February 5, 2013
John Hancock Chicago construction, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Chicago, IL, 1967
When it comes to architecture photography, Ezra Stoller is the standard-bearer. The Chicago-born visionary not only produced some of the most exciting, beautiful photographs of mid-century architecture — bringing modernism to the masses — but his iconic images continue to define the public perception of such structures as Saarinen’s TWA Terminal, Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum.
But Stoller shot more than just buildings. A new exhibition, ”Beyond Architecture,” which runs through March 2 at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York City, highlights the photographer’s rarely seen images of industry, technology, transportation, and working-class Americans. These photographs, like Stoller’s architectural work, capture the vitality, excitement, danger, and struggles of post-war, industrial America and urban life. But they also offer a glimpse of an America that has all but vanished today. Not in New York City? We’ve got a selection of some of these gorgeous photos below. Click through to see them all!
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November 20, 2012
image © Visualhouse
Midtown Manhattan has long been the site in mind for New York City’s greatest makeover yet, in the form of the Hudson Yards. The project consists of 48 city blocks and 26 acres of greenery stretched between 30th and 43rd streets vertically and spanning across 8th avenue to the West Side Highway. This massive development will include 20,000 housing units, 2 million square feet of retail space, another 3 million square feet in hotel ares, 12 acres of public space, a new public school, a subway extension, and a laundry list of world famous designers behind it all. Some designers who have already signed on include Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, David Rockwell, Elkus Manfredi and Thomas Woltz. Now add a number of developers, city officials, community boards, and pesky zoning laws and Hudson Yards is poised to be either the perfect plan– or perfect storm. Read more.
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October 23, 2012
In the 1960s, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill unleashed its wild side when designing the famed Cadet Chapel for the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The expressive, metal-clad building features 15 pointy spires that resemble fighter jets ready to shoot into the sky—a thrilling contrast to the boxy Miesian towers the firm was building at the time.
Now, five decades later, SOM is working on a new project for the academy: the Center for Character Leadership Development (CCLD), a rectangular structure that will knit together the campus’s main plaza, designed by SOM in 1954. Scheduled to open in the summer of 2014, CCLD will be the place where officers-to-be receive the moral portion of their training. The academy’s aspirations for its students’ development are hammered home in every elegant inch of a 105-foot-tall glass-and-steel skylight that will be trained, telescope-like, on the North Star. Check out the renderings!
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July 20, 2012
For as much time as we’ve spend oohing and ahhing over the Burj Khalifa (heck, we even went to visit!), it’s remarkable we’ve never stopped to wonder who makes all the high-performance materials that make a mile-high building technically possible.
We’re glad we did, though, because it turns out that one of Architizer’s advertisers, Guardian SunGuard, is the company responsible for cladding the Burj’s facade. Yep–that’s Guardian glass that Tom Cruise is scrambling over in Mission Impossible 4!
Click through!
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January 18, 2012
China will be home to yet another towering steel skyscraper, and this new one set to rise in Wujiang looks straight out of a Sharper Image catalogue. The Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have stolen the competition yet again with a design that conflates sustainability with a sleek, high-performance façade. Renderings show a 358-meter-tall tapered high rise shaped like an oversized eye of a needle and marked by an immense atrium and light well. More after the jump.
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January 9, 2012
All images © SOM
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has recently added a new landmark to the skyline of Kuwait City: the Al Hamra Firdous Tower, now the tallest building in the country, peeks through the clouds with its quarter-mile-high torqued form. Unless record height is achieved, ‘supertall’ skyscrapers rarely sustain attention these days, but SOM’s latest tower has received notice for its unusual appearance. The Al Hamra Firdous Tower is the only skyscraper with an asymmetrical exterior; the structure wraps around like a robe, choosing to conceal or reveal depending on one’s angle of approach. More after the jump.
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December 19, 2011
The cat came out of the bag sooner than expected: at a formal press conference this afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg awarded a coveted city grant to build a new applied science campus in New York to team Cornell and Technion. No one had expected a decision until January, but news of top contender Stanford dropping out of the race and of the $350 million donation from the recently revealed Atlantic Philanthropies and its Chairman Charles Feeney shelled out to realize Cornell’s new campus left the jury with a clear decision. More renderings after the jump!
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October 7, 2011
It’s October, and Open House New York is here again! Every year, OHNY organizes one jam-packed weekend dedicated to educating and inspiring the public firsthand with the marvels of local architecture, engineering, planning and design. This year, on October 16-17, the citywide cultural event is bringing another round of sites, talks and tours, opening the doors to hundreds of the most architecturally significant places and spaces across the five boroughs. This is your chance to explore and experience New York City’s built environment like never before. Click for a look at some of our picks for OHNY events!
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May 31, 2011
Photo: Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times
“The Ledge” is a series of projected glass boxes on the 103rd floor of the Willis (née Sears) Tower, designed by heavyweight firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill in 1974. The New York Times, for whatever not-so-timely-reason, published a cute piece this weekend about visitors to the Skybox level:
“Despite the reassuring rivets in the 1,500-pound glass panels, the calm stillness of the air at the Windy City’s pinnacle and the security of a 10,000-pound weight capacity for each of the four 4.3-foot-deep glass boxes that protrude past the sheer edge of the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building — despite all that, you still feel twinges of queasiness.”
Though we’re used to mining the web for pedestrian views of iconic buildings, it’s unique to pinpoint such a specific architectural detail via crowdsourcing. So, we scanned Flickr to highlight a few of the (literally) hundreds of images of the transparent skybox at Willis Tower. Click through to see them after the jump:
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May 2, 2011
Photo: Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal.
Grey Group is one of the advertising biggies: it operates out of 100+ offices and employs over 700 people in its New York flagship alone. And quite a flagship it is. The Grey office spans six floors in a recently-restored building next to Madison Square Park, and STUDIOS Architecture designed both. (You may also remember it as a winner in our contest with Inc.com last fall.)
Now, 200 Fifth Avenue is sporting a new roof deck, meant to “help employees better summon their creative energies, socialize and entertain.” [Insert Mad Men joke here.]
More on the building’s newest addition — designed by none other than Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — after the jump.
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