Architecture on the News

Urban Land Institute Unveils Winners of 2009 Awards for Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Five outstanding developments have been selected as winners of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) 2009 Awards for Excellence: Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) competition. This year, the competition also included the announcement of two special award winners. The Awards for Excellence competition is widely regarded as the land use industry’s most prestigious recognition program.

The winners were announced today during an Awards for Excellence ceremony hosted in London by ULI EMEA, which serves nearly 2,600 members across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India.

The awards recognize the full development process of a project, not just its architecture or design. The criteria for the awards include leadership, contribution to the community, innovations, public/private partnership, environmental protection and enhancement, response to societal needs, and financial success.

The 2009 ULI EMEA Awards for Excellence winning projects were selected from among 39 entries representing 17 countries. The winners (owners and/or developers in parentheses) are:

Akaretler Row Houses/W Hotel, Istanbul, Turkey (Akaretler Turizm Yatirimlari A.Ş.). In the heart of the business and hotel district of Istanbul, the original Akaretler Row Houses were built in 1875 by the order of Sultan Abdülaziz as an annex to Dolmabahçe Palace for the accommodation of palace staff. The historic renovation of these houses led the revitalization of an abandoned district now featuring office space, retail and residential areas, and the W Istanbul Hotel. Its ideal location allows a minute’s walk to a variety of museums, theaters, and restaurants.

Elm Park, Dublin, Ireland (Radora Developments Ltd.). Elm Park is a low-energy-use, high-density, mixed-use project comprising a private hospital, a hotel, offices, apartments, housing for seniors, plus cafés and sandwich bars, all in a richly landscaped parklike setting on eight hectares (20 acres). The initial plans called for a minimization of energy demand, which was achieved by capitalizing on the benefits of building orientations, using natural light and ventilation, and creating a large public landscape.

Hilton Tower, Manchester, U.K. (the Beetham Organization). At 169 meters (554 feet) and 48 floors, this is the U.K.’s tallest mixed-use building and a spectacular addition to Manchester’s skyline. The 4,600-square-meter (50,000-sq-ft) development comprises 219 luxury apartments and a 279-bed Hilton Hotel on a site of less than 0.5 hectares (1.2 acres). This iconic project creates a visual connection between the city’s south and the center.

Leoben Judicial Complex, Leoben, Austria (BIG-Services, Immobilienmanagementgesellschaft des Bundes mbH). A new approach for a penal system, this complex includes a court building and an integrated prison for 200 inmates. It serves as a model of design for the Austrian penal system with its open design, which creates a sense of transparency. It is all designed with a focus on human dignity while satisfying all safety requirements and giving the city a new and beautiful building.

Mountain Dwellings, Copenhagen, Denmark (Hoepfner and Danish Oil Company). Mountain Dwellings was designed to be two-thirds parking and one-third living. Rather than constructing two separate, adjacent buildings, it was decided that the two functions needed to be merged to create a symbiotic relationship. This project offers a multistory parking structure as the foundation for 80 housing units integrated into one ten-story building with optimized solar orientation, natural ventilation, and on-site rainwater collection used in the landscaped roof garden areas.

The Special Award winners were chosen in recognition of their unique scope and context; exceptionally large scale; and exemplary practice in terms of design, sustainability, and community engagement.

The Special Award winners are (owners and/or developers in parentheses):

American University in Cairo New Campus, Cairo, Egypt (AUC). The university’s new campus is located at the center of New Cairo City, about 40 kilometers (20 miles) east of the current campus in downtown Cairo. It is designed to be a tool and stimulus in itself for learning and to anchor community development around the university. The 105-hectare (260-acre) virgin desert site has been developed into 200,000 square meters (2.2 million sq ft) of energy-efficient housing and academic, administrative, and student life facilities.

Liverpool One, Liverpool, U.K. (Grosvenor). A transformational £1 billion ($1.6 billion), 17-hectare (42-acre) mixed-use development in the Liverpool city center, Liverpool One is an open development that retains many of the street patterns long familiar to shoppers and visitors to the city. However, through comprehensive redevelopment, the city center now has 160 retail shops, 23,000 square meters (250,000 sq ft) of leisure space, a two-hectare (5-acre) park, apartments, hotels, and a new bus interchange. This open development creates a link between the west and east sides of the city while revitalizing the city center, which has suffered from underinvestment and decline in recent decades.

The competition is part of the Institute’s Awards for Excellence program, established in 1979, which is based on ULI’s guiding principle that achievement of excellence in land use practice should be recognized and rewarded.

