Christian Wassmann is wondering whether or not to sign a new lease. In Manhattan, with its breathtaking rents, this is no small decision. While getting the extra office space would give him more room (Wassmann and his project-basis employees are used to working in an office carved out of his apartment), it could also force him to take on some work he’d otherwise have the luxury of passing up. If this is the first growing pain for a young architect who has seamlessly transitioned from project architect for Steven Holl to principal of his own practice, it’s not so bad. Only 32 years old, Wassmann has a pedigree that explains his success. After moving to the United States from Switzerland, he began working for Steven Holl because Holl was (and still is) his favorite architect. He has also worked on side projects with another master of American design, artist Robert Wilson, for 10 years. It seems that the mentorship Holl and Wilson have provided—from their influential aesthetics to their willingness to work with Wassmann outside of a standard full-time position—has made all the difference in his career. About leaving Holl’s firm, Wassmann says, “He understood [my decision to leave his office], and encourages me to this day.” While Wassmann left the firm in May 2005, he continued freelancing with Holl to finish a hotel in Austria, then the following winter he co-taught an architecture class with him at Columbia University. This sort of support lessened the anxiety when Wassmann left Holl’s firm without projects in hand. He quickly picked up a diverse group of projects, including a renovation of a radio station and several exhibition designs for the Vitra showroom in Manhattan. While Wassmann relishes the brief time it takes to produce exhibitions (“they’re like architectural one-night stands”), he has a number of longer-term projects on the boards, including a renovation of a 1930s house in Miami, Florida. Much like his other mentor, Wilson, whose work has touched nearly every art form, Wassmann says he wants “to continue to do everything from books to exhibition design to writing and teaching, building houses, furniture, theatrical productions, film, and art projects—the full scale of design.” Wassmann’s strategy for accomplishing his work has already been fruitful, which may explain his hesitation to opt for the new office and the changes it might bring. He still sometimes attends pin-ups at Holl’s office because they can be stimulating, but now that he is no longer part of the structured life of an office, he prefers his own less-orthodox method of getting his work done. “The best ideas,” he says, “come late at night dancing and are then sketched on a piece of paper.”
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Architectural Record
When Bill Pedersen, FAIA, co-founder and principal design partner of Kohn Pedersen Fox, bought a three-acre piece of land on Shelter Island, New York in 1981, “Things were a little different on the island,” he wryly recalls. He means that one could buy a waterfront plot with views of Long Island Sound and Coecles Harbor without the excessive fanfare or money that nowadays accompany real estate purchases. In the intervening years, the island has grown more expensive to live on and crowded with visitors during the summer, but Pedersen has created a residence that, nested in the earth and angled to create uninterrupted views of nature, is protected from those changes. Read more…
Joe and Lucianne Carmichael were thinking green