Milestone: UofSC’s Darla Moore School of Business Steel Structure Complete

We are pleased to announce that the University South Carolina celebrated the “Topping Out” of the new building for the Darla Moore School of Business in a ceremony held at the construction site on February 4, 2013.

The Darla Moore School of Business, globally renowned for its international business program, has until now been housed in a small, 1970s-era building located near the university’s historic Horseshoe, site of the original campus established in 1801. The new building—designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects and commissioned by alumna and namesake Darla Moore through a $70 million donation—will provide an environment well suited to answer the challenges of a 21st century business school.

The building program effectively provides the school’s curriculum and stimulates learning through the most up-to-date means of technology. The building also features a green rooftop terrace, which coupled with a courtyard and perimeter terraces areas, work to promote interaction and collaboration between faculty, students and community members.

More information on the project is available here.

How will tall buildings be different 20 years from now?

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) addresses key questions relating to the field of architecture. This month they asked Rafael Viñoly and other industry leaders the question: How will tall buildings be different 20 years from now? See the full video here.

Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat, Shanghai Conference

Over the past decade, the tall building industry has seen incredible advance in the realms of design, technology, and construction allowing experimentation with new forms and ever greater heights. The result of these developments is particularly evident in terms of building height, as projects reach higher and higher into the sky.

Rafael Viñoly joins a panel discussion on the implications of the industry’s newfound freedom, along with questioning the theoretical limits of height today? And should we strive to achieve these heights, or be content to live and work below the atmosphere?

Video of the September 19, 2012 discussion held in Shanghai, China is now available on the Council of Tall Building and Urban Habitat’s website.

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Rafael Viñoly, man about t̶o̶w̶n̶ world

Rafael Viñoly’s already hectic travel schedule is made more so this fall with the following engagements planned across three continents. Here’s your chance to see and hear our visionary talk about a wide-range of topics relating to architecture. Check back for more information as we’ll be posting updates leading up to the events.

Shanghai, China – September 19, 2012

Host: Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) 2012 9th World Congress

Event: How High Can We Go (and Why Should We?), panel discussion chaired by Richard Tomasetti, featuring panelist Rafael Viñoly

Event Link

Hong Kong, China – September 24, 2012

Host: AIA Hong Kong

Event: 3rd Quarterly: Culture and the Public Client: The Development of Public Participation in the Design of Clutlural Infrastructure, featuring Rafael Viñoly as speaker

Event Link

London, U.K. – October 1, 2012

Host: World Architecture Day 2012

Event: Rafael Viñoly to serve as keynote speaker

Event Link

Chicago, U.S.A. – October 8, 2012

Host: The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust

Event: Thinking into the Future Lecture, featuring Rafael Viñoly as speaker

Event Link

From the Archives

A charming and [humorous] note from a visitor to the newly completed Brooklyn Children’s Museum back in 2006.

Images and description of the museum are available here.

Winner of the 2012 AIA Ohio Design Awards

The AIA Ohio Design Awards Program promotes those projects that have distinguished themselves, through attention to high quality design, performance, and commitment to AIA’s 10 principles of livable communities.

Rafael Viñoly Architects been awarded the program’s Honor Award for Newly Completed Additions for the Cleveland Museum of Art Expansion and Renovation project.

AIA Ohio will recognize its 2012 Design Award Winners on Friday, September 14, in Cleveland, OH, at the AIA Ohio Convention.

Additional details of the Cleveland Museum of Art project is available here: www.rvapc.com 

The 2012 Los Angeles Architectural Awards

The 42nd annual Architectural Awards, hosted by the Los Angeles Business Council, celebrated a diverse range of innovative architecture and design projects from throughout Los Angeles County that support a livable, beautiful, and economically vibrant region. 33 stand-out building projects were honored as premiere examples of the region’s cutting-edge design that help make Los Angeles an engine of creativity and dynamism on both the national and international stages.

Rafael Viñoly Architects was the recipient of the Education Award in the Private Education category for its design of Kravis Center, Claremont McKenna College. This project, also known as the “glass living room,” was deliberately designed without a central public space or lobby, but shares an outdoor, all-glass space with the rest of the west campus. A critical design component was the facility’s transparency, both as a way to use Southern California’s natural daylight to greatest advantage and to visually integrate indoor and outdoor activities. The building creates a prominent western gateway and expands the campus mall along its main axis, improving CMC both aesthetically and with regard to electricity use, earning the Center a LEED Silver rating.

