Search results for "Syracuse University School of Architecture"

This is a preview of our September issue, out tomorrow. What happened to speculation in architecture? At a recent symposium at the Yale School of Architecture titled “Aesthetic Activism,” Dean of the Syracuse School of Architecture Michael Speaks noted that curiously, architecture has lost its penchant for speculation in recent years. He cited the two most recent Venice Biennales as evidence of this trend, as the curators chose to look at the elements of building (Rem Koolhaas’s Elements, 2014) and reporting on reality in regions beyond what the Biennale had traditionally addressed (Alejandro Aravena’s Reporting from the Front, 2016). He also discussed the Chicago Biennial in 2015, which arguably focused on practice, rather than architecture. What happened to architecture’s ability to speculate on the world around us, as was the ordinary in the 20th century, from Le Corbusier and the modernists to Archigram and the radical architects of the 1960s and 1970s? In the latest issue of The Architect's Newspaper (AN), we set out to survey the state of architectural speculation today. AN Contributing Editor Sam Lubell will be opening the exhibition Never Built New York, which features proposals that were never realized. You could say that looking at the history of unbuilt architecture is speculation. So we set out to find what might be in the Never Built exhibition of 2050. What is speculation today? We found that in architecture, most speculation is more like plausible futures. It is being developed by private industry in some cases, well within the realm of possibility. Many think that self-driving cars are a revolutionary technology, and are a matter of “when,” not “if.” But why have so few architects gotten out in front of this technology looking for opportunities to change the city? Solar technologies, like those being developed at Tesla, would also have the potential to radically change how we build. Our research confirms that in many ways Speaks is correct in his thinking about a lack of speculation. Architects are not really thinking much about new ways of living and relating to the world outside of our own history and discourse. I would argue that the upcoming Chicago Biennial appears to confirm this idea. We did manage to find an interesting mélange of projects that project toward that future. From automation and smart cities, to floating islands (front page), there are some plausible futures that might be very real someday. So it is not necessarily speculation, but just futurist realism, which we found to be a fruitful endeavor. In an interview with Amelie Klein of the Vitra Design Museum about her exhibition as part of the Vienna Biennale, she reported that many of the most speculative work in architecture that she has come across is actually happening in the realm of construction, such as the algorithms used by Achim Menges at the University of Stuttgart, Institute for Computational Design, to minimize material use and create new ways of making. While the discipline might be struggling to imagine new ways of living, it is not a boring time for architecture. The world around us is changing quickly, and we can see several new futures simultaneously developing before our eyes. It may not be about predicting or producing new futures, but about reflecting on the present and what plausible near futures could be on the horizon and how they will affect our cities.

Jonathan Massey, dean of architecture and professor at California College of the Arts, has been named the next dean of the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He will follow Dean Monica Ponce de Leon, who is now the architecture dean at Princeton, and Robert Fishman, professor of architecture and urban planning, who has been serving as interim dean. "Taubman College has excelled by taking Detroit, the Great Lakes region and other sites around the globe as frameworks for research on the challenges and opportunities posed by processes of modernization," Massey said. "I am excited to work with U-M students, faculty and staff to generate architecture and planning strategies that expand economic opportunity, increase equitable access to resources, design better health and create the operating system for smart cities." Massey earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, from Princeton University. He earned a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a doctoral degree in history and theory of architecture from Princeton. Massey has worked for architecture firms including Frank O. Gehry and Associates and has taught at Barnard College, Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University, where he served as chair of the Bachelor of Architecture program from 2011-2014. He is the author of the book, "Crystal and Arabesque: Claude Bragdon, Ornament, and Modern Architecture," and in 2006, Massey co-founded the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, "a team of scholars focused on how buildings shape processes of political, economic and social transformation." He also edits The Aggregate Website.

