Construction Moving Forward on Frank Gehry's Australian Debut

Image via Fairfax MediaFrank Gehry, favorite star of the Los Angeles architecture constellation, is on track to make his Australian debut with the Faculty of Business building at the University of Technology, Sydney. The building will assemble 320,000 hand-laid brown bricks to achieve an effect already described by the press as a “melted chocolate castle” or “sagging skin.” Originally reported by the Sydney Morning Herald (and picked up by ARTINFO), Australian construction giant Lend Lease won the bid to complete the project, which has seen its cost balloon from $150 million to $180 million (Australian) due to complications with excavation and the aforementioned brick work (the bespoke construction method is a change from original plans to use “brick curtain” technique). 

In a video featured on the SMH website, Murray Coleman, managing director of project management and construction for Lend Lease’s Australian operations, describes the inner workings of the building’s unique façade: “[The façade] has an internal structural steel layer, which has a membrane. The bricks follow a unique series of contours and are tied back into the façade.”

Construction is expected to be complete by mid-2014.

Articulating Museum Spaces

Every picture benefits from a good frame, and that principle also applies to museum installations. Three current exhibitions in LACMA’s Resnick Gallery reveal the sweep of Renzo Piano’s skylit expanse while enhancing the special qualities of old master paintings, minimalist sculpture, and colorful ceramics. The square space, walled in glass and white plaster, has been divided into three long rectangles. To the west, Frederick Fisher and Partners have inserted L-plan dividers, stippled in yellow ochre, to create semi-enclosed galleries for the display of gold-framed paintings by Caravaggio and his contemporaries. Benches of stacked felt punctuate the sequence and encourage visitors to linger and soak up the spirit of these theatrical canvases.  A central axis extends from a ghostly image of Caravaggio at the entry to Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass beyond the glass wall at the far end, as though the artist were gazing out at this natural form.

Turn the corner and you find the entire central space is occupied by Water de Maria’s The 2000 Sculpture, a seried array of faceted white blocks arranged in a herringbone pattern. The repeated zig-zag rows extend back to the entry façade and a framed view of BCAM’s red steel staircase. The east side is devoted to a retrospective of the late Ken Price, a virtuoso ceramicist whose work ranges from whimsical tea cups to massive coiled forms in a dazzling palette of soft and vibrant colors. Frank Gehry loves Price’s work and has set it off within a sequence of rotated white cubes that rise to the ceiling and are cut away to frame and enclose key exhibits. Projecting hoods conceal down lighting and extend the cubes into the central axis, mirroring Fisher’s looser enclosures. Most visitors will focus on the artworks, as they should, for these structures are not meant to draw attention to themselves. Architects will appreciate the spatial contrast between the open volume at the center and the articulation of those to either side, and the way these scaling devices intensify your experience of the art.

Frank Gehry Designed Chess Set for Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co. commissioned one of Los Angeles’s most famous starchitects, Frank Gehry, to design this strikingly modernist chess. Even the pawns, that uniform bastion at the front of the line, have unprecedented idiosyncrasies--each is adorned with cannons arranged at unique angles. According to a post by Architizer, “Each of the pieces is wrought in fine bone-china” and the entire set will go for $25,000. Deluxe Spain also explains that he game of chess is a passion for Gehry: “Gehry has said that what he likes most about his work is seen as ‘changing the architectural landscape’ as the game unfolds.”

New World Centre in Miami by Frank Gehry

Yesterday the New World Symphony opened their new orchestral academy, designed by Frank Gehry Partners, in Miami Beach, Florida. Named the New World Centre, the building houses a 756-seat performance hall surrounded by large acoustically reflective “sails,” that encompass the audience with sound and serve doubly as video projection surfaces. The hall is diverse and multipurpose; the stage is made up of ten platforms, each on its own mechanical lift, that can be moved and adjusted depending on the particular theater experience. Gehry Partners worked with Nagata Acoustics and Theatre Projects Consultants to create the world-class performance hall. 

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USC School of Architecture Summer Exec Ed Program

This year marks the rebirth of the USC School of Architecture’s Executive Education Program. They are launching it off with "EXPECTED," a new innovative program at the School of Architecture. The school is now also interdisciplinary - architecture, technology, real estate, development, engineering, building investment, interiors, product design, and trends.

There will be major world renown speakers at these sessions including 5-time Presidential Advisor Warren Bennis, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Hamid Rashid.

Launch date:  July 20, 1010.