The Architectural League of New York » Current Work

Francis Kéré

Reid — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:50:45 +0000

Francis Kéré
Kéré Architecture
Recorded: February 9, 2012
Running Time: 27:01

Click here for a conversation with Michael Bierut and Francis Kéré.

In this excerpt from his February 2012 Current Work lecture, architect Francis Kéré presents a Primary School and Teachers Housing in his native village of Gando in Burkina Faso.

Kéré is increasingly known for his philosophy of “self-building,” in which he works with communities to develop capacity to monitor climactic circumstances and use local materials. Kéré considers new ways architects can exchange knowledge with communities and propose new models for practice. In his own words, “only people who take part in the building process can maintain and spread the word about these architectural projects.”

Diébédo Francis Kéré, from Burkina Faso, studied architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin, where he is now based. As an architect he defines himself as “a bridge between cultures, between the technically and economically developed countries of ‘the north’ and the less developed African countries (of the south)” His projects have focused on education as “the developing concept for his country.” While a student, he founded the association Schulbausteine für Gando e. V, for the funding of his first project, a Primary School in his native village. The building, completed in 2001, received the Aga Khan Award. The school’s construction is “the result of a vision, initially verbalized by the architect and realized by the community.”

This program is co-sponsored by The Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design.

Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto

Reid — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:12:15 +0000

Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto
Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture
October 25, 2011
Running time: 47:43

Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, principals of Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture, present 0-14. Founded in 1986, Reiser + Umemoto’s New York City-based practice has an international collection of projects, yet considers each as the continuation of an ongoing inquiry, delving into relationships between architecture, territory, and systems of distribution.

Recent projects include O-14, a 22-story exoskeletal office tower in Dubai, and residences in Jerusalem, New York, and New Jersey. The firm’s current work includes projects commissioned through two recently won international competitions: the Taipei Pop Music Center and the Kaohsiung Port Terminal, both scheduled to begin construction in 2012.

Their O-14 Building has received numerous honors, including the Concrete Industry Board’s 2009 Award of Merit and the American Council of Engineering Companies’ 2009 Diamond Award. A monograph of the project, O-14: Projection and Reception, is currently in production by AA Publications. Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto were awarded the Chrysler Award for Excellence in Design in 1999 and received the Academy Award in Architecture by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2000. In 2008 they were awarded the Presidential Citation from The Cooper Union for outstanding practical and theoretical contributions to the field of Architecture, and in April 2011, they were honored with the John Hejduk Award, also from The Cooper Union.

Both partners have taught at a number of academic institutions. Reiser is currently a Professor of Architecture and director of graduate studies for the M.Arch program at Princeton University’s School of Architecture.

Michael Van Valkenburgh

Reid — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:45:02 +0000

Michael Van Valkenburgh
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
November 22, 2011
Running time: 22:47

In this excerpt, Michael Van Valkenburgh presents two projects, one for Cornell University and another for Princeton University. Based in Brooklyn and Cambridge, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) is a landscape architecture firm, which works on projects in scale from the city to the campus to the garden. MVVA’s commissions have sought to achieve an “ecological urbanism,” with projects such as the Master Plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park and Wellesley College, and built work like Mill Race Park and Allegheny Riverfront Park.

The office, led by its three principals, Laura Solano, Matthew Urbanski, and Michael Van Valkenburgh with a staff of 65, works closely with urban planners, architects, engineers, and ecologists. The firm’s projects have received numerous honors, including the ASLA Design Medal from the American Society of Landscape Architects; the Brendan Gill Prize from the Municipal Art Society of New York City; Progressive Architecture Awards; and awards from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada. MVVA has also won multiple high-profile design competitions including Pennsylvania Avenue at the White House, the Lower Don Lands project in Toronto, and The City + The Arch + The River competition for St. Louis and East St. Louis. Van Valkenburgh received the 2003 National Design Award in Environmental Design from the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and was the 2010 recipient of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Van Valkenburgh earned a B.S. in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University’s College of Agriculture, and a M.F.A. in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Van Valkenburgh teaches landscape design as well as the use of plants as design material. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Landscape Architects.

Francine Houben

Reid — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:16:34 +0000

Francine Houben, Mecanoo
“Dutch Mountains”
December 1, 2011
Running time: 11:29

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Francine Houben, creative director and founding architect of the Dutch firm Mecanoo, presents an office complex and an apartment complex, both in the Netherlands. With offices in Delft and Birmingham, UK, Mecanoo’s ambition is to design buildings with “a strong respect for context: physically, historically, and environmentally.”

Projects of note include the Technical University Delft Library; Montevideo residential tower in Rotterdam’s harbor district; Phillips Business Innovation Centre FiftyTwoDegrees in Nijmegen, The Netherlands; La Llotja Theatre and Congress Centre in Lleida, Spain; Bijlmerpark, Amsterdam; the soon to be opened Library of Birmingham, integrated with the REP Theatre in the UK; and the 2015-anticipated Delft City Hall and Train Station. Her projects in the Far East include Wei Wu Ying Centre for the Arts, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan; and Whistling Rock Golf Club, in Chuncheon, South Korea.

