GSD News Archive: July 2007
Thom Mayne’s (MArch ‘78) Morphosis named winner of Zumtobel Group Award for Ecological High-Rise Building in San Francisco
Dornbirn/Austria - The Zumtobel Group has announced winners of the first international Zumtobel Group Award: Morphosis Architects for Ecological High-Rise Building and Schlaich Bergermann Solar for Solar Updraft Tower. Designed to commend outstanding sustainable and humanitarian solutions in contemporary architecture and engineering, the award carries a purse of EUR 140,000, shared among two categories. In the category "Built Environment” the jury honoured Morphosis Architects, Los Angeles, USA, for the San Francisco Federal Building; while in the category "Research & Initiative” the award went to Schlaich Bergermann Solar, Stuttgart, Germany, for the design of the Solar Updraft Tower. In the category "Built Environment” the Zumtobel Group Award 2007 was won by Morphosis Architects of Los Angeles for their naturally-ventilated high-rise San Francisco Federal Building. In this recently completed project, Pritzker Prize laureate Thom Mayne combined leading-edge sustainable technology with intelligent design strategies to create an architectural landmark of outstanding aesthetic quality. In the words of the jury: "Through its leadership in sustainable thinking, this building sends out a strong signal and message in the urban context, not only in the US, but all over the world.” information on the San Francisco Federal Building... image: copyright Morphosis Architects, Santa Monica, USA
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Michael Murphy (MArch '10) named a 2007 Hart Howerton Fellow Architecture student Michael Murphy (MArch '10) is one of six students nationwide to be named a 2007 Hart Howerton Fellow. Awarded annually by Hart Howerton, an architecture, landscape architecture, and planning firm based in New York and San Francisco, the fellowship offers recipients a paid summer internship within the firm’s design practice combined with three weeks of self-directed travel. Michael has chosen Rwanda as his travel destination. While there he has been researching health care infrastructure and vernacular building. He is working with Partners in Health, learning about their housing program and analyzing the hospitals they have already built. Hart Howertown Fellowship website...
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Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design Joan Busquets elected to develop the urban strategies for the transformation of Scheveningen Harbor
image: BAU
Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design Joan Busquets and his team BAU have been selected to develop the urban strategies for the transformation of Scheveningen Harbor Area in The Hague, Netherlands. The strategy is to a large extent capable of regenerating the natural conditions of the dune system and drawing together the existing residential units around the project. This signifies that the development of 1/3 of the waterfront (about 1 mile) of the city to fulfill its ambitious of becoming an “International Harbor City”. The proposal creates a continuity of the dunes in the natural geographical system of the waterfront and it allows the pedestrians to walk from dune to dune and different kinds of sports activities can be accommodated here such as volleyball, small kiosks, etc. A residential sector of low-rise mid-density will lead from West Dune to the inner port, together with the Maritime Theatre, and the First Harbour with its fishing and leisure activities. The extension of the Harbour brings together sailing activities with some restaurants/bars and services. The Museum of Peace is designed to be situated on the dune and on the other side of the large civic plaza. Picasso’s “dove of peace” is moulded into the surface of the plaza, together with other buildings including the congress centre, the housing and the confluence of the dunes, a diverse system of the maritime housing will be developed into the area. Three skyscrapers located on both sides of Rocks complete the harmony and beauty of the skyline of the area. The strips are all well connected and it forms a more general system of the waterfront of the city.
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Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Alan Berger’s Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America takes Silver Medal for Design Distinction in I.D. Magazine’s 53rd annual design review 2007
Of the several books on environmental issues that were chosen for recognition, Alan Berger’s Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America was the jury’s favorite, owing to its seriousness of purpose and clear presentation of multiple forms of visual material. The book, a scholarly analysis of the perils of urban development, opens with an eight-page manifesto in bold orange type on a field of recycled brown paper. “Drosscape’s format was developed to accommodate the large-scale display of detailed aerial photographs, maps, and charts, while maintaining a reader-friendly size,” writes Adam Michaels, principal of New York’s Project Projects, which designed the book for Princeton Architectural Press. “It starts off simple and then goes into these complex information graphics,” said DiMatteo. “It’s very smart.”
