness during the winter, you’d be wise to consult with an architect about thermography, which is infrared scanning of your home. This process will discover areas of thermal transfer, i.e., the places where your house is leaking air. The most common areas of thermal transfer are apertures such as windows and doors, but it’s also crucial to check the exterior cladding of your house to ensure that there aren’t leaks that may otherwise evade easy detection. The more thermal transfer your house has, the more energy you’ll consume in attempting to cool it in the summer months and heat it in the winter months; imagine a freezer door left ajar. Measuring your house’s baseline energy consumption and thermal transfer is key to potentially reducing long-term energy costs.

Insulation: If you’re reluctant to change your home’s outward appearance, another method of increasing energy efficiency—and long-term cost savings—is through additional insulation. Many people think of attics when they think of insulation, but it’s important to remember that walls and floors can also benefit from extra insulation to prevent heating and cooling loss. Increasing the amount of insulation doesn’t necessarily mean tearing down your walls or ripping up hardwood floors; expanding foam and loose-fill insulation can be added through minimally invasive methods.

 

Read the full story and see images at Topic Architecture. 

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