Today, Syracuse University announced New York City-based SHoP Architects the winners of a six-month competition to design the new National Veterans Resource Complex (NVRC) on the school's campus. Programmatically, NVRC will include classroom spaces for veteran-focused programming, as well as a conference center and a roughly 1,000-seat auditorium, both of which can host community activities, lectures, and national events. Gallery spaces will exhibit the robust history of veteran support at the school. The NVRC will offer state-of-the-art vocational and educational programs designed to advance the economic success of the region’s and the nation’s veterans and military families, including research and programming connected to the veteran and military sectors. “The programmatic demands on this building, its historic symbolism for the University, and the gateway role it will play on the campus dictate a very high level of performance in its design—a building that is at once inviting to all and a specialized tool perfectly suited for the specific work that will take place there,” SHoP's William Sharples said in a statement. The NVRC is part of the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council’s winning proposal titled Central New York: Rising from the Ground Up, which is part of Gov. Cuomo’s $500 million Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI). The facility will house the Syracuse University and Regional Student Veteran Resource Center, the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps, the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs “Vet-Success on Campus,” the National Center of Excellence for Veteran Business Ownership, Veteran Business Outreach Center and Accelerator, Syracuse University’s Office of Veteran and Military Affairs, and the University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF). The committee included Chancellor Kent Syverud, J. Michael Haynie, vice chancellor of veteran and military affairs, Andria Costello Staniec, associate provost for academic programs; Julia E. Czerniak, associate dean of the School of Architecture; Jared Grace, graduate student in the School of Architecture and Army ROTC cadet battalion commander, Breagin K. Riley, assistant professor of marketing in the Whitman School of Management, Peter Sala, vice president and chief campus facilities officer, and Michael A. Speaks, dean of the School of Architecture. The process was led by Martha Thorne, dean of the IE School of Architecture and Design in Madrid. The NVRC is expected to be complete in the spring of 2019.

London-based Adjaye Associates, New York–based SHoP, and Oslo/New York–based Snøhetta have been announced as design finalists for Syracuse University’s new National Veterans Resource Complex (NVRC). Selected out of 28 other firms, the three finalists will now visit and engage with the university and veteran community to develop proposals for the multi-use facility. The NVRC will be home to the University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) as well as the school's Regional Student Veteran Resource Center, the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps, the Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps, the National Center of Excellence for Veteran Business Ownership, Veterans Business Outreach Center and Accelerator, as well as the University’s Office of Veteran and Military Affairs. The building will be programmed with classrooms, a conference center, gallery space, and a 1,000 seat auditorium to facilitate local and national veteran-focused events. The site of the project is tentatively set for the western end of the Waverly block, which will be visited by each office in the coming weeks. Their visits will also include meeting with the campus community to discuss the possibilities of the project in preparation for the presentation of their final design proposals in April. Also planned for March, the Syracuse University School of Architecture will facilitate lectures by each of the firms. In a statement David Adjaye discussed the relation of his practice to the goals of the University and the NVRC, “Syracuse University’s ambition to make the NVRC a combined educational and community centre as well as a national hub for America’s 22.8 million veterans and their families resonates deeply with my own commitment to architecture that empowers communities and has global resonance.” Both SHoP and Snøhetta remarked on the honor of working on a project for the veteran community. William Sharples, principle at SHoP, noted, "The NVRC at Syracuse University will occupy a special place in the life of the city, the campus, and the community of veterans nationwide it is intended to serve. Everyone at SHoP is honored to be a part of this process." Craig Dykers, founding partner of Snøhetta echoed Sharples, “The poet RJ Heller once wrote, ‘In the aftermath we are because they were.’ Courage is contagious and being a part of this process at Syracuse to benefit our veterans in a groundbreaking new facility is exciting and humbling for all of us at Snøhetta. This is more than a handshake: we are doing something revolutionary for those whose origins are from the same stuff.” Along with competing to design the NVRC, each of these three offices is also contending to design the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago.