We’re honored that our work is recognized by the Los Angeles Business Council and to be included in a group of such esteemed visionary thinkers.

More project details can be found on our site: www.rvapc.com

Object of the Month

The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum highlights a drawing of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts by Rafael Viñoly.

See the full article by Gail Davidson at cooperhewitt.org

1stdibs’ Introspective Spotlight Magazine profiles Rafael Viñoly

Rafael Viñoly speaks to writer David D’Arcy about why his work has no signature styale and no artistic pretensions, but is still able to create artful structures that make grand gestures and lasting impressions.

Read the full article here: www.1stdibs.com/introspective

A Look Back…

…To 1993.

Cover and inside images of Japan’s Public Space Magazine, Issue No. 101, featuring Rafael Viñoly and the firm’s pivotal project: Tokyo International Forum.

The Future of the Past Opening Reception: June 23, 2012

As part of The Landmarks of New York traveling exhibit, ‘The Future of the Past’ is a series of public programs addressing issues of preservation. At the opening reception on Saturday, June 23, at 6 pm  at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, NY, Rafael Viñoly will join a panel of award-winning architects, including Richard Meier and Annabelle Selldorf to engage in a discussion moderated by curator Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel.

Landmarks of New York Opening Reception Event:

The program and reception are free for Parrish Members and $15 for nonmembers. Seating is limited. Advance reservations are required. Please call 631-283-2118, ext. 41 or e-mail membership@parrishart.org to reserve your place or to upgrade your membership level.

More information can be found at: www.parrishart.org/upcoming

6/18/12 UPDATE:

The panel discussion is sold out, however we invite you to join us at the reception following the discussion at 7 PM for wine, hors d’oeuvres, live music and to view the exhibition.

Rafael Viñoly Architects Announces New Partners

Rafael Viñoly Architects is pleased to announce that five directors within the firm have been promoted to partner. The new partners represent leadership across all of the firm’s practice areas. Their appointment will support the firm’s growth and help shape its succession plan, and will further its commitment to reinvent institutional typologies and integrate the public realm into civic buildings and master plans.

New Partners:

Charles Blomberg, AIA/NCARB

With 30 years of experience, Charles Blomberg, Technical Director, leads the technical development of nearly every project within the firm. He oversees the translation of preliminary design concepts into highly articulated and innovative systems for enclosure and building structure. He also oversees the firm’s in-house structural engineers, specification writers and quality control architects who support the firm’s projects.

Jim Herr, AIA/NCARB

With 27 years of experience, Jim Herr, Project Director, has designed and managed a large number of the firm’s academic, research, healthcare, commercial and cultural projects. His experience ranges in scale and type from 500-square-foot galleries to 500,000-square foot health sciences projects and super-tall structures, often implemented under the constraints of complex phasing and aggressive construction schedules.

Andrea Lamberti, AIA/NCARB

Andrea Lamberti, Project Director, joined Rafael Viñoly Architects in 1997 and has 17 years of professional experience. She has overseen academic, cultural and research projects for various universities and private foundations; she also directed several master plans including the new campus for New York University Abu Dhabi.

Chan-Li Lin, AIA/NCARB LEED AP

At Rafael Viñoly Architects since 1990, Chan-li Lin, Project Director, has overseen the development of a wide range of project types including university laboratories, hospitals, convention centers, performing arts facilities, and a university stadium. He has often led the implementation of projects directly at the project site, overseeing very large design teams co-located with clients, consultants and the construction teams.

David Rolland, AIA JIA

Since joining Rafael Viñoly Architects in 1999, David Rolland, Project Director, has led many of the firm’s civic and cultural projects including museums, convention centers and airports, in locations spread across three continents. Mr. Rolland, with 25 years of professional experience, also has directed the completion of academic and university research facilities throughout the United States.

Curve Theatre Featured in Geometry and Atmosphere

Recently published by Ashgate, Geometry and Atmosphere: Theatre Buildings from Vision to Reality discusses the complexity of building for the performing arts. Rafael Viñoly Architects’ Curve theatre in Leicester is one of six prototypes featured in the book. The book provides an in-depth study, exploring all stages of the project – from briefing, to designing, to managing the construction process.

As an anchor for redevelopment of the St. George’s Conservation Area in downtown Leicester, the Curve theatre seeks to engage community life. To fulfill this mission, Rafael Viñoly Architects turned the typical theater configuration “inside out,” exposing the production, construction, craft, and technical components of the building to the public, and integrated the performance into the life of the city.

