Reiter to Lead School of Art Institute of Chicago

Wellington “Duke” Reiter, FAIA, a respected architect, urban designer, and educator, has been named the new president of the venerable School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Reiter succeeds Tony Jones, who held the position for 18 years. Jones will become school chancellor for a year and then retire.

Reiter takes the helm on Aug. 25. He most recently was dean of the College of Design at Arizona State University. During his five-year tenure, he oversaw a major ASU expansion in downtown Phoenix and successfully lobbied for a 2006 bond referendum allocating $232 million to the new campus. He also taught architecture courses at the college.

Reiter previously served as an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as a professional adviser at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He holds architecture degrees from Harvard and Tulane University. His urban design work has received honor awards from the American Institute of Architects, and his drawings will be featured in this fall’s Venice Biennale.

“His art and design practice reflects the breadth and depth of the school’s values and mission,” says Cary D. McMillan, a Chicago Art Institute trustee and chair of its search committee. “He brings energy and vision to the [school], and will be an important addition to the city of Chicago’s array of notable civic and cultural leaders.”

The private school, which has a $100 million annual budget, was founded in 1866, and boasts such alumni as Joan Mitchell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Halston, and Claes Oldenburg. With a student body that currently totals 2,935, SAIC offers six undergraduate and 12 graduate degrees, including a recently added master of architecture program. Reiter, as incoming president, hopes to blur boundaries between art, architecture, and design, using each to inform, inspire, and engage the other.

“I’m not bringing an agenda to town,” Reiter says. “But I would like to see what the mutual benefits are between art and design, making that dialogue more active and fruitful. We have a great model at our doorstep with Millennium Park.”

By Tony Illia (Architectural Record)

Groups advance two sets of high-performance building standards

In the not-too-distant future, there could be two U.S. standards for green buildings. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), in conjunction with two other industry organizations, is developing the Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Meanwhile, the three-year-old, nonprofit Green Building Initiative (GBI) is also working toward establishing its Green Globes rating system for commercial buildings as an official standard. Both organizations are following the protocols of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and expect to release fully completed and approved documents by the end of 2008.

The ASHRAE initiative, also known as Standard 189, is being developed with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), and could ultimately become a prerequisite under the LEED rating system. The organizations recently released a second draft of the standard for public comment. Until April 7, 2008, the document is available at www.ashrae.org/publicreviews.

With 189, ASHRAE and its partners hope to provide a baseline definition of green building in code-enforceable language. The standard is conceived as an appendix to the International Building Code that jurisdictions could adopt “and code officials would understand how to enforce,” explains Kent Peterson, ASHRAE president and a principal of P2S Engineering, based in Long Beach, California. Although many cities and states have incorporated LEED, and to a lesser extent Green Globes, into green-building legislation and executive orders, the rating systems were not originally devised for that purpose. “Jurisdictions have adopted the rating systems, but they are struggling to interpret them,” says Peterson.

In contrast to the code- ready format of 189, the GBI standard would not be written in “mandatory” language. It would establish guidelines for multiple building-performance levels designated by one to four “globes.” According to Vicki Warden, GBI’s vice president of commercial programs and product development, “the standard is not intended to elevate code, but to be an incentive for achieving higher levels of performance.” The group plans to release its first draft for public comment sometime this spring.

Standard 189 will address sites, water use, materials, and indoor air quality, among other issues. It is also part of a set of ASHRAE initiatives aimed at helping teams design more efficient buildings, with the ultimate goal of creating net-zero-energy buildings—those that consume no more energy than they generate on an annual basis. The ASHRAE net-zero initiatives were outlined at the organization’s winter meeting held in New York City in late January. These include a set of Advanced Energy Design Guides, a series of publications tailored to specific building types and providing guidance for achieving 30 percent energy reduction. A set of 50 percent energy reduction guides is due to be published later this year. Eventually, ASHRAE plans to offer a series focused on net-zero buildings.

