Fee: none Judges: • Nader Tehrani • Mark Lee • Lisa Iwamoto •Barbara Bestor • Cristina Parreño Alonso Professional adviser: Alan Goldberg Challenge: What will the future look like? How can architects design dwellings to meet evolving living patterns and the challenges of the future? This competition offers the contestant the opportunity to answer these questions. The contestant will be asked to design dwellings that take a bold social and environmentally sustainable view of the future. 70 years ago, New Canaan’s Mid Century architects faced similar questions. To these architects who practiced during that period, Mid-Century Modern was more than a style. It was a social, and even a political movement. They believed that the architecture they practiced offered new ideas for living that were more advanced and better suited for the times than the architecture that preceded them. By creating more efficient and scientific households, they thought of houses as “Machines for Living,” a term that became popular at the time. (a+u 19:05) Now, more than 70 years later, it is time to re-examine the criteria on which the success of housing is formed, both from a programming, architectural and urbanistic point of view. In order to look to the future, one must not only understand the successes and failures of the past, but also be able to gauge what are some of the urgencies of the present. An international jury panel made of prominent architects and academics will fairly and methodically judge the submissions. Winning entries will be displayed in the exhibit Beyond the Glass House: New Canaan Modern House 1947–1979 that opens in Cooper Union in New York January 2020. -Alan Goldberg
If cities in the U.S. are anticipating funding from government entities to solve a dire need for affordable housing, they should be prepared for a long wait. The national government, a traditional source of funds for such projects, has shown little if no interest in the issue, and state and local sources are at a minimum. To exacerbate the problem, the construction cost of affordable housing has risen exponentially the the past few decades. Gone are those days when architects such as Oakland-based Michael Pyatok could build affordable housing for $100 a square foot.
Form and Dichroic Light Scott Hall at Carnegie Mellon University Michelle LaFoe and Isaac Campbell OFFICE 52 Architecture Forward by Cesar Pelli, FAIA Introduction by Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA Leete”s Island Books, Maine USA Hard cover; 96 pages in color ISBN 9780918172709
In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.
The Rails to Trails program, which gained momentum after the1984 Federal Land Banking Law—supported by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy—has seen over 24,000 miles of trails established where rail lines once existed. Some sites were strictly urban, while others, sometimes over 100 miles in length, were primarily rural, while others combined some of both.
The reunification of Germany in 1989 not only had a great impact on the lives of many Germans, especially those living in the former DDR,but together with the decision to move the nation’s capital from Bonn to Berlin resulted in two major international design competitions in 1992: the first was to convert the existing Reichstag building into a home for the German parliament, the second being the Spreebogen planning competition, which included a chancellery for the head of state as well as needed buildings nearby for the Federal government.
The renovation of Miremont-le-Cret n 2012 was unusual in that the project was the subject of a competition. This building had long been landmarked as one of Geneva’s most significant modern accomplishments, designed in 1953 by a local architect, Marc-Joseph Saugey. The building’s design is remarkable in how it fits into a somewhat narrow, elongated site, but solving the issue of monotony that could naturally arise, had the facades not consisted of a simple elevation with no protruding edges. Instead Saugey came up with the idea of a faceted treatment of the facade on both sides of the structure, thus eliminating any notion of boredom on the part of a casual visitor.
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