NEWS
SCI-Arc alum Yuval Yasky (M.Arch '00) curated the Israeli pavilion at the 12th international architecture exhibition at the Venice Bienalle.
His exhibition, titled "Kibbutz: An Architecture Without Precedents," explores the roles of planning and architecture through the 100-year history of the kibbutz, as it has actively shaped society and has contributed to the quality of human relationships.
Yasky and co-curator Galia Bar Or show the evolution of the kibbutz from its Zionist beginnings of a voluntary way of life based on equality, mutual aid and full partnership in all the social and economic aspects of life to a radical value shift of differential earnings linked to the rules of the market. Its future has come full-circle, as new designers of the kibbutz have started to rethink its architectural, environmental and spatial values and have begun developing new models of solidarity and mutual aid.
Earlier this year, Yasky was elected Director of the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.
The Israeli Pavilion will be on display at the Venice Biennale from August 29 to November 21. For more information on the Venice Biennale, go to the www.labiennale.org.
The humanitarian efforts of international architect and SCI-Arc alum Shigeru Ban ('78-'80) were showcased in the online version of the Architectural Record earlier this year.
Ban, founder and principal of Shigeru Ban Architects, has been actively involved in disaster relief activities in Haiti following the catastrophic earthquake that struck the country in January.
Among recent projects, Ban and members of his staff worked with architecture students from the Dominican Republic to provide sturdy, temporary shelters for 50 Haitian families who have chosen to stay in their destroyed village of Digner in Port-au-Prince. The shelters are stable, waterproof structures that maximize internal space. They consist of a 161-square-foot, barn-shaped structure, constructed with polyurethane-coated cylinders that are linked together with plywood joints and rope. The cost of a shelter is $300 and all materials are acquired locally.
Ban began his relief work in 1994 in Rwanda and has built shelters at disaster sites in Asia, Africa and Europe. His long-term goal in Haiti is to build permanent homes for villagers of Digner.
The homes of several Los Angeles-based SCI-Arc alumni are featured in the August 2010 issue of Angeleno Magazine.
In his article, “Power Grid,” architectural writer Sam Lubell highlights husband-and-wife design teams including Carlos Zubieta (B.Arch '94) of Bernstein-Zubieta Architects and Tatiana Barhar (M.Arch '96) of Verdego Design; Robert Thibodeau (M.Arch '93) and Yasi Vafaie (B.Arch '90) of DU Architects; and Jason Ruperto (M.Arch2 '01) and Emmylou Vy (B.Arch '00) of Emjae Design Shop.
"L.A.'s hottest architects turn a quiet quadrant of Venice streets into the insiders's residential 'hood' for top design talent,” writes Lubell.
All homes listed in the article are based in the city of Venice, located in a “non-descript, non-touristed pocket of tree-lined streets east of Abbot Kinney and north of Venice Boulevard…ground zero for the city’s highest concentration of A-list architects."
Other featured alumni include Angela Brooks (M.Arch '91) of Pugh+Scarpa, David Hertz (B.Arch '83) of Studio of Environmental Architecture, and Anthony Coscia of Coscia Day Architecture+Design. The article also mentions former faculty members Steven Ehrlich, Deborah Richmond, Lawrence Scarpa and Olivier Touraine.
The Architect’s Newspaper highlights an AECOM project led by alumnus
Carlos Madrid III (M.Arch2 ’95) in its August 2010 Developers issue. The project, 207 Goode Street, is “a normal suburban office building but subverts the formula with simple moves that make it not only edgier design-wise but more effective in its urban context,” writes AN's Sam Lubell in his editorial, "Keep It Simple."
Surrounded by standard office buildings in downtown Glendale, 207 Goode Street is the clear nonconformist on the block. The building’s exterior, as described by Lubell, is “a cubed-shaped envelope with a flat profile and mullion-less mirrored glass curtain wall…but within this sheer envelope the firm carved holes into the typical scheme, both literally and figuratively.” Madrid and his team designed a “sleek port cochere and supported it with dramatic chevron-shaped columns that give the heavy structure a feeling of lightness and minimize the sense of an imposing block.”
“At night the building stands out even more thanks to its thin, dramatic bands of greenish LED lighting; the thin strips further demarcate the strategic cuts in the façade. As the back of the building touches the ground, a loggia connects it to a new paved courtyard and to the complex’s other buildings, helping create a new urban space where there was basically nothing.”
Read the entire story in Architect’s Newspaper >>More about AECOM >>
A home designed by alumnus Robert Thibodeau (M.Arch ’93), was featured in the 2010 Dwell on Design Westside Home Tour. Scheduled on Saturday, June 26, the tour featured homes in the “Surf and Turf” beach cities of the Los Angeles area.
Our house, also known as Biddle/Reilly Residence, is a 3,000 square foot, single story home on a flat 11,000 square foot lot in Venice. It is designed in the tradition of California modernism, emphasizing indoor/outdoor living and an open plan. Floor to ceiling glass floods the interior with daylight while cantilevered eaves provide shade and reduce solar heat gain. The design includes passive solar and natural ventilation to accentuate the emphasis on green building. Solar panels on the roof provide power for hot water, heating, and electricity. Natural materials were selected to create warm living spaces.
Thibodeau’s clients utilized local resources to infuse the Our House project with a sense of community. The project was approached as a traditional barn-raising, where friends and neighbors join together to erect a structure. Because the property is located on a street made up of single-story homes, the clients chose to build a single-story home rather than a taller home in consideration of scale with their neighborhood.
