The Architect Newswire is an aggregation of news from media outlets around the world, intended to keep you abreast of all of the industry’s important developments. The stories we feature are not reported, edited, or fact-checked by Architect’s staff.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (CA)
Apple refines campus design, crashes city server
Apple has tweaked the plans for their Norman Foster, FAIA–designed Campus 2 in Cupertino, Calif. Pete Carey reports that though the changes are modest—they include new renderings and a move of the fitness center’s location—interest in the design remains extraordinarily high. “All of a sudden we got thousands of people downloading at same time. It kind of crashed our server,” says Cupertino planning director Gary Chao. “The images are prettier, but I would say this update is not that exciting at all.” The four-story, 2.8 million-square-foot building was first revealed by Steve Jobs in June.
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE
BKL Architecture loses B & L
Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin reports that Brad Lynch and David Brininstool, AIA—two of the three letters in BKL Architecture’s acronym—have left the Chicago-based firm. That leaves former SOM managing partner Tom Kerwin heading the 20-person firm alone. “Brad and Dave wanted to concentrate on their high-quality design, boutique-y type projects,” says Jim Loewenberg, a developer and BKL investor. “Tom wants to do high-quality design on large projects.” The “amicable” split took place quietly just before Thanksgiving, with Brininstool and Lynch keeping some interior and residential projects. None of the three former partners were available for comment.
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THE SEATTLE TIMES
Early reviews for tower are positive
Seattle’s Pioneer Square is set to get a new, 25-story glass tower—if the developer and local preservation board can agree on its details. Eric Pryne reports that the project consists of two- to four-story “boxes” that are stacked on each other, with varying overhangs and angles. “The offsets do help bring down the bigness of the building,” says Pioneer Square Preservation Board chair Lorne McConachie. But vice chair Erin Doherty believes that the design is still a bit “heavy,” noting that the challenge is “how to 'lighten' this building as much as possible.” The tower is slated to rise from a four-story podium that broke ground this week.
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LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR (NE)
HDR opens new office
Omaha-based HDR Architecture has opened a new office in Lincoln, Neb. The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Lincoln native Trenton Reed will lead the office. “Our strategy is basically to build relationships within communities, governments, municipalities, institutions, whether it be critical care centers or correctional facilities, things of that nature, to spread knowledge of HDR, what we do and what we can bring to the table,” Reed says. ”HDR has been in business in Nebraska since 1917 and has grown into a major global presence.”
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ARCHINECT
Portland Building added to National Register
Michael Graves’s postmodern icon the Portland Building has been named to the National Register of Historic Places. “The building occupies such a pivotal place in the architecture of the last quarter of the 20th century and its appropriateness for historic status has now been confirmed,” Graves says. ”The building represents the first of many which have helped redefine the traditional urban fabric of our cities.” Archinect reports that the 15-story municipal office building completed in 1982 “is widely credited with ushering in the rejection of modernist styles and pioneering a return to classicism in architecture.”
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YALE DAILY NEWS (NEW HAVEN, CT)
Designing for elves
Yale’s Ink and Vellum, the school’s undergraduate architecture society, sponsored a competition to design a college for elves at the North Pole. Natasha Thondavadi reports that students from all disciplines used gingerbread, frosting, candies and gummies as their medium. “It’s a fun way of coming together with your classmates to play,” organizer Katherine Dyke says. Math major Caroline Andersson participated, saying, “I’ve never done something like this before, but I do want to open a bakery when I grow up.”
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TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
Autodesk’s consumer hit
After two years, Autodesk’s SketchBook app for the iPhone and iPad has produced about $15 million in revenue, a small amount for a company with annual receipts totaling $2 billion. But Brian Bergstein reports that the low-cost consumer application has given the company more customers than it had in its previous 29 years of existence. “It's the best advertising we've had in years,” says Autodesk CEO Carl Bass. The company now has a consumer products division, spurred by a project that was started under the radar by managers Chris Cheung and Thomas Heermann. “Two guys did it and didn't ask anyone's permission,” Bass says, noting that it’s an example of a large company innovating in an unpredictable way. “You can't institutionalize innovation. If you could, everyone would do it.”
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GRAHAM FOUNDATION
Projecting Warhol
This Friday, the Art Institute of Chicago—with support from the Graham Foundation—will present one skyscraper projected on another. Andy Warhol’s Empire, an 8-hour film of New York’s Empire State Building filmed in 1964, will be projected onto 12 upper stories of Chicago’s Aon Building. “The projection in Chicago—birthplace of the modern skyscraper—is in keeping with key themes in Conceptual uses of photography, foremost among them the desire to test whether an image of a thing can not just depict but somehow ‘stand in for’ that thing,” the Graham Foundation says. The presentation is part of the Art Institute’s opening for the exhibition “Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977.”
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