Bernard Khoury

Reid — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:55:13 +0000

Bernard Khoury, Bernard Khoury/DW5
“Where the Hell Are the Arabs?”
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Running time: 15:19

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Bernard Khoury presents the work of his firm, founded as an independent practice in 1993. In this excerpt from his lecture he presents several projects from Lebanon, including B018 and Al Ghanim Residence. As an architect, Khoury is preoccupied with presentness; he writes about the work of his firm: “I have given up on fantasizing on the future of cities. My work is not about the past and it is certainly not about the future.”

Bernard Khoury studied architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (B.F.A/B.Arch). He received a Masters in Architectural Studies from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. In 2001, he was awarded by the municipality of Rome the honorable mention of the Borromini prize given to architects under 40 years of age. In 2004, he was awarded the Architecture + Award. In 2008, Khoury was a visiting professor at the Ecole polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; he has lectured and exhibited his work in academic institutions in Europe and the U.S including a solo show of his work given by the International Forum for Contemporary Architecture at the Aedes Gallery in Berlin (2003) and numerous group shows includingYOUprison at the Fondazione Sandretto in Turin (2008) and SPACE at the opening show of the MAXXI Museum in Rome (2010).

Michael Maltzan

Reid — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:53:58 +0000

Michael Maltzan
Michael Maltzan Architecture
“No More Play”
October 6, 2011
Running time: 17:54

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Since founding his firm in 1995, Maltzan has created a practice committed to “creating architecture that is a catalyst for new experiences and an agent for change in our cities.” In this excerpt from his lecture, Michael Maltzan, principal of Los Angeles-based Michael Maltzan Architecture, presents the School for Inner City Arts, and the Carver apartments.

Recent projects include the Inner-City Arts complex, New Carver Apartments, Rainbow Apartments, and Playa Vista Park, all in Los Angeles. The firm’s current work also includes the Star Apartments and One Santa Fe in Los Angeles; Ju Gong Bridge and Waterfront Park, and Zhe Zhi Bridge both in Chengdu, China; and the recent competition winning entry for the Mashouf Performing Arts Center at San Francisco State University.

Maltzan’s complex for the Inner-City Arts campus located in the heart of the Los Angeles Skid Row serves at-risk youth from area public schools, providing a range of art facilities and services. The project was featured in the 2010 MoMA exhibition “Small Scale: Big Change.” Maltzan’s New Carver Apartments, which provides permanent supportive housing units for formerly homeless residents was awarded the 2011 AIA/HUD Secretary’s Award for Excellence in Affordable Housing Design. Additionally, his work has garnered numerous Progressive Architecture awards, citations from the American Institute of Architects, and the Rudy Bruner Foundation’s Gold Medal for Urban Excellence.

Simón Vélez

Gregory Wessner — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:26:40 +0000

Current Work
Simón Vélez
Recorded February 24, 2011
Running time: 30:08

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In this excerpt from his February 2011 Current Work lecture at the League, Colombian architect Simón Vélez discusses building with bamboo and various projects he has designed around the world.

Simón Vélez was trained at the University of Colombia in Bogotá, where he lives and has practiced architecture for more than 40 years. His achievement utilizing bamboo as a structural material for architecture grew out of close collaborations and relationships on-site. Often working in rural areas, Vélez capitalized on the lack of regulating authority and the relative difficulty of importing standard building materials such as brick and mortar to experiment with locally available materials. With Marcelo Villegas, he developed a mortar-filled joinery system that allows long-span and cantilevered structures to be built out of bamboo. By building only with his own well-trained crew of workers, Vélez has been able to draw upon past successes and failures in detailing. He intentionally keeps drawings simple, usually freehand on single sheets of 8×11 inch graph paper.

Completed work ranges from low-cost houses that can be built by their inhabitants to large-scale pavilions and commercial projects including: a bamboo pavilion for the Expo Hanover 2000; the Zócalo Nomadic Museum in Mexico City, which houses Gregory Colbert’s “Ashes and Snow”; and a bridge for Crosswaters Ecolodge, the largest commercial project in the world to use bamboo.

Bijoy Jain

Gregory Wessner — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:50:17 +0000

Current Work
Bijoy Jain, Studio Mumbai
Recorded March 14, 2011
Running time: 31:42

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In this excerpt from his March 2011 Current Work lecture at the League, Bijoy Jain, principal of Studio Mumbai, presents the projects Tara House, Palmyra House, and the House on Pali Hill, all in India.