Over the years, the Awards for Excellence program has evolved from recognition of one development in North America to an international competition with multiple winners. In 2004, the program added the ULI Awards for Excellence: Europe, which later expanded to include entries from the Middle East and Africa; in 2005, the program added the ULI Awards for Excellence: Asia Pacific, and the Global Awards. Throughout the program’s history, all types of projects have been recognized for their excellence, including office, residential, recreational, urban/mixed-use, industrial/office park, commercial/retail, new community, rehabilitation, and public projects and programs.

The 2009 ULI Awards for Excellence: EMEA winners were selected by a jury of land use development and design experts. Members were Ian D. Hawksworth, managing director, Capital & Counties, London; Patrick Albrand, managing director, Hines France, Paris; Max Barclay, head of communications and internal operations, Stronghold Invest AB, Stockholm; Luca de Ambrosis Ortigara, partner, Realty Partners SRL, Milan; Andrew Gould, chief executive, Jones Lang LaSalle England, London; Hakan Kodal, president and chief executive, KREA Gayrimenku/Real Estate, Istanbul; and Karsten von Koeller, chairman, Lone Star Germany, and non-executive director and member of the investment committee, W.P. Carey LLC, Frankfurt.

“These are wonderful examples of success that showcase creativity, innovation, and long-term thinking,” jury chair Hawksworth said. “Perhaps now more than ever, the ULI Awards for Excellence program reminds us of the key difference that responsible design and development can make in terms of longevity and overall community sustainability.”

These Are the Winners of the Seastead Design Contest

The Seasteading Institute has crowned the winners in its first Seasteading Architectural Design Contest. The Contest, which ran from February 1st to May 1st, invited participants to design the floating city of their dreams. The winning design was awarded a $1000 grand prize, and there were four additional $250 prizes for specific categories.

Seasteads are permanent, stationary structures specifically designed for long-term ocean living. Entrants into the contest were provided with a 3-D model of TSI’s patent-pending base platform, on which they built creative architectural designs for a new society of ocean pioneers. The specifics of the design, aesthetics, and intended use were entirely up to each designer.

Entrants ranged from amateur 3D designers to professional architects and architecture students. 41 qualified designs were entered, including sports arenas, medical facilities, universities, hotels, and residences. The designs were judged by a panel of TSI staff, volunteers and board members.

The Winning Designs:

$1,000 Grand Prize: The Swimming City by András Gyõrfi (Runner Up: Seagull Hotel by Matias Perez)

$250 Prize for Aesthetic Design: SESU Seastead by Marko Järvela (Runner Up: Entwined Dragon Seastead by Patrick Kenny)

$250 Prize for Personality: Rendering Freedom by Anthony Ling (Runner Up: The Arch by Rory O’Hagan)

$250 Prize for Best Picture: Oasis of The Sea by Emerson Stepp (Runner Up: La Gallerie de la Mer by Hakeem Bux)

$250 Prize for Community Choice: Refusion by Team 3DA (Runner Up: Micro City Community by Ettore Mele)

Winners will receive a cash prize, along with free admission to the 2nd annual Seasteading conference, a free membership with TSI, and a commemorative piece of merchandise with their design on it.

Here are some more exciting competition entries:

A few designs did not comply with the contest rules but could still serve as valuable inspiration for future design endeavours:

The wealth of creative talent that was brought to bear for this contest has provided TSI with a wonderful vision for the future of seasteading. “I am awed by the creativity and effort put into these entries, which portray a compelling and beautiful vision of a new way of life.” says Executive Director Patri Friedman.  “Before something can be built it must be imagined and expressed, and these imaginative models express the possibilities for seasteading.”

Images: Seasteading Institute

Michael Maltzan’s Inner-City Arts Campus Awarded with 2009 Rudy Bruner Award

The Rudy Bruner Foundation has chosen the Inner-City Arts project, a downtown Los Angeles education facility which provides art instruction to a large population of at-risk children and youth in LA, as one of five finalists for the 2009 Rudy Bruner Awards. The project, designed by LA-based architect Michael Maltzan together with garden designer Nancy Goslee Power, received the Gold Medal Award for Urban Excellence.

Further finalists of the 2009 awards are Hunts Point Riverside Park (Bronx, NY), Millennium Park (Chicago, IL), St. Joseph Rebuild Center (New Orleans, LA), and The Community Chalkboard and Podium: An Interactive Monument to Free Expression (Charlottesville, VA).