For more information about Geometry and Atmosphere, and to purchase click here

The design accomplishes this goal of public engagement via a four-story glazed curtain wall that reveals two main performance venues, a 750-seat main theater and a 350-seat black box theater, situated on opposite sides of the main stage and surrounded by the public ground-floor lobby. The stage, lobby, and sidewalk are all at the same level, with ample visual connections among them, thus making the theatrical performance an extension of activity on the street. Metal shutters open the stage to one theater, to both theaters at once, or to the lobby, which allows for a wide variety of performance configurations to meet the community’s diverse cultural needs.

No distinction is made between front- and back-of-house, because the stage itself can be made part of the lobby and circulation. Situated at ground level across the main lobby from the stage, double-height workshops and production spaces feature glass walls that expose production activities and make them a visible part of the overall performance experience.

Rectangular building volumes along the north and west elevations contain administrative offices, production facilities, dressing rooms, rehearsal spaces, the box office, a recording studio, a kitchen, and other support functions. Circulation balconies at upper levels overlook the foyer and allow for physical and visual connections among staff, performers, and the audience.

University of Pennsylvania, Center for Advanced Medicine Wins Multiple Awards

The University of Pennsylvania Health Systems’ Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine has been awarded the International Architecture Award for Best New Global Design by the Chicago Athenaeum, the Design Award of Special Recognition by the Pennsylvania SARA (Society of American Registered Architects) and was given an Honorable Mention in the Healthcare Sector by World Architecture News (WAN).  This first phase of the three-phased master plan, completed in 2008 as a joint venture with Perkins Eastman, is a 1.3-million-square-foot ambulatory care and cancer center, designed to integrate the surgery, cardiology, imaging, and cancer departments of the UPENN health system into one state-of-the-art building. The building greatly increases the site’s density and offers a new public gathering space.

The Center for Advanced Medicine is a part of an overall master plan for current and future expansion. During construction of the Perelman Center, Rafael Viñoly Architects was retained for a 14-story extension adjacent to the western wing. The Penn Medicine Translational Research Center (TRC) expansion, completed in 2010, contains three floors that extend the clinical spaces of the original Perelman Center, along with seven stories of research laboratories.  Construction has commenced on the third phase of the master plan, the South Pavilion.

The U-shaped facility houses the clinical departments and wraps around a transparent, 110-foot-high (33.5-meter) atrium, topped by a wood-clad volume that houses two stories of conference rooms and executive offices. Located at the termination of 34th Street, the eight-story glazed atrium provides the focal point for the building entrance and a prominent urban landmark. Sightlines throughout the atrium orient visitors, while public areas and some clinical spaces and offices are placed along the building perimeter to maximize natural lighting and outward views for visitors and staff. Exceptions are made for rooms that need privacy and carefully controlled light—examination rooms, labs, and operating rooms—which are placed in the center of the floor plates. Seven elevator and stair cores provide clearly defined circulation routes.

A 30 x 30-foot-square (9.15 x 9.15-meter) structural steel grid provides optimum space for current clinical requirements allowing for horizontal placement of departments to encourage interaction among physicians. At the same time, the grid offers flexibility to accommodate possible reconfiguration of departments. Currently, the eastern and western wings house clinical departments, while the lower levels provide services needed by all parts of the facility including radiology and Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

The hospital has earned LEED Silver certification through a host of “green” strategies: a highly reflective roof to reduce heat island effect, electric car charging stations, bike parking, showers for bicyclists, and the use of local steel.

As the hospital expands, the master plan specifies that future construction be similarly arranged around the perimeter of the building, in order to preserve the prominence of the central atrium and to maintain the pedestrian scale of the streetscape.

Cleveland Museum of Art: Construction Progress

The second phase of the Cleveland Museum of Art is slated for substantial completion later this year, and will celebrate a grand opening in 2013. The original museum, built in 1916 by local architects Hubbell and Benes as a Greek revival pavilion, is situated at the head of a pastoral park landscape designed by the Olmstead Brothers. Many subsequent additions, including a noteworthy education wing by Marcel Breuer, obscured the order of the original plan. Rafael Viñoly Architects’ two-phased plan brings a renewed sense of order and circulation to the museum complex and restores focus to the original 1916 building. A brand new centralized, sunlit indoor piazza will open, exposing the north façade of the original 1916 building for the first time since 1958. The piazza also functions as a central public space and organizing element for visitors.