Bijoy Jain was born in Mumbai, India in 1965 and received his M. Arch from Washington University in St. Louis in 1990. He worked in Los Angeles and London between 1989 and 1995 and returned to India in 1995 to found his practice. Jain’s work endeavors to explore “the genuine possibility in creating buildings that emerge through a process of collective dialogue, a face-to-face sharing of knowledge through imagination, intimacy, and modesty.” The studio designs through “an iterative process, where ideas are explored through the production of large-scale mock-ups, models, material studies, sketches, and drawings. Here projects are developed through careful consideration of place and a practice that draws from traditional skills, local building techniques, materials, and an ingenuity arising from limited resources.” In this spirit, the studio consists of both architects and skilled craftsmen who design and build each project from start to finish.

Click here to read the interview with Bijoy Jain.

Charles Renfro

admin — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:49:00 +0000

Current Work
Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Recorded: November 22, 2010
Running Time: 11:49

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Charles Renfro, a principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will use the context of the firm’s work as a means to ruminate on the relationship between nature and its “perversion.” In this excerpt from the lecture, Renfro discusses the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the pneumatic bulges of the temporary extension to the Hirshhorn Museum.

Charles Renfro was made a partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro in 2004 and has been working with the firm since 1997. He served as Project Leader on Brasserie, Eyebeam, the BAM master plan (with Rem Koolhaas/OMA), Blur, and the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art. DS+R has been awarded the AIA Presidents Award, the AIA Medal of Honor, and the National Design Award in Architecture from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Renfro’s writings and interviews have been published in journals and books worldwide and he lectures frequently both in the U.S. and abroad. He has taught at Columbia University, Rice University, and Parsons The New School for Design and is on the board of Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an international, 40-person interdisciplinary studio. For three decades, the studio has realized work through a practice that straddles all fields of design (urban, landscape, interior, product, exhibition), media oriented installations, graphics, print, and experimental dance and theater productions. Other major projects include Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York; the Creative Arts Center at Brown University, Providence; the Broad Art Museum in Los Angeles; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley; Media Zone, Abu Dhabi; and Blur, built on Lake Neuchatel for the 2002 Swiss Expo.

Ben van Berkel

admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:46:31 +0000

Current Work
UNStudio
Recorded: February 1, 2011
Running Time: 16:38

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Click here to read the League’s interview with Ben van Berkel.

Ben van Berkel, founding partner with Caroline Bos, of the Dutch architectural design studio UNStudio, presents the office’s current projects within the context of the firm’s belief in constant experimentation through building. Projects discussed in this excerpt include the Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart; the Burnham Pavilion, Millenium Park, Chicago; Collectors Loft, New York City; and the Music Theatre, Graz.

The firm describes its practice as: “Today, the discipline of architecture is wide open to the possibility of radical change. The narratives of gain and growth that explained, legitimized and propelled forward so much architecture in the past decades have been interrupted. The focus now is on articulating new conceptualizations of possibly all the vital considerations at the core of the field.

Yet this is nothing new in itself; architecture thrives on newness. Without continuous material, cultural and ideological innovations, the profession loses its specificity and becomes simply a bland part of a generic building industry. With UNStudio we have long realized this, which is why we have pushed ourselves in many different directions, continuously addressing new challenges and questions. But at the same time this experimental attitude has also led us to consciously seek to build as much as we could. Disengagement from the dangers of the building industry within the globalized economy has never been our preferred option.

Perhaps now, even more than at the height of the boom, this engagement is necessary to identify the topics that we need to understand in new ways. These topics are: knowledge, cultural versus economic values, speed and the future. How do we begin to understand these anew? How can we find a new balance between timeless values endogenous and exogenous to architecture?”

UNStudio (United Network Studio) has expanded its capabilities through prolonged collaboration with an extended network of international consultants, partners, and advisors across the globe. This network, combined with offices in Amsterdam and Shanghai, enables the firm to work throughout the world. With over seventy projects in Asia, Europe, and North America, the studio continues to expand its global presence with recent commissions in among others China, South-Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany, and the USA.

The office has produced a wide range of work from public buildings, infrastructure, offices, residential, products, to urban masterplans. Pivotal UNStudio projects within these fields include; the New Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart (2006), the large scale mixed-use project Raffles City in Hangzhou (2008 – 2012), the Galleria Department Store in Seoul (2005), the urban and architectural plan for 81 residential towers of I’Park City in Suwon, Korea (2007 – 2012), department store Star Place in Kaoshiung, Taiwan (2009), private family house VilLA NM in Upstate New York (2007), the Agora theatre in Lelystad, Netherlands (2007) and the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam (1996).

Ben van Berkel studied architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Architectural Association in London, receiving the AA Diploma with Honours in 1987. In 1988 he and Caroline Bos first set up an architectural practice, Van Berkel & Bos Architectuurbureau, in Amsterdam. In 1998 Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos established the new firm, UNStudio. Ben van Berkel has lectured and taught at many architectural schools around the world. Currently he is Professor of Conceptual Design at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Central to his teaching is the inclusive approach of architectural works integrating virtual and material organization and engineering constructions.