One goal of standard 189 is to achieve a 30 percent reduction in energy cost over the 2007 version of building energy standard, ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1. Standard 189 will also contain a requirement that a minimum of 1 percent of peak energy come from renewable sources and is generated on site. With each revision of 189, the energy-efficiency and renewable requirements would become more stringent, “so that we are approaching net-zero energy by 2030,” Peterson says.

By Joann Gonchar, AIA

Construction of “World’s Worst Building” Resumes?

Beijing has erected a dizzying array of striking architectural landmarks in preparation for this month’s Summer Games. Roughly 500 miles east of Beijing, in an aging city in North Korea, a similar attempt to capitalize on Olympic tourism two decades ago met a different end.

Hoping to lure travelers from Seoul, South Korea, who were attending the 1988 Summer Games—while also preparing to host the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students— North Korea reportedly hired a firm called Baikdoosan Architects and Engineers to build a 4-million-square-foot, 3,000-room hotel on a hilltop overlooking the country’s capital, Pyongyang. The 105-story, rocket-shaped building—dubbed Ryugyong, or Capital of Willows—was to be a world-class destination, with luxury suites, casinos and seven revolving restaurants. At 1,082 feet in height, it would have been the tallest single-use hotel in the world, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Some estimates put the project’s cost at $750 million.

But Ryugyong wasn’t finished in time for the Olympics. Then, in 1992, construction came to a halt when the government ran short on funding. The building’s concrete skeleton has loomed over Pyongyang ever since, a dismal reminder of failed ambitions. Once destined to become a superlative hotel, Ryugyong is now the tallest abandoned building in the world.

North Korea became tight-lipped about the project and allegedly removed Ryugyong from official Pyongyang maps. Its secrecy has only spurred international interest. The hotel has inspired Web sites, such as ryugyong.org, and is featured in several videos on YouTube.com. In June 2005, Italy’s Domus magazine put the building on its cover, after organizing a competition with the Politechnic of Milan that asked architects to submit ideas for hotel. This past January, Esquire magazine’s Eva Hagberg called it “the worst building in the world.”

Now, as Seoul once again prepares for international attention—after being named World Design Capital 2010—the Institute for Far Eastern Studies reports that North Korea plans to revive work on its monster building with the help of the Egypt-based development outfit Orascom Group. This report, however, picked up by various news outlets, appears to be false. “Orascom is not related to or involved in operations or hotel developments in North Korea,” says Mamdouh Abdel Wahab, the company’s director of investor relations.

For those fascinated with the “Phantom Pyramid,” as some have called Ryugyong, the rumor might be a case of wishful instead of rational thinking. Even if the government of North Korea—where 25 percent of the population faces famine, according to the United Nation’s World Food Program—had the estimated $300 million needed to finish Ryugyong, it could encounter big obstacles. First and foremost, it would need to repair an enormous structural frame that has been exposed to the elements for 20 years. “That can be tricky with a concrete building,” explains architect Eric Howeler, AIA, author of Skyscraper: Vertical Now. Plus there is no guarantee that the hotel would be profitable. Just 2,000 Westerners visited North Korea in 2007— a fraction of the number needed to keep the “Hotel of Doom” in business for the long haul, let alone fill it on a single night.

Source: Architectural Record

Art Museum of Yue Minjun

While the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May left a large portion of Western China in ruins, signs are emerging that some notable building projects in the area are pushing forward. One of these projects is the Art Museum of Yue Minjun, designed by Beijing-based Studio Pei-Zhu, a 2007 Design Vanguard winner.

Located near the Qingcheng Mountains, and adjacent to the Shimeng River in Sichuan Province, the 10,700-square-foot museum will house the work of Yue Minjun, a Chinese contemporary artist known for his repetitive images of large, smiling figures. It will be one of 10 new museums on the same site, each dedicated to the work of an influential Chinese artist. Zhang Xiaogang and Wang Guangyi are among the other artists to be showcased. The complex, which is being developed by the local government of Dujingyuan, is the brainchild of Lu Peng, an art professor at the China Central Academy of Fine Art.