[ID Magazine, July/August 2007]
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ASLA announces Martha Schwartz promotion to Professor of Landscape Architecture with Tenure
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2008 Olympic Stadium, Beijing designed by Arthur Rotch Design Critics Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron is among the world's most ambitious projects By Tom Dyckhoff full article...[The London Times, July 10, 2007] image: Herzog & De Meuron
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Harvard GSD students address planning and design challenges in Nairobi slum; Innovative "parks" to improve living conditions
image: KDI website
Imagine for a minute, all Bostonians living in a space two-thirds the size of Central Park without a single trash can among them. Such is Kibera Nairobi, a slum where every space not occupied by mud housing is covered in layers of trash. Together, with residents of Kibera, the Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) are reclaiming a trash covered river bank as a revenue-generating community node complete with composting farm, water-filtration station, toilet facility, and play space using bricks, tin barrels, plastic water bottles, and a little bit of elbow grease. And that’s just the first project. The Kounkuey Design Initiative, a not-for-profit design firm led by Harvard-trained architects, landscape architects, and urban planners, is committed to collaborating with communities in informal settlements to develop tactical, context-appropriate design interventions that alleviate the environmental degradation affecting daily life. KDI looks for ways to redefine problems as opportunities and then work to make sure those opportunities become reality. Van Alen Institute Fellowship website...
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GSD New Community Service International Travel Fellowship Program assists design student volunteers in South Africa
Several thousands of miles away in Khayelitsha, South Africa, GSD students are busily engaged in Project Khayelitsha, for which they received GSD Community Service international travel grants to allow them to reach their destinations and spend the summer months as volunteers. Working with a local NGO, the students are helping to design and assist in the construction of a new multipurpose community center in this second largest township in South Africa, home to more than a half-million people. The project is affiliated with Art Aids Art and MonkeyBiz, nonprofit organizations working with a South African collective of women artists to create employment and empowerment for disadvantaged women in the town. Project Khayelitsha is led by Fellowship students Patrick Jones (MArch I ‘09), Ashley Heeren (MArch I ’09), and Laura Shipman (MAUD ’08), with the assistance of Stephen Lewis, a GSD Loeb Fellow, and other GSD graduate students While the GSD Community Service Fellowship Program has successfully sponsored students for summer internships in the Greater Boston area for several years, Dean Alan Altshuler recognized the importance of extending student voluntary design and planning services, especially to improve conditions in developing countries. In its first year, the GSD Community Service International Travel Fellowship Program is already well underway. The program has already funded airfare for Fellows to travel to Nairobi to spend the summer as United Nations Interns in the Urban Economy Branch in the Human Settlements Internship Programme and in the Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch of the Human Settlements Financing Division.
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Why parks are important
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Martha Schwartz named Tenured Professor; Carl Steinitz to retire to pursue research, part-time teaching
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Boston ICA’s 2007 Vita Brevis Series features installations by GSD student and facultyAmong four new projects at the Institute of Contemporary Art’s “Arts on the Harbor Islands” program, two were designed by GSD faculty and a GSD student. The installations are on exhibition through October 8th on two of the harbor islands and at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
Office dA, "Voromuro," 2007.
“Voromuro, 2007,” created by Professor of Architecture Monica Ponce de Leon and Adjunct Professor Nader Tehrani and exhibited on Georges Island, is an intricate structure made with translucent acrylic installed in the elegant interior of the fort’s powder magazine. The architects are compelled by the rich interplay between Georges’ natural topography and its intricate built environment. The work is inspired by the rural New England stone wall and the fort’s extensive stone masonry.
Visitors experiencing Teri Rueb's "Core Sample" (2007) on Spectacle Island. photo: ICA/Boston website
Teri Rueb’s (DDes ’09) “Core Sample” is an interactive sound walk on Spectacle Island with corresponding sound sculpture at the ICA Founders Gallery. Using Global Positioning Technology, Rueb has created an interactive walk with a series of audio “core samples,” or sonic mixes, that explore the island’s many subterranean layers. Blending fact, fiction, and voices of former residents, Rueb combines natural and processed sounds to evoke what lies beneath while also calling attention to the island’s present soundscape.
For more information visit the ICA/Boston website...
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GSD’s Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani (Office dA) win I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review Award in the Environments category for the new RISD Library, completed in 2007. The project is featured with other award winners in the July issue of the magazine.
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Danny Forster’s (MArch ’06) “Build it Bigger” TV series premieres on Discovery Channel
Danny Forster, Trump International Hotel and Tower, Chicago image: DCI
After 10 months of travel and filming, Danny Forster’s new TV series, “Build it Bigger,” premieres on the Discovery Channel on July 10 at 10:00pm. The first episode highlights the tallest roller coaster in the world. Subsequent programs will cover topics ranging from the world’s tallest skyscraper in Shanghai, to a tunnel under Los Angeles, to modular homes for Katrina victims, to Trump’s new tower, to the World’s largest Cruise ship. “Huge projects, amazing access—and me running around like a maniac trying to take it all in,” reports Danny.
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