A jury of architects, landscape architects, critics, educators, and planners has named the 35 winning projects of this year's AIA New York Chapter Design Awards. "Each winning project, granted either an 'Honor' or 'Merit' award, was chosen for its design quality, response to its context and community, program resolution, innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique," AIANY said in a statement. "Submitted projects had to be completed by members of the AIA New York Chapter, architects/designers practicing in New York, or be New York projects designed by architects/designers based elsewhere." Take a look at the winning teams in the architecture category below. But before we get to that, let's start with the Best in Competition distinction which goes to SsD and its Songpa Micro Housing in Seoul, Korea (above). "Like the ambiguous gel around a tapioca pearl, this ‘Tapioca Space’ becomes a soft intersection between public/private and interior/exterior building social fabrics between immediate neighbors," the firm said in a statement. "Finally, as this is housing for emerging artists, exhibition spaces on the ground floor and basement are spatially linked to the units as a shared living room. Although the zoning regulation requires the building to be lifted for parking, this open ground plan is also used to pull the pedestrians in from the street and down a set of auditorium-like steps, connecting city and building residents to the exhibition spaces below." Okay, now onto the Honor Awards in the architecture category. Davis Brody Bond National September 11 Memorial Museum New York, NY

From the architects: "Remembering the fallen Twin Towers through their surviving physical structural footprints, the 9/11 Memorial Museum stands witness to the tragedy and its impact."

John Wardle Architects and NADAAA Melbourne School of Design Melbourne, Australia

From the architects: "The new building for the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning responds to the urban design values identi- fi ed in the Campus Master Plan and enhances the existing open spaces within the historic core of the Centre Precinct of the Parkville Campus. It engages with the existing landscape elements, continues the sequence of outdoor rooms arrayed across the campus, and links strongly to the intricate network of circulation routes that surround the site. The new building compliments and enhances the sense of place that the Eastern Precinct of the Parkville Campus already commands."

REX Vakko Fashion Center Istanbul, Turkey

From the architects: "Turkey’s pre-eminent fashion house, Vakko, and Turkey’s equivalent of MTV, Power Media, planned to design and construct a new headquarters in an extremely tight schedule using an unfinished, abandoned hotel. Fortuitously, the unfinished building had the same plan dimension, floor-to-floor height, and servicing concept as another one of our projects, the Annenberg Center’s 'Ring', which had been cancelled. By adapting the construction documents produced for that project to the abandoned concrete hotel skeleton, construction on the perimeter office block commenced only four days after Vakko/Power first approached our team. This adaptive re-use opened a six-week window during which the more unique portions of the program could be designed simultaneous to construction."

ROGERS PARTNERS Architects+Urban Designers Henderson-Hopkins School Baltimore, MD

From the architects: "The new Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School and The Harry And Jeanette Weinberg Early Childhood Center, together called Henderson Hopkins, is the fi rst new Baltimore public school built in 30 years. A cornerstone for the largest redevelopment project in Baltimore, it is envisioned as a catalyst in the revitalization of East Baltimore. The seven-acre campus will house 540 K-8 students and 175 pre-school children."  

WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center Brooklyn, NY

From the architects: "A botanic garden is an unusual kind of museum: a fragile collection constantly in flux. As a constructed natural environment, it is dependent on man-made infrastructures to thrive. New York City’s Brooklyn Botanic Garden contains a wide variety of landscapes organized into discrete settings such as the Japanese Garden, the Cherry Esplanade, the Osborne Garden, the Overlook, and the Cranford Rose Garden. The Botanic Garden exists as an oasis in the city, visually separated from the neighborhood by elevated berms and trees."

WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology Philadelphia, PA

From the architects: "The newly-opened Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology demonstrates the University of Pennsylvania’s leadership in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Nanoscale research is at the core of cutting-edge breakthroughs that transcend disciplinary boundaries of engineering, medicine, and the sciences. The new Center for Nanotechnology contains a rigorous collection of advanced labs, woven together by collaborative public spaces that enable interaction between different fields. The University’s first cross disciplinary building, the Singh Center encourages the exchange and integration of knowledge that characterizes the study of this emerging field and combines the resources of both engineering and the sciences."