Building a new arts campus, which began with an abandoned 10,000 square foot auto body shop in the heart of Skid Row, captured architect Michael Maltzan’s imagination. It was the fall of 1993, and Inner-City Arts became the first project for the new office that Maltzan was opening at that time, and his first pro bono project. He persuaded his colleague, garden designer Nancy Goslee Power, to volunteer her services as well.

With an eye to using architecture and design as agents for social change, Maltzan and Power created a campus where every space is a “teachable moment,” from the way the buildings are designed, arranged and used, to the way nature is invited in to what used to be a concrete jungle. And what fired up Maltzan and Power’s own creativity was looking at artwork presented by the children when asked to envision what their ideal Inner-City Arts campus would look like.

Built in three phases over 15 years, the one acre campus was conceived as a contemporary open-air village, an indoor/outdoor tradition perfectly suited to the Southern California climate. The buildings and classrooms are arranged around a landscaped central plaza. The “campus as village” fosters a way of living, working and relating that informs the larger city that surrounds the school. Each child has his or her own work: performance, ceramics, dance, painting, sculpture, animation. But the group gathers as a community to interact in the public space of the central courtyard. “The responsibility to both of those things,” says Maltzan, “to yourself as an individual, to expressing yourself, making your work, to living a creative life - but also to have a responsibility to your role within the larger community. This is an important lesson.”

Each building has its own character and function. The original building was a 1930s bow-string truss shell, a huge open space with no interior divisions. Working in collaboration with architects Marmol Radziner and Associates, the design features large glass openings and roll up doors that open onto the central plaza, echoing the original auto shop doors. The light industrial quality of the original structure and the surrounding neighborhood set the tone for architecture overall. Most of the ceilings are left raw, open to the rafters.

This neutral palate allows the buildings to serve as a canvas for the students’ artwork, a background to the work that is being created on the campus. The materials Maltzan uses are taken from the neighborhood: chiefly stucco, and construction grade wood and concrete. According to Maltzan, “If you look around Skid Row, the building and context are made from the most prosaic of materials. Often people have the idea that buildings become architecture because the materials are expensive, fancy. Here, the lesson is that it isn’t the quality of the materials, but the way you use them, the way you bring your creativity and thinking to the design that can make something transformative out of something very humble.”

White is the dominant paint color, with orange as an accent. With security and graffiti being major issues in the neighborhood, the idea of white exteriors was radical. But Maltzan believes the community will respect the architecture and the Inner-City Arts’ mission it embodies.

At first, the new buildings seem to have always been there. But after a moment, one realizes that they are quite different. Many of the structural angles are pushed intentionally below or beyond the normal 90 degrees. The buildings open up like Japanese origami, with light entering through the folds and cuts. The ceramics building rises from the plaza in a three-story tower that is visible from the entire surrounding area. “In this new phase,” says Michael Maltzan, “I was trying to create more transparency through the gates and with the height of the ceramics studio, while still maintaining security.”

The new Rosenthal Theater, funded by Philip and Monica Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond, is the final piece of the puzzle, the campus’ most urban element. The building is mostly square, but is also shaped by the irregular street grid. Functionally, the theater is an extremely flexible “black box.” The lighting grid extends almost throughout the entire ground floor, with the control booth on the second level. The stage, seating and curtains can be positioned anywhere: thrust, in-the-round, traditional proscenium arch, multiple stage, etc. In a roving performance, the entire space can be activated - including the upper parking lot and the proclamation platform on the exterior stairway. The acoustics were carefully engineered, with sound isolation, triple-insulated glass and a large skylight that can be blacked out.

At the beginning of the design process, Inner-City Arts founder Bob Bates asked the children to draw images of their vision for the new campus. They drew palms, oranges, and other fruit trees. The boys also drew volcanoes, which inspired the children’s fountain. These children’s drawings gave garden designer Nancy Power many of her ideas for the plaza. Because of the glaring sun, she imagined a sheltered oasis like the courtyards in Italy or Southern Spain. “Gardening is one of the great arts that can alter the environment,” says Power. “Under the dappled light of trees, we can create a cool room and a calm environment. A quiet space is particularly important for inner-city kids who sometimes suffer from nature deficit disorder.”

