Photo: Scott Frances/Esto

Mother’s Day is just around the corner, and if you’re (un)lucky enough to have a child working as an architect, you may be in for a big surprise come Sunday. Along with designing an iconic chair, building a house for one’s mother is a longstanding architectural tradition. So in honor of this holiday, we’ve rounded up five of the most important  of houses designed by famous architects for their parents, ranging from Le Corbusier to Richard Meier. Think of it as a long-overdue thank you for the years of emotional and financial support in the arduous process of becoming an architect!

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The Spender House in Ulting, Essex, by Richard and Su Rogers

One year after the listing of the Lloyd’s of London as Grade I heritage in the UK, architect Richard Rogers scores another spot on conservation lists with his 1968 house for noted architectural photographer Humphrey Spender. Built in the remote village of Ulting, Essex, the house strangely references the lightweight mid-century Californian architecture style, with an exposed, even celebrated structural frame plus the use of “flimsy” industrial materials rarely used for domestic purposes. Significant for these reasons and more, the design marked both the end of Rogers partnership with Norman Foster and the beginning of the former’s independent career. Continue.

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Nettleton 198 by SAOTA from our Top Ten: Playboy Architecture

We had a big week here at Architizer. We’re just launched the A+ Awards, and it’s shaping up to be biggest architecture awards program out there. Really. We were at the 2012 MAS Design Summit, where we met up with Lord Foster, Roger Duffy of SOM, and WXY architecture (see the video here). We snuck into Google’s data centers, one of which turns out to be hidden inside an old Alvar Aalto-design machine hall (the things you learn!). Oh, and we launched our biggest giveaway ever! Stay tuned to see if this week was as good as the last, but in the mean time, have a look at our biggest stories from the past five days. Continue.

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Image © Foster + Partners

When it was announced earlier this month that Foster + Partners had triumphed in the starchitect throw-down to design 425 Park Avenue , we wondered how the winning design matched up against the runners-ups. L&L Holding has recently released the renderings from the competition’s three other finalists, and you may have heard of them: Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, and Rem Koolhaas. Foster’s design was officially presented yesterday at the Municipal Art’s Society Summit for New York City, where an exhibition of the four tower designs will also be on view. Seen together, the contrasts are startling, if not unexpected. Foster’s design is stately, elegant, and kinda boring, Zaha’s dips and curves, Rem’s does a programmatic twist, and Rogers’ is, well, vintage Rogers. They each present very different visions for Park Avenue’s newest skyscraper. Click on through for the slideshow!

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425 Park Avenue; Photo by Flickr user d.guija

The competition to design a new tower for 425 Park Avenue is heating up. When we last wrote about it, proposals had been elicited from eleven architects, but now, seven of those firms have been eliminated from the running, leaving (surprise!) four Pritzker Prize winners in the competition.

As City Room reports, Zaha Hadid of Zaha Hadid Architects, Rem Koolhaas of OMA, Norman Foster of Foster & Partners, and Richard Rogers of Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners each presented initial concepts to developer L&L Holding this week. These designs are expected to be released to the public in the coming weeks as an advisory committee headed by the director of Columbia’s Center for Urban Real Estate, Vishaan Chakrabarti begins to make decisions.

The site presents some unique challenges, especially with regards to the zoning regulations in place. The existing building, a bulky and not-so-tall High Modernism knock-off, sits just four blocks from Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and three from Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House. With a Floor-to-Area Ratio (FAR) of 18, the current building is larger than allowed for new buildings, which must be at FAR 15 or below. An arcane loophole, however, would allow the developer to build at FAR 18 if twenty-five percent of the existing structure is kept; this adds a lot of complication to any design process, starchitect or not.

This problem might be entirely avoided, though, as the Planning Commission is due to decide on a proposal to upzone the entire area surrounding Grand Central; in this scenario, 425 Park could be allowed to reach up to 21 FAR. Because of the uncertainty around the project, the developer has asked each of the four competing firms to submit designs for each of the possible scenarios at hand. In addition, the prospectus for the proposals said that, “While the client team is open-minded about material and aesthetic expression, a restrained elegance has often proven to be more successful for this building type than irrational exuberance.” This is developer-speak for ‘we don’t care what the design turns out to be, as long as the profit margin is wide enough.’