Merit Awards  Garrison Architects NYC Emergency Housing Prototype Brooklyn, NY H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture Theatre for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center Brooklyn, NY Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects Toroishiku (Marc Jacobs Building) Tokyo, Japan Louise Braverman, Architect Village Health Works Staff Housing Kigutu, Burundi Maryann Thompson Architects Pier Two at Brooklyn Bridge Park Brooklyn, NY OPEN Architecture Garden School Beijing, China PARA-Project Haffenden House Syracuse, NY Skidmore, Owings & Merrill University Center – The New School New York, NY Thomas Phifer and Partners Project: United States Courthouse, Salt Lake City Location: Salt Lake City, UT Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Project: Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts Location: Chicago, IL

In the second significant departure this week from the Syracuse University School of Architecture, professor Jonathan Massey has been named the Director of Architecture at California College of the Arts (CCA). Massey, who chaired the Bachelor of Architecture program at Syracuse from 2007 to 2011, succeeds Ila Berman in the position. Although he spent four years in Los Angeles, Massey is new to San Francisco, and admitted, "I still have a lot to learn." So far he said he's impressed with the school's focus on digital craft, its ability to "tap into a broader Bay Area culture of innovation," its diversity of offerings, and its commitment to social justice. While it's too early to set out an agenda, Massey is interested in plugging faculty and students' digital skills into a larger framework, through municipal data, social media, and other means. He wants to connect a strength in formalism with political and social issues—what he called "socially engaged formalism—and he would like to expand the school's regional and global partnerships. Many of these initiatives, he posited, are likely already there, but may be "ready to be developed further." Massey holds a doctorate in the history of theory and architecture from Princeton, a master of architecture from UCLA, and a bachelor of arts from Princeton.

Chicago’s top art school announced big changes in its design department this morning. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Thursday announced their selection of Jonathan Solomon as the new Director of the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects (AIADO). Solomon, who comes from his position as associate professor and associate dean at the School of Architecture at Syracuse University, assumes the job officially on August 1. In 2010 Solomon, who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Columbia University and a Master of Architecture and Certificate in Media and Modernity from Princeton University, helped curate Workshopping: An American Model of Architectural Practice at the Venice Architecture Biennial. He is the co-founder of 306090, a nonprofit arts stewardship organization. He previously taught design at the City College of New York, the University at Buffalo, and the University of Hong Kong, where he led the Department of Architecture as Acting Head from 2009 to 2012. He is a licensed architect in the State of Illinois. Solomon recently spoke on a Chicago Architecture Foundation panel discussing Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin’s series on Chicago designers in China. He is related to Lou Solomon, who helped found Chicago design firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB).

Parsons The New School for Design has named Brian McGrath as the new dean of the School of Constructed Environments, the university's integrated school of architecture, interior design, lighting design, and product design, taking the place of interim dean David Lewis. Educated at Syracuse and Princeton, McGrath is the founder of the urban design consultancy, Urban-Interface, where he explores the role of architecture, design, ecology, and media in cities, and has been an associate professor of urban design at Parsons' School of Design Strategies. “The School of Constructed Environments has a key role to play with respect to contributing research and practical applications of design to address the key issues of our time: rapid urbanization, globalization, social justice and climate change,” said McGrath in a statement. “We have taken an active role in recent post-Sandy discussions, and plan on expanding these efforts so that we can make a important contribution to future dialogues and debates on these topics.”

