Archinect - News

Construction begins on Zaha Hadid Architects’ meandering Jinghe art center

2022-10-18T12:37:00-04:00

Construction has commenced on the Zaha Hadid Architects-designed Jinghe New City Culture & Art Center in China, following a ground-breaking ceremony on September 16th, 2022. Zaha Hadid Architects won the international competition to design and deliver the scheme in June, which will serve as a new cultural and arts destination for the burgeoning Jinghe New City tech hub.

Rendering by ATCHAIN courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

As we reported in June following news of ZHA’s commissioning, the new center is organized as a series of “flowing volumes, layers, and surfaces interconnecting with courtyards and landscapes.”

Rendering by ATCHAIN courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects

“The Jinghe New City Culture and Art Center will promote the highest standards of construction throughout the city,” said one government official about the scheme. “Creating a variety of new public spaces to serve the community, the project demonstrates Jingue New City’s determination to provide architecture and urbanism ...

Banksy offers support to turn an infamous UK prison into a new arts center

2021-12-06T15:20:00-05:00

Banksy is getting into the shuffle in the effort to preserve a grade-II listed former prison complex in England called Reading Gaol.

The BBC is reporting that the famed street artist intends to sell the stencil he used for an Oscar Wilde-inspired mural placed on the building’s exterior wall in March at a charity auction which he hopes will command somewhere on the order of £10 million ($13.3 million) to be used towards creating a new arts center.

The historic structure has been up for grabs since 2019 and is reportedly under consideration to be purchased and remade in a scheme authored by the local Reading Borough Council.

A rendering of the proposed arts center plan. Image courtesy Reading Borough Council.

Now, with his literary idol in mind, Banksy’s pledge would help support the Council’s effort that could keep the former complex from being turned into apartment buildings while also paying homage to the artistic underpinnings from which the Picture of Dorian Gray author drew some...

An artist is honoring Eileen Gray’s iconic E1027 villa with a new research-intensive exhibition

2021-10-01T19:04:00-04:00

Situated on the French Riviera, about a 30-minute drive east of Nice, the graceful 1929 villa was originally designed by architect Eileen Gray as a retreat for her and her lover, critic Jean Badovici. Over the course of its nearly century-long life, it has borne witness to one naked starchitect vandal, one world war, various drug-fueled orgies and a murder.

The original 1929 villa reopened in August after a five-year-long restoration effort led by the French Association Cap Moderne. The house was the site of a 1996 murder in addition to several other sordid affairs and outré episodes that have helped create a rather useful mythology surrounding Gray’s modernist icon. Artist Kim Schoenstadt incorporated three year’s worth of research into the home and its architect, whom many now count as an unheralded icon of the International Style.

“Gray wasn’t forgotten, but the way she was written about and the way her work was dismissed — that’s an important discussion to have with students,” curator Julie Joyce told the LA Times.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by ArtCenter Exhibitions (@artcenterexhibitions)

The exhibition will be on view until February 27th at the ArtCenter College of Design’s Mullin Gallery in Pasadena. The Times’ Carolina Miranda has more on the house’s inspirational backstory here.

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Closer look: OPEN Architecture's Tank Shanghai, five fuel tanks converted into a contemporary art center and park

2020-04-01T13:47:00-04:00

Over the course of six years, OPEN Architecture transformed five decommissioned aviation fuel tanks into a vibrant contemporary art center and public park. Overlooking the banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River, the art center has attracted hoards of visitors and large cultural events since opening in March 2019.

With a site area of 47,448m2, the project was envisioned as an art museum and open park that embraces public life. The tanks are surrounded by sloping landscaped meadows that connect to the street and riverside.

Photo: INSAW Image.

Art Center Main Entrance. Photo: Qingshan Wu.

OPEN Architecture retrofitted the five tanks according to the program requirements for each of them. Tank 1 is a two-story live-performance house and bar that contains a drum-shaped inner tank with curving walls that improve the space's acoustics. Tank 2 is a restaurant organized around a circular central courtyard, which features a rooftop deck for dining.

Tank 3 interior. Photo: Qingsh...