[via NYTimes City Room and A/N Blog]

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425 Park Avenue; Photo: flickr user d. guija

A new Manhattan skyscraper is an event. We are far removed from the days of the city’s erstwhile competitive tower builders who manically thrust their stone edifices up in an intense race to the top. Things have changed, and the skyline must now be protected from the invasion of the new indignant glass towers, whose very materiality, it seems, is inherently inferior to that of their stone and brick forebearers. Yet, it cannot be said that there has been insufficient opportunity to produce a contemporary tower that at least approaches the exemplariness of New York’s greatest skyscrapers–few of the towers built in the last generation can be described as good, let alone great. But that may change, as 11 world-famous architects will be given their chance to recast the typology on their own terms.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, developer L&L Holding Co. has shortlisted Zaha Hadid, Foster + Partners, Herzog & de Meuron, Jean Nouvel, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Richard Meier, and other top international firms to develop ideas for a new office tower to be built at 425 Park Avenue, which, ironically enough, is situated near the Seagram Building–easily the greatest structure to be erected on the island in the last half-century. The list will be soon narrowed, and those remaining will have till next month to present their proposal. The city hasn’t seen this many architectural egos since the (ongoing) disputes forged during the World Trade Center competition or when the UN Building committee pitted Wallace K. Harrison and Le Corbusier against one another in a battle of wills. Who will triumph and who will retreat, their prestige battered and bruised?

The site is currently inhabited by a 32-story building dating from 1957. Given Park Avenue’s peculiar zoning laws, leveling the structure in its entirety would prevent L&L from constructing the iconic skyscraper that they hope will rival Seagram and nearby Lever House both in height and quality. To work around this obstacle, the developers are planning to leave 25% of the existent steel structure intact, atop of which the new tower will rest.

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OMA‘s recently-completed facilities for the Maggie’s Cancer Caring Center opens today. The project, which was led by OMA partners Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon, was designed as a ring of interlocking spaces around a central courtyard, as explored by BDonline‘s exclusive video tour. Images after the jump!

All photos: Philippe Ruault

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This morning the New York Times released a video post featuring a revolving 3d model to visually articulate the programmatic diversity of and the architectural/infrastructural distribution across the 16-acre site. Set to the Time’s version of Muzak ( i.e. “contemplative”, repetitive measures of throbbing bass lines), the video explores the site’s projected above- and below-ground conditions with color-coded massing elements approximating the sizes and configuration of the more hidden aspects of the construction, including the new subway and PATH tunnels and accompanying pedestrian platforms and walkways.

Interestingly, we are shown some of the construction troubles which have befallen Santiago Calatrava’s ridiculous is-it-a-bird-or-not-and-why entrance hub due, in part, to a strange arrangement of circulatory systems–the pedestrian passage which extends from the street to some of the train platforms passes underneath the subway tracks, requiring workers to dig under the tunnel while keeping it in place. This inclusion of underground networks and mechanical systems such as a chiller plant and help to flesh out the project. The video is indicative of the great coordinative efforts of architects, planners, and engineers along with city officials and of the importance of the continuation of these efforts to guarantee the project’s expected completion date of 2020.

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If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain… Angel investor Enrique Allen talks about his plan to encourage designers to enter the start-up game, rather than trying to teach start-ups “design thinking.” [via Fast.Co Design]

Aaron Betsky — arguably the most legit blogger/critic regularly writing on the ‘nets — weighs in on the Biennale, finding glimmers of the New despite the general malaise fallen recently over the architecture world. [via Beyond Buildings]

Richard Rogers wants to build a giant walkway over the Millenium Dome (aka the O2 Arena) he designed in the 90s. [via BD Online]

Apartment Therapy heard about Thai designers Mooof and, unsurprisingly, finds them difficult to define: from karaoke bars and meditation furniture to chic offices, they’re a mysterious addition to the Architizer galaxy. [via Apartment Therapy]

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The New York Times enlightens those of us whose body of knowledge regarding tornados is based mainly on the 1996 classic Twister. [via NYT]

F.A.T. Lab has a whole series of posts regarding ways to carry out digital disobediance in protest of Ai Weiwei’s continuing detainment. [via F.A.T. Lab]

Former Bullring, new mall: Barcelona’s newly converted Las Arenas by Richard Rogers follows a familiar historical trajectory. [via The Guardian]

Pentagram  has designed a new identity campaign for NYC Parks, with patterned play on the leaf. [via PSFK]

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