World Architecture Festival - Barcelona 22-24 Oct, 2008

In late October, Barcelona hosts the World Architecture Festival during which the great and good will attempt to choose the best building in the world.

CNN will get exclusive access to the event, the nominations, and the jury which includes some of the world’s greatest architects.

The program will start with an explanation of Barcelona’s unique architectural heritage. It will then feature short pieces on six of the architects and the buildings that have been nominated for awards. These profiles have been filmed in Mumbai, Tokyo, Pretoria, Munich, London and Maryland.

The program will also feature interviews with some of the world’s leading architects including Lord Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid and Wolf D Prix.

Foster is the founder of the London-based Foster and Partners architecture company which has recently won a competition to build Virgin Galactic’s New Mexico Spaceport Authority Building for space tourism. — CNN

OMA to build its first residential high-rise in New York City

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas was in New York today to unveil his design for 23 East 22nd Street, a new luxury high rise in the Flatiron district that will rise immediately adjacent to the recently completed One Madison Park tower by Cetra-Ruddy architects with which it will share a lobby and building amenities.

The 24-storey building will include 18 residences, a Creative Artists Agency (CAA) screening room, pool and gym. The building will be distinguished in the skyline by its dramatic cantilevered floors. “Mirroring the traditional New York setback, the building’s form is at once familiar and distinctive,” said OMA founder Rem Koolhaas. “The form provides a number of unexpected moments that appear at each step- balconies at the upper part of the building and floor windows at the lower part- providing a variety of unit types and features throughout the building.”

The building is scheduled for completion in 2010.

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) | www.oma.eu

Work Begins On Paris Twin Towers

The first tall buildings built or years outside of the Commune of Paris and La Defense are now beginning construction.

The scheme is being funded by Saudi investment fund MBI to the tune of 500 million euros and is located in the commune, or district if you don’t speak French, of Levallois-Perret, one of the most densely populated areas of Paris.

Called the Levallois Twins, the design by architects Sylvain Glaiman and Pierre Epstein stars two curving 38 storey 164 metre tall towers set above a circular podium with their concaved fronts looking into the centre of the plot. Sterile white lines and contrasting glazing add to the cleanness of the look which is more corporate America than French chic.

It is being built speculatively with the main thrust of the project being some 82,000 square metres of office space. Also included is a new 400 bedroom four star hotel and least 40 new retail outlets in a 3 storey shopping mall. There will be parking for 1,600 cars will be in the basement.

For years the city had rejected building skyscrapers outside of the core area of La Defense but the construction of the Levallois Twins is one of the proposals that is seeing this policy come to an end. Whether this sees construction in La Defense which has had a virtual monopoly on skyscrapers fall or a wider building boom across Paris remains to be seen.

The scheduled completion date of the project will be sometime in 2011.

Students Master the Art of Building

When Hurricane Hugo ravaged Charleston, South Carolina, in 1989, more than 4,000 historical buildings were severely damaged. Due to a dearth of traditionally trained workers in the United States, European craftsmen were brought in to restore the structures, many of which dated back to the early 1800s.

Importing these types of experts may no longer be necessary. After getting licensed in 2004, the American College of Building Arts (ACBA), in Charleston, will graduate its first class next May. John Paul Huguley, a preservationist and structural engineer, founded the college, formerly the School of the Building Arts in Charleston, in 1998.Inspired by European restoration specialists, who are formally trained and supported by guilds, he modeled it after schools in France operated by Les Compagnons du Devoir, a 600-year-old organization for craftspeople.

The ACBA is not merely a trade school. It is the only four-year university in the U.S. that offers associates and bachelors degrees in the building arts. Students major in architecture or historic preservation and pick one of six concentrations: architectural metal, plaster working, masonry, carpentry, architectural stone, and timber framing. The students spend three days a week in the classroom, and two in the workshop. There are no electives, and each summer students must complete an eight-week internship in their concentration. “Every class is geared to fulfill a liberal arts curriculum, but in a very specific, integrated way,” explains Deborah Bowman, director of enrollment and student services. “Instead of biology, we have material science. Instead of the history of Charleston, we have the history of architecture.”