With wife and fellow SCI-Arc graduate Yasi Vafai (B.Arch ’90), Thibodeau co-founded Design Universal, known as du Architects, in 1995. du has had projects throughout Southern California, mostly in the Venice and Santa Monica area where Thibodeau and Vafai live and work. The firm has been a primary contributor to the reshaping of Venice as a community that nurtures support of both art and new architecture.
Standard, the Los Angeles-based architecture and design practice of alum Jeffrey Allsbrook (M.Arch2 '95) and wife Silvia Kuhle, was recognized in June by the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC) as winner in the Single Family Housing category of the 40th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards.
Allsbrooks' winning project, Hidden House (shown here)—a modern single-family residence located in Glassell Park—was selected as a best-practices example of local architectural innovation. Its eco-friendly construction involved incorporating an existing two-bedroom cottage into a new, larger structure, and doubling the size of the residence from 1,580 to 3,500 sq. ft., without marring the natural context of the property's expansive and rare 7-acre site. The home's design offers its owners the experience of country living while situated in the center of an urban environment.
"It is an honor to be recognized by the LABC," said Allsbrook. "The project demonstrates how working within constraints and incorporating the extant can be key in creating an entirely new design."
Allsbrook's practice was among 31 architectural teams to win awards from the LABC for recent work. The winning projects cut across a wide range of building types, from commercial office spaces to affordable apartment complexes to sports arenas.
Upcoming projects for Standard include a new retail/restaurant space for Tommy Bahama in Laguna Beach scheduled to open November 2010, several residential projects in Beverly Hills and the Hollywood Hills, and a design studio for a Los Angeles-based clothing company.
Alumna Jennifer Siegal (M.Arch '94) of Office of Mobile Design has been selected by the Monterey History and Art Association (MHAA) to perform the initial renovation of the Monterey History and Maritime Museum at Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, CA.
Siegal's design includes the lure of the sea through four suspended baskets in the gallery space of the first floor. Each basket represents Monterey's interests with the sea – oral histories, whaling, the Japanese and Chinese communities, and Cannery Row – while incorporating the senses of sound, taste, sight, and touch. Monterey's lure of the land is represented in a wiggle wall that features the city’s indigenous culture (pre-1846), nautical navigation, tourism, military presence, and local artists.
The Monterey History and Maritime Museum has been closed since January for renovation, but a soft opening is slated for September 2010. The lobby will be completed in the fall of this year, and the first floor of the museum is scheduled to re-open in early 2011. In addition, the children's area in the courtyard will be updated. The MHAA houses more than 50,000 artifacts, costumes and textiles, photographs, and historic papers in the museum.
Siegal, known for her work in creating the prefab home of the century, is founder and principal of the Los Angeles-based firm Office of Mobile Design. Recently, Siegal was appointed as visiting professor at USC, where she starts teaching in the fall.
Alum Kiyokazu Arai (M.Arch '83), principal of Japan-based Arai Architects, recently won a 2-stage international competition for the concept development of an International Business Center in the city of Yerevan, Armenia. His proposal was among 275 competition entries.
Resting on a unique hilltop with panoramic views of Yerevan and of Mt. Ararat, the 300,000 sq. ft. project comprises a hotel, business center, residential and commercial zones, and a parking structure.
The scheme by Arai Architects employs ordering principles such as Rhythm/Gradation/Flow, together with compositional methods for the spatial sequence between outside and inside, and landscape and architecture. Within this design composition, a number of framed scenes in the center's outdoor plaza become spaces that unify the site with Mt. Ararat and the city context.
Arai is a professor at Kyoto Seika University.
The Philadelphia-based firm of SCI-Arc alumna Karen M'Closkey (BArch '94), PEG office of landscape + architecture, is one of six practices to receive the 2010 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers.
PEG also won the 2010 Emerging New York Architects Prize for the HB:BX open ideas competition sponsored by the AIA New York.
M'Closkey is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.
More about PEG >>The work of Shubin + Donaldson Architects, the firm of SCI-Arc alum Robin Donaldson (M.Arch2 '87), is explored in the new book Live+Work: Modern Homes and Offices: The Southern California Architecture of Shubin + Donaldson. A book signing event will be held Thursday, April 15, 6-8pm, at the Hennessy + Ingalls Art & Architecture Bookstore located at 214 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica.
Published by Oro Editions, the visually immersive monograph includes 23 projects spanning 1998 to 2009, juxtaposing creative commercial spaces and distinctive residences. Live + Work opens with 195 pages of pure visuals, predominantly full-color photographs of Shubin + Donaldson's work, which draws on the intersecting vernaculars of Southern California's cultures, landscapes and traditions. Drawings, sketches, and diagrams are interspersed as well. Included are essays by Thom Mayne — a SCI-Arc founding faculty member, and Joseph Giovannini. In lieu of project descriptions, Live + Work presents conversations with partners Russell Shubin, AIA, LEED AP, and Robin Donaldson, AIA — many also including revealing dialogues with the clients.
Shubin and Donaldson began their collaboration in 1990 and have offices in Culver City and Santa Barbara. Their work has gained the attention of a range of creative clients in the entertainment, production, and advertising fields in addition to business owners, community leaders, educational officials, developers, and home owners. Shubin began practicing architecture in 1985 with Blurock Partnership in Newport Beach, CA, after completing his architecture degree and studying at L'Ecole d'Art et d'Architecture in France. Donaldson began his career with the Los Angeles design firm Morphosis Architects while still a Masters student at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).