As with the glass canopy over the piazza, the east and west gallery wings seem to barely touch the 1916 building, as they connect to it via glass pedestrian bridges. Each wing culminates in a fully glazed gallery that, in addition to creating a day-lit space for viewing art, permits full views of the 1916 building’s east and west elevations and restores its original appearance as a freestanding structure in a park. In this manner, the distinctions of “modern” and “historic” are preserved, yet integrated into a cohesive whole. Stay tuned for additional updates about the museum, and read more about it here.

Phase I, completed in 2009, included renovations to the 1916 and Breuer buildings, a new central utility plant built adjacent to the western end of the Breuer wing, expansion of the parking garage, and the construction of the museum’s new east wing for special exhibitions, art storage, conservation labs, and the Museum’s 20th-century collections. Phase II includes the demolition of the 1958 and 1984 additions, along with construction of the central piazza; the west wing; the four-story volume containing gallery, retail, and administrative space that rises between the piazza and the Breuer building; and basement space for storage, curatorial, workroom, and administrative needs.

With indoor landscaping and daylight entering the center of the floor plan, the 34,000-square-foot piazza is a large and welcoming public space, a gathering place for museum-goers as well as an event space for large functions. It is topped by a gently curving, column-free canopy of glass and steel. Structurally, the canopy is supported in two places: along its northern side, by a narrow, four-story volume of galleries and administrative spaces inserted between the Breuer building and the piazza; along its southern edge, a transfer beam concealed on the roof of the 1916 building transfers the canopy load to the existing structural columns, after a structural analysis determined that the columns could support more weight than that of the building alone.

The exterior cladding of the new construction is designed to transition between the very different aesthetics of the 1916 and Breuer buildings, establishing a dialogue between their strong self-referential characters without creating a “hard seam” between them. The dark granite bands of the Breuer building are echoed on the Rafael Viñoly Architects additions with alternating bands of dark granite and white marble; the dark bands decrease in density until they eventually transition to the fully white marble palette of the 1916 building.

Soaring Design

Promoting Collaboration While Absorbing Earthquake Forces

We are pleased to announce that the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building at the University of California, San Francisco has been completed.

Located on a steeply sloping hill at the foot of Mount Sutro, the Regeneration Medicine Building presented the design team a unique challenge: executing a horizontal structure on an uneven site. RVA responded by creating a beautifully sinuous, serpentine building that fits that makes use of every foot of available space. The building structure is supported by steel space trusses springing from concrete piers, minimizing site excavation and incorporating seismic base isolation to absorb earthquake forces.

Inside the building, the transitions between the split levels are designed as hubs of activity. Break rooms and stairs located at these interfaces increase the potential for chance interaction, and interior glazing maximizes visual connectivity between the lower labs and the upper offices. To further promote collaboration, the laboratories occupy a horizontal open-floor plan, with a flexible, custom-designed casework system that enables the rapid reconfiguration of the research program. And, green roof terraces impart environmental benefits and an outdoor amenity for building occupants and campus community. Visible from surrounding campus buildings’ upper floors, the terraces create a welcoming transitional space where the dense campus meets the forest.

More details and a press release are available at: http://tinyurl.com/6shdo9h

Monocle 24 Interview

Rafael Viñoly gives a candid interview to Monocle 24 regarding his passions [other than architecture] and a few of his favorite things.

Monocle 24 is the around-the-clock-online-audio service of Monocle Magazine, and features a pacy mix of current affairs, business, culture and music. Rafael Viñoly’s interview first appeared on February 21,2012, in the Section D program. Listen here:

http://monocle.dl.groovygecko.com/m24

/10500019.mp3?web-download

Our New Book: Pressures and Distortions

The Research Program of Rafael Viñoly Architects is pleased to announce its latest book release: Pressures and Distortions, City Dwellers as Builders and critics: Four Views. The new book is an investigative look by four international research teams into how residents adapt to rapid and stressful change in seven cities across the globe, and how they are remaking those cities in the process.

The research methodology demonstrates how to cultivate dialogue for the benefit of better urban spaces, how we could build better houses and help people build better neighborhoods, and not least, how we might use innovative research methods to more clearly understand what people need from their cities and buildings.

More information regarding Pressures and Distortions, and how to buy it online is available at: www.rvatr.com