The college has an eclectic mix of scholars ranging in age from 17 to 30. Some are teenagers fresh out of high school, while others already have bachelor degrees. When classes got under way on August 13 for the fall semester, the campus welcomed a total of 60 students, one third of them female. Enrollment is increasing: there are 25 freshmen this year, a 60 percent increase from 2005. The annual tuition is $20,000.

When evaluating candidates, the selection committee considers standard criteria like high school transcripts and SAT scores. Applicants must also submit a portfolio showing their work, but special emphasis is placed on the interview. The program is rigorous, much like architecture school, and Bowman says they want to ensure students are passionate and mature enough to handle the demanding course load.

The school has two campuses: a former naval base houses the workshops, and the historic Old City Jail in downtown Charleston contains classrooms and administrative offices. In the future, the ACBA plans to expand to the McLeod Plantation, a 17th-century, 40-acre estate. This year, the senior class will assist with restoration work at the site.

Students say the program offers them a unique opportunity to get a bachelors degree while studying a trade. Isaiah Shaw, 24, became interested in timber framing while living in upstate New York, where old barns abound. He knew he wanted to pursue this line of work full-time, but he didn’t know how to go about it until he found the ACBA on the Internet. “It was my only option,” he says. “Smaller schools offered a week or three-month course, but nothing combined a liberal arts degree with the trade.” While Shaw is only a junior this year, his summer internships in New Hampshire and Rhode Island have already led to job offers.

In May, the college won an Arthur Ross award from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. Paul Gunther, the organization’s president, says the ACBA fills an important niche. “We are definitely seeing more of a need for these kinds of artisans,” he says, “not only in classical design but all kinds of construction.”

By Alanna Malone / ArchRecord

Wright’s Palmer House Put on the Market

The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Palmer House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, acclaimed by historians as one of the architect’s best residential projects, has been put up for sale by the family of the original owners. The asking price is $1.5 million.

Built between 1951 and 1952, the Usonian-style home measures 2,000 square feet and sits on 1.5 acres of wooded hillside near the University of Michigan campus. Still in pristine condition, it contains three bedrooms and two baths, as well as many pieces of Wright’s free-standing furniture and a collection of original documents relating to the project. The grounds also include a small teahouse designed in a sympathetic style by John Howe, a Wright protégé. The structure was built several years after Wright’s death in 1959.

Wright designed the house for William Palmer, a professor, and his wife, Mary, a musician. In 1950, the couple asked the architect to create a dwelling for a double lot they had purchased on Ann Arbor’s east side. Historian Grant Hildebrand, author of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Palmer House, published in 2007, wrote that the architect, then in his eighties, gave the Palmers a design that ranks among the best residential work of his career.

The Palmer family lived there for five decades. William Palmer died several years ago, and his wife and their children recently decided the time is right to sell.

Viewed from above, the house evokes an arrowhead. Its shape is based on an equilateral triangle, which creates sculptural spaces and relationships, inside and out. The house contains many of Wright’s trademark interior elements, including cypress paneling, a large central fireplace, and flooring made of reddish concrete with a leather-like finish. Outside, the gently sloping roof features cedar shingles and patinated copper flashing. The building’s façade is a defining characteristic: brick walls are accented by bands of ceramic blocks with a repeating cutout that resembles a bird in flight.

Edward Francis, FAIA, a Detroit architect and long-time student of Wright’s work, says the house is in mint condition, which he attributes to the architect’s meticulous craftsmanship and the building’s “well-conceived and technically solid design.” Furthermore, he adds, the house was “passionately maintained by dedicated owners.”

For more information, visit www.palmerhouseannarbor.com.

By John Gallagher (Architectural Record)

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