Remembering Syd Mead and his futuristic visions of the built environment

2020-01-03T14:04:00-05:00

Revered as a legend in the field of science-fiction, the American industrial designer Syd Mead has given the world memorable and inspiring designs of what the future could be. Recognized for his contributions on the silver screen, he produced conceptual art for blockbuster Hollywood films like Tron, Alien, Star Trek, Short Circuit, and Blade Runner, to name a few. After graduating from Art Center College of Design, Mead started his career as an automobile illustrator for the Ford Motor Company in 1959. He eventually became a sought after illustrator creating architectural renderings and drawings for clients all over the world.

Image from Mead's U.S. Steel Series. Image © Syd Mead.

Beyond his numerous accolades and unforgettable artwork inspiring retro-futurists and science-fiction enthusiasts alike, what strikes me the most is Mead's commitment to transforming possibilities of the built environment. According to Mead, in a 2008 i...

ArtCenter aims to explore visionary design "Beyond the Bauhaus"

2019-11-10T09:00:00-05:00

Different Tomorrows: Design Futures Beyond the Bauhaus [...] brought together scholars, artists, activists and designers to challenge the Bauhaus as the movement of record with discussions related to gender, race and global perspectives. Organized by graduate Media Design Practices Department Associate Professor Sean Donahue and Professor Elizabeth Chin, the series included a reading room, [...] projects questioning the Bauhaus legacy, and a docent tour of the Getty Center’s Bauhaus archives.

A thoughtful interview with Elizabeth Chin and Sean Donahue, the two ArtCenter College of Design-based organizers behind Different Tomorrows: Design Futures Beyond the Bauhaus reveals a bevy of interesting and thought-provoking connections between the Bauhaus and a variety of topics and locales, including the movement's connections with China, the work of the school's female practitioners, and other suppressed focuses.

Chin writes, "The version of the Bauhaus that was promoted in the U.S., and which has influenced places like ArtCenter, was stripped of many of the concerns that had fueled the development of the Bauhaus. Two of the most important, from our point of view, were the experimental educational model and the school’s concerns for social well-being."

David Adjaye's red concrete art museum, Ruby City, to open in San Antonio in October

2019-04-02T15:06:00-04:00

David Adjaye's ruby-red art museum in San Antonio, Texas is set to open to the public in October 2019. It is the Ghanian-British architect's first project in Texas. Famous for his behemoth buildings, Ruby City—which is described by Adjaye himself as a "very shy building"—offers a quiet stop in between his career-defining National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC and his next two projects, the U.K Holocaust Memorial and the National Cathedral of Ghana.

Nevertheless, the blushed building offers itself as a crown jewel to a Texan city looking to reactive itself after decades of sprawl. The art museum is designed with this urban future in mind and will be part of a growing campus, the brainchild of philanthropist and heiress to the Pace Foods fortune Linda Pace, whose meditation garden, Chris Park, and exhibitio...

ArtCenter College of Design presents 15-year master plan designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture & Tina Chee Landscape Studio

2017-11-06T14:12:00-05:00

The ArtCenter College of Design continues to move forward with a 15-year master plan for its two Pasadena campuses, with the release of a draft environmental impact report for the project. At completion, the Michael Maltzan- and Tina Chee Landscape Studio-designed expansion would increase the school's total enrollment from 2,000 full-time students to 2,500 full-time students, and its total staffing from 753 faculty to 994 faculty.

The City of Pasadena informs on its web page dedicated to the master plan project: "The ArtCenter College of Design (ArtCenter) proposes a 15-year Master Plan (the Project) that focuses growth on its South Campus, while providing for infrastructure improvements and building renovations on its Hillside Campus. The Project would be implemented in two phases, with Phase I occurring in the first five years of the Master Plan and Phase II occurring in the final ten years."

Image: Michael Maltzan Architecture, via artcenter.edu

More information can also be found on the school's ArtCenter Master Plan page.

Art Center buys postal facility, plans to expand and renovate

2012-03-07T14:20:00-05:00

Art Center, often ranked among the nation’s top design schools, announced Tuesday that it has spent $7 million to buy a former U.S. Postal Service mail distribution center next to its existing satellite campus in south Pasadena, and has hired the Los Angeles firm Michael Maltzan Architecture to do master planning and design work.