The Yue Minjun museum will contain exhibition space and a small artist’s studio. According to Pei Zhu, one of the firm’s principals, a river rock that he picked up one day inspired the building’s form—a large, oblong sphere. “Everything is based on the natural stone, which has a very strong relationship between the creek and the mountain and nature,” explains Zhu.

On the exterior, curvilinear walls will be clad in highly polished zinc, a soft metal that blends in with the natural surroundings while also giving the building a futuristic look. “Normally, architects will use a local material and vernacular language,” says Zhu. “We believe we needed to make something both futuristic and very natural.” It’s a striking departure from another recent project designed by the firm for the 2008 Summer Olympics: Digital Beijing, a control center whose façade resembles computer circuitry.

Work is already underway on the art museum. Site preparation began earlier this year, and the building should be completed by early 2009. Zhu says the earthquake delayed the project a mere three months, at most. “The developer still really wants to push this project [forward],” he says, “and we think that this will still benefit the society and the city.”

By Andrew Yang (Architectural Record)

Kew House - Melbourne, Australia

No one told Jackson Clements Burrows Architects they weren’t supposed to play with stacking blocks on a tennis court—and the Australian firm’s clients are glad. Before the Kew House, in Victoria, Australia, came to be, the clients, family friends with firm principal Tim Jackson, came to the architect with an interesting site condition—they had purchased a subdivided lot that gave them a tennis court on which to build. “The clients, a married couple at retirement age, had previously lived in a stuffy period home not far away from this site,” says project architect Andrew Bos. “They approached Tim with a program that called for better access to light, fresh air, and views. They wanted to retire into this home and eliminate steps wherever possible.” As well as living areas on one floor for the couple, Bos says the clients also wanted a third bedroom and a large playroom on another floor for family and friends.

Located at the end of a cul de sac in the coveted Yarra Boulevard neighborhood—a residential area following the flow of the Yarra River—the land falls away 11.5 feet from street level to the former tennis court below. The hill falls again beyond this area, creating a precipice from which the river and a golf course can be seen. “The dramatic fall of the land puts you at eye level with the canopies of eucalyptus trees and abundant birdlife and bushland,” says Bos. “We saw the ground plane as an artificial scar on the landscape, and wanted the new building to effect a new condition that repaired and reconnected with the landscape.”

The architects created a three-part, two-toned, steel-and-copper-titanium-alloy-clad form for the house that would telescope progressively from front to back. The three shells that make up the horizontal stacking-block form contain an entry shell with study and garage, a middle shell with bedrooms, bathrooms, and laundry, and an end shell with kitchen, dining, and living areas. The three forms are suspended in the tree canopy with a supporting structure of circular two-tone columns. Beneath this platform level is a glazed area with an additional bedroom, bathroom, storage, and living areas, a floor of synthetic grass (the last vestige of the tennis court) and a children’s play area. “We saw the cladding as evoking the alternate colors of new and old growth bark of the once-dominant indigenous red river gum trees,” says Bos. “The satin finish of the Colorbond contrasts with the dull matte of the Rheinzink, like the top and underside and of a leaf sweeping backwards and forwards in the wind.” More practical is the fact that the house uses passive thermal heating and cooling techniques, with a northern orientation, overhangs and minimal openings to the west, as well as operable windows in all rooms and a main hallway acting as a breezeway corridor.

“Perhaps the biggest surprise about this project when completed was the scale of the home from the street frontage,” says Bos. “The fanning of the shells is only apparent when viewed obliquely from up and down the street. Viewed from the front the house nestles into the site and appears as a single-level residence.” Bos says that from this vantage point it’s impossible to tell that the house has been built on a tennis court below the footpath level. “That fact remains undisclosed to everyone other than those invited beyond the black steel mesh security door,” he says.

By Ingrid Spencer (Architectural Record)

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