Good morning, architects. Shigeru Ban's new project for Gorky Park in Moscow has a special significance for this writer, who spent an unhappy six months trotting around that besotted hellhole. By the sounds of it, things are turning up. The new project by Ban, Hon. FAIA, is an 8,000-square-foot pavilion made in part using Ban's familiar cardboard tubes, according to the Huffington Post. The project is the temporary exhibition space for the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, the kunsthaus brainchild of new-Russian culture czar Dasha Zhukova. Zhukova announced in April that Rem Koolhaas will be building a new, permanent home for the Garage in Gorky Park. That building, a renovation of the notorious Soviet-era Vremena Goda restaurant and pavilion, will open next year.
PRIZED BY GEHRY. Here's a deep dive on the project that won the the inaugural Gehry Prize at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Designed by husband-and-wife duo Liz and Kyle von Hasseln, it's a devastatingly simple project: The SCI-Arc grads created a 3-D printer that allows for changes to the design during the printing process.
LA PONT GONFLABLE. Oliver Wainwright is on to the French and their trampolines and simply notes that Londoners didn't abide by a slight wobble to the Millennium Bridge designed by Arup for more than two days before that project closed. The Guardian sounds unconvinced.
MORGANPOCALYPSE.The Contra Costa Times profiles Karen McNeill, the leading academic authority on the life and work of California's First Lady of Architecture, Julia Morgan. Devoting 800 words to Morgan's biography is just how serious they take Morgan in California, or a sign of how effective the Julia Morgan Festival really is.
TOPPED OUT. Hear that music? That means tomorrow is Topping Out 2012, the annual event recognizing and celebrating the 10 best new projects in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Last year's winners include the Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center at Dallas by Perkins+Will and Lady Bird Johnson Middle School by Corgan Associates.
... AND REMAINDERS. Tadao Ando, Hon. FAIA, is talking up the expansion for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, whose Stone Hill Center he designed... Architecture for Humanity wants students to "hack their schools green"... The Kansas City Star gives HNTB some ink for the firm's part in designing the winning bid for Los Angeles's Sixth Street Bridge... The Stirling Prize ceremony is just another forum to talk about UK public building... Hong Kong gets a preposterous nod over New York City for best skyline.
