The ‘New York Five’ is shrinking

Gwathmey’s Death Further Diminishes ‘New York Five’
ROBIN POGREBIN New York Times August 10, 2009 New York Times

…The group, long known as the New York Five, is shrinking: After losing its first member, John Hejduk, in 2000, a second, Charles Gwathmey, died last week….he group was also known [as The Whites] because of its proclivity for white buildings inspired by the purist forms of Le Corbusier. Along with Mr. Gwathmey and Mr. Hejduk, the group included Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier.

-Tanya

Yale’s Rustic Kroon Hall Fits Carbon Neutral Technology

The new Kroon Hall at Yale University strikes a rustic note with its barn-like form and thick vaulting roof, as if made of thatch. It’s not about quaint, since it is among the few buildings in America that can claim to be almost carbon neutral — the Holy Grail in the battle against global warming. That “thatch” supports photovoltaic panels.

Yale’s Rustic Kroon Hall Fits Carbon Neutral Technology: Review James S. Russell Bloomberg 7/20/09

-Chris

Preservationists object to plan for new colleges

Buildings to be demolished, clockwise from top left: Daniel Cady Eaton house, Hammond hall, Seeley Mudd Library, 88 Prospect Street.

“I find it very shocking that the total demolition of a giant site like this is still thought of as the way to proceed,” says Anstress Farwell ‘78MA, president of the New Haven Urban Design League.

More seriously, she questions the wisdom of emulating the neo-Gothic architecture of Yale’s central campus. Calling it “a fantasy environment about what Yale has been in the past,” Farwell says, “I don’t think that if the university succeeds in this plan, the debate will ever go away: why did Yale do something retardataire at a moment when architecture is looking to be innovative?”

Preservationists object to plan for new colleges Carol Bass Yale Alumni Magazine 7/7/09

-Chris

Drawings give first look at new colleges

Jeff Stikeman

Designs for the new colleges have not been unveiled to the public, but an artist commissioned by Stern’s architectural firm recently posted sketches of the project on his Web site. The pencil drawings show two colleges that will be built of brick with stone embellishments, will feature towers in various locations and, like all of Yale’s existing colleges, will be defined by their courtyards.

Drawings give first look at new colleges Paul Needham YDN 5/12/09

-Chris

YSOA Symposium on James Stirling, May 9-10

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1984)

Via Yale OPA Press Release:

A symposium examining the work of 1981 Pritzker Prize laureate James Stirling will take place May 9–10 at the Yale School of Architecture, where the influential architect taught in 1959 and from 1966 to 1984.

All events of the symposium take place in Paul Rudolph Hall, 180 York Street. The symposium is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Call (203) 432-8621 or e-mail archevents@yale.edu.

Titled “James Stirling, Architect and Teacher,” the symposium is being convened by writer and professor of architecture Anthony Vidler, dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. It is being held in anticipation of a major exhibition on Stirling being organized by the Yale School of Architecture, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Yale Center for British Art.

Full schedule available here.

-Chris

Kroon Hall opening celebration, May 8

Covering Kroon’s south-facing roof are dark panels that generate electricity. Rainwater running off the roof is collected into a courtyard pond, where after being filtered by aquatic plants, it’s used for flushing the building’s toilets and watering the grounds. Four wells, each 1,500 feet deep, extract warmth from underground water to help heat and cool the building.

Because of these and other resource-conserving technologies, Kroon uses half the power of a conventional structure, and is expected to earn the highest rating (platinum) of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program.

Innovative Building Brings Focus To Yale’s Science Hill Philip Langdon Hartford Courant 4/26/09

The $33.5 million building atop Science Hill at 195 Prospect Street will host a grand opening celebration at 4 p.m. May 8.

Designed by Hopkins Architects of Great Britain and Connecticut’s Centerbrook Architects & Planners, Kroon Hall uses natural materials such as Briar Hill stone and red oak from Yale’s own forests

Educational Edifices Business New Haven 5/4/09

Read more about the greening of American Universities here.

-Chris

Roundup of new architecture in New Haven

Design New Haven has a great new post here, summarizing new works of architecture in New Haven:

With major new commissions such as the Yale School of Management New Campus (Sir Norman Foster), College Square (Robert A.M. Stern), 55 Park Street (Svigals + Partners and Behnisch Architects), Yale-New Haven Hospital’s new 500,000 square-foot Cancer Hospital (SBRA), 360 State (Becker + Becker), University Health Services (Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam) and Gateway Community College (Perkins + Will) — and many others — currently in design or construction, the image of Downtown New Haven will be changing for years to come. Can New Haven sustain its longstanding reputation as a place for some of the nation’s most groundbreaking architecture and design?