The palm trees offer shade and attract birds. A constructed dry creek bed (that the children can fill with water) represents a California arroyo, lined with native oaks and alders. The boulders and sycamores that shade the outdoor staircase create the image of a canyon from one of the nearby mountain ranges. Agaves and other native plants offer multiple exotic shapes for the kids to draw. At the forefront of the wave of planting kitchen gardens in schools, the landscaping now includes grapes, tomato, cilantro, chard and sunflowers. “My interest in the project grew over the years,” says Power, who first got involved in 1993, the same year as Maltzan did. “This is part of teaching the kids how to eat well, and where their food comes from.” The plaza garden includes a labyrinth and, with a total of 30 trees, constitutes an urban forest.

Arrayed surrounding the internal plaza courtyard and within the confines of the urban street grid, the separate campus structures relate to each other in a complex geometry. “As you move through the campus your mind accumulates this subtle series of spatial relationships,” says Maltzan. Movement is the animating force behind the architecture. The structures vary in height and angle. The planes and lines of the new buildings align with, or gesture to, the existing buildings. In addition to serving as an armature for the student’s art, the campus and buildings function as the arts education center’s biggest learning tool. The environmental graphics, bold and deeply integrated with the architectural concept and design, are from Ph.D, the LA-based graphic design firm that has worked with Maltzan on Inner-City Arts since the first phase.

As is also true for the larger city, the way that students relate to each other and their surroundings at Inner-City Arts actually creates the campus. It is not just that many individuals have gathered - it is the way those individuals interact. The entire campus is intended to create that sense of responsibility and interaction. Particularly with the expansion, the campus also has an important role in relation to the rest of the city. It is an urban community center and agent for change, a positive force in that neighborhood. “If there is something that the campus communicates, that people take with them,” says Maltzan, “I hope that people get that architecture is not only great form, but the way we structure our relationship to the way that we live in the city, and to find forms that can evolve as the city changes is important and is essential for the city to continue to emerge.”

The expanded campus can now serve 16,000 students annually and train 1,800 classroom teachers each year to use the arts as a tool in teaching academic subjects, extending its reach beyond the campus and reforming education in Los Angeles. In addition to the original Mark Taper Center / Inner-City Arts Building, the campus includes The Rosenthal Theater, the W.M. Keck Foundation Ceramics Complex, a Parent-Teacher Resource Center, a Grand Courtyard, the Alissa Michelle Tishler Children’s Garden, The Hinchliffe Building, and a Visual Arts Complex (which includes a painting and drawing studio and the DreamWorks Animation Academy at Inner-City Arts). The total cost of the expansion is $10 million, raised through private individuals, foundation and government grants.

Inner-City Arts was officially opened in October 2008 and is located at 720 Kohler Street (at 7th Street) in downtown Los Angeles.

Tacoma Art Museum Shortlists Selected Design Firms

The Tacoma Art Museum in Washington state received 95 submissions in response to its recent call for design concepts to redesign the museum’s plaza and perimeter and create a landmark civic space that enlivens downtown Tacoma. Submissions were received by individuals and firms from Tacoma, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Richmond, VA, and New York.

The shortlist of finalists are BCRA (Tacoma, design team led by David Wright), the design team led by E. Cobb Architects, which includes Alchemie and Arup (Seattle, Vancouver, Sun Valley, worldwide), Johnson Architecture and Planning LLC (Seattle, design team led by Ben Gist), Mithūn (Seattle and San Francisco), NBBJ (Seattle and worldwide), and Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen & Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture (Seattle).

The museum’s Plaza Redesign Task Force, made up of Tacoma Art Museum Trustees and knowledgeable community members, met on June 22 to review the submissions and determine finalists for the interview stage of the selection process. Task Force chair Steve Barger noted: “We were pleased and gratified by the great response to our project. The submissions showed impressive creativity and a wide variety of approaches. The selection process was arduous. We now look forward to meeting the finalists for interviews on July 9.”

Director Stephanie A. Stebich added: “That we received submissions from across the country speaks to the museum’s vision of being a national model for regional museums. We will spend this summer working to select a finalist after the interview phase and other due diligence. After Board approval this fall, we look forward to introducing the community to the selected firm to provide their input into our design.”

About 75 interested parties attended the May 18 two-hour walk-through with Director Stebich, Curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art Rock Hushka, and the Plaza Redesign Task Force. They toured the museum’s plaza, parking area, and perimeter spaces. Many questions were posed and notes were posted on the museum’s blog. The museum created a public online forum at http://TacomaArtMuseumPlaza.blogspot.com/. The forum, moderated by Mr. Hushka, allowed for questions and perspectives specific to the plaza redesign process and scope to be shared by all potential designers during the submission period.