Michael Speaks, Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design, has just been appointed Dean of Architecture at Syracuse University. Mark Robbins left that post to direct the International Center of Photography in New York. Speaks, who has been at UK since 2008, cited a number of initiatives as his legacy in Kentucky, including many that engaged directly with urban and rural issues in the Commonwealth. "I arrived here at an inauspicious time, a very economically challenging one, " he told AN. "One of our goals was to make sure that as many studios engaged with real world problems as possible." One such project, called Houseboat to Energy Efficient Residences (HBEER), developed prototypes for affordable, highly energy efficient housing, using local building materials and prefabricated assembly. Two HBEER prototypes have been built and a market roll-out is in the works. Another initiative focused on river cities in the region, from small towns to mid-sized cities, the results of which fostered masterplanning processes in many of those communities. Speaks was also deeply involved in architecture and planning initiatives in Louisville and Lexington, including a Studio Gang-led masterplan for a block in Lexington, a Space Group-led masterplan in downtown Louisville, and the recently concluded competition to day light a creek in downtown Lexington, won by SCAPE/Landscape Architecture. Under Robbins, the Syracuse School of Architecture was deeply involved in redevelopment projects in that city, involving design-oriented architects and landscape architects, something Speaks hopes to continue when he arrives. "You never know until you are on the ground, but there are certainly a lot of potential to connect with the kind of work that Mark did." He also plans to continue to focus on teaching students how to compete in globalized economy and to be better prepared for contemporary architectural practice.

This Syracuse mural project, S.Alt City, was sent to AN over the summer just as we were preparing our live coverage of the Venice Biennale and went unreported in the paper. But the mural by Cheng and Snyder Architects is a smart project that deserves more attention than it has received. The mural depicts a local waterside salt barge that alludes back to Syracuse's industrial heritage but it also imbedded QR codes throughout the work. These QR codes are becoming more ubiquitous in the world of art making and were in fact used in the Russian pavilion at the recent Venice Biennale in a grandiose and very expensive installation in their pavilion. In Syracuse the young architects cleverly and cheaply utilized the QR codes to send smart phone viewers to links for contemporary arts organizations in the Syracuse region. The connection between the old industrial fabric of the city and the contemporary use of codes and cultural facilities and organizations to help bring the city back to its former livability and economic strength. It is exactly the type of "art" young architects should be engaged with today. The mural is in downtown Syracuse on a west facing wall of Lemp jewelers (on Fayette Street just west of Warren). The mural is permanent and was funded by a seed grant from the Syracuse University School of Architecture (one of Dean Mark Robbin's last initiatives before he left his deanship ) as well as a larger grant from the Connective Corridor.

On March 7, the dean of the Syracuse University School of Architecture, Mark Robbins, was named senior advisor for architecture and urban initiatives for the university. The announcement formalized a role Robbins has been playing since he arrived at SU in 2004.

The struggling upstate city has already benefited from the attention of Robbins and the university, and in the next couple of years Robbins plans to roll out an impressive roster of new buildings and initiatives both for campus and town, including projects by such marquee name designers and emerging talents as Toshiko Mori, Koning Eizenberg, and Field Operations.

“It’s part of an evolving commitment we are making to the city,” said university chancellor Nancy Cantor. Robbins and Cantor share a belief that engagement with the city is mutually beneficial. “We want to be a sustainable anchor in this community,” she said, calling the private university and the city “joined at the hip.” Practical concerns such as attracting faculty and students are driving the projects, she added, in addition to loftier goals: “We are committed to engaged scholarship. Our intellectual capital can make a difference.”

Like much of upstate New York, Syracuse faces daunting economic and urban challenges. According to a 2005 report by the Syracuse Arts Initiative, the city has lost nearly one third of its population since its 1950 peak of 220,000. The housing vacancy rate is almost double the state average. In the same period, suburbs around the city swelled. Poverty is concentrated in the central city, with median incomes in the city approximately half that of the county. “They’ve lost population, lost tax base, but unlike Detroit or Buffalo, it’s small enough that we can have an impact,” Robbins said. “I believe the city and the region can be a very active field for us.” 

In spite of the challenges, Robbins sees opportunities in the city, especially for architects. “You have to look at your available resources,” he said. “We have tremendous intellectual capital and architectural patrimony.” Inexpensive real estate helps. While looking for a downtown building to renovate for his own home, Robbins also looked at a couple of large properties that could serve as a swing space for the architecture school. After locating a former furniture warehouse downtown as the likely site, Robbins called on Richard Gluckman, a Syracuse alumni, to renovate the 135,000-square-foot structure, now called The Warehouse. The building brought five hundred students and faculty downtown, and, with its glowing Panelite-covered openings in its massive concrete walls, looks like a hive of activity at all hours of the day and night.