Also, check out their coverage on the streetcar proposal for downtown New Haven, here.

-Chris

Yale U. Shows Off Its Architecture

Even in a Recession, Yale U. Shows Off Its Architecture Lawrence Biemiller | Wednesday April 8, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education

A tour on Tuesday made it clear that, despite the economic downturn, the university still has plenty to show off. Barbara A. Shailor, the university’s deputy provost for the arts, noted that the university had recently put most new construction projects on hold, except those for which donors have picked up the tabs.

-Tanya

New Forestry School Building, Kroon Hall Approaches Carbon-Neutrality

Helioscribe @ Flickr

Early this year, a new building opened on the Yale University campus that set out to achieve the architectural Holy Grail in the age of global warming — getting to carbon neutral.

The biggest savings came not from sexy new technologies but from figuring out how to make the design function like an old-fashioned cathedral, with a slender profile for maximum daylighting, an east-west orientation for greater solar gain on the long southern exposure, careful use of shading, and plenty of stone and concrete to store thermal energy.

Pursuing the Elusive Goal Of a Carbon-Neutral Building Richard Conniff Yale Environment 360 3/3/09

Read more here and here.

-Chris

Tsien and Pelli recipients of the 2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards

Minneapolic Public Libraries

Former Dean of the Architecture School, Cesar Pelli and visiting professor, Billie Tsien have both been named recipients of the 2009 AIA/ALA Library Building Awards.

The new Minneapolis Central Library is a vital civic landmark and cultural center for downtown Minneapolis. The highly sustainable design, which arose from a collaborative, public process, reinvigorates the idea of the grand urban library for new generations.

Read the full press release here.

-Chris

After the Bubble

Vincent Laforet

New York City is no stranger to the effects of economic downturns. The Empire State Building, once known as “the Empty State Building”, didn’t become profitable till almost 20 years after it was completed. But Jonathan Mahler suggests that, as in the past, the current downturn will give the city a much needed chance to contemplate the consequences of its recent architectural boom.

Since November, some $5 billion worth of development has been delayed or canceled. New York is again a city of abandoned lots, half-finished buildings and free-floating anxiety. “At this particular moment, I think that everyone who is honest with themselves can’t but help think about 1929, which came at the end of an extraordinarily fertile period for architecture,” says Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture

After the Bubble Jonathan Mahler NYT 3/12/09

-Chris

The Beauty in Brutalism

“Rudolph’s building is pure, theatrical drama. Mr. Gwathmey’s is cool, neutral efficiency.”

The Beauty in Brutalism, Restored and Updated ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE Wall Street Journal 2.24.09

Posted by: Tanya

Afterparty

“New Haven-based architectural firm MOS, led by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, recently received first prize in the tenth-annual Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Young Architects Competition, beating out the four other top finalists and receiving a grant from MOMA/P.S. 1 to construct their design. Their thatched, Kahn- and Albers-inspired design for the P.S.1 courtyard…entitled ‘afterparty,’ will open for public use beginning in June of this summer.”

MOS P.S. 1-Ups Indie, BSC, LEFT and PARA-Project for MOMA Young Architects Prize Design New Haven 2.10.09

MoMA Award Goes to Architecture for an Economic Hangover New York Times ROBIN POGREBIN January 27, 2009

Posted by: Tanya

Rudolph Hall in New Yorker’s “Ten Best of 2008″

This past year also saw two of the finest restorations of great landmarks in memory: Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building, at Yale (now renamed Paul Rudolph Hall), by Gwathmey Siegel, and the Eldridge Street Synagogue, on the Lower East Side, by Walter Sedovic.

Rudolph’s 1963 landmark is a brilliant, infuriating, impossible, frustrating, and breathtakingly glorious masterpiece that had been mistreated for years. The restoration by Rudolph’s former student Charles Gwathmey is not merely respectful, but loving. Gwathmey brought back the combination of toughness and sumptuousness that made this building so remarkable, and—thanks in part to the highly functional if not particularly lyrical addition he put beside it—it now works far better than it ever did.

Architecture’s Ten Best of 2008 Paul Goldberger New Yorker 12/17/08

Rudolph Hall named one of the “year’s best”

New York city architect Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates masterfully restored the former Art & Architecture Building at Yale University, a Brutalist monster that practically became unlivable after its 1963 opening. Recovering dramatic interior spaces that had been chopped up by unsympathetic restorations, Gwathmey showed that even the most troubled modern landmarks can be brought back to life. The building is now named for its original architect. Gwathmey’s adjoining history of art building, however, fell flat.

2008: The year’s best in architecture–Olympic feats, ravishing restorations and the social promise of design Chicago Tribune 12/10/08