“It’s made a very real difference,” said Tim Carroll, legislative aide to Syracuse Mayor Matthew Driscoll. “Both the look and the perception of the university’s commitment to the city have vastly improved.” Acknowledging some town/gown differences in the past, Carroll praises both Robbins and Cantor: “There was a perception in the community that the university didn’t always give back to the community, but the Chancellor has turned that on its head in short order.” After the Warehouse opened, a private developer acquired two adjacent lots, testifying to the project’s catalytic effect.

In addition to the $9 million Warehouse, the university has been active in bringing high-level design thinking to a variety of civic concerns. Field Operations contributed a master plan for a corridor connecting many of the city’s arts, cultural, and educational institutions, to be called the “Syracuse L.” Harvard’s chair of the architecture department Toshiko Mori, working with local firm Ashley McGraw Architects, has designed a new 55,000-square-foot Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems, also for downtown. Santa Monica–based Koning Eizenberg Architecture is working on a new public broadcasting station due to break ground this year, with bold super-graphics incorporated into the facade and a folded green roof.

Sycracuse faculty are also involved. Scott Ruff and Timothy Stenson are converting a house into an info center and an artist-in-residence apartment in a depressed neighborhood adjacent to downtown that is also becoming an area of targeted investment for the city and the university. Arthur MacDonald Architect is renovating the 1910 Syracuse Trust building for mixed uses. On campus, the building continues with a new athletic center by SOM, a possible law school renovation and expansion by Gluckman Mayner, and a residence hall expansion by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects due for completion in the fall of 2009.

“Every place does it differently—Cincinnati, the University of Pennsylvania—we have our own particular strategy,” Cantor said. If one can detect a certain neo-modernist stylistic bias among the designs, one can also sense a greater degree of urban engagement than, say, at Cincinnati: There is not a Gehry crumple or a Calatrava bobble on the boards. Adaptive reuse is as often the strategy as new construction. “It’s more about people and programs, culture and community, than it is about buildings,” Cantor said.

Robbins acknowledges that architecture alone cannot rescue a city. “I don’t mean to be overly instrumentalizing about design,” he said. “But architects have a role to play. I believe in pushing the conversation forward.” From the perspective of city government, SU and other institutions such as hospitals are key to the city’s future. “There is a sense that the important players here—the city, the institutions, the developers—are pulling in the same direction,” said Carroll. “We’re cautiously optimistic.”

SPORTS is a design collaboration between architects Greg Corso and Molly Hunker, both faculty at the Syracuse University School of Architecture. The Adrian Smith Prize is awarded each year to a young design firm to build the Ragdale Ring, and outdoor performance space for the 50-acre Ragdale campus north of Chicago. SPORTS will receive a $15,000 production grant and a ten person residency for up to three weeks, starting May 23. SPORTS’s design, entitled Rounds, was selected by a jury of architects and artists. Comprised of an undulating circular ribbon, Rounds will be the site of public performance and garden party on June 9th. The rises and runs of the ribbon will act as the seating, stages, entries, and a space for the Ragdale community to gather throughout the summer. The original Ragdale Ring was designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1912 as an open air theater for his playwright wife. Since 2013 Ragdale has re-imagined the Ring through an annual international competition. Ragdale specifically looks for designs that “explore intersections of architecture, sculpture, landscape, design, public art, and performance disciplines.” “I am proud to support the Ragdale Ring competition which uniquely serves the field of architecture and dynamically engages the public. Rounds is an exceptional design solution and I look forward to its successful construction and use,” remarked prize sponsor and jury member, Adrian Smith in this year’s announcement. Ragdale offers upwards of 200 residencies and fellowships annually at their campus in Lake Forest, IL, just north of Chicago. At any given time 13 artist are in residency working uninterrupted for weeks at a time. While SPORTS is in residency they will take part in nightly family style dinners, and have full access to the campuses 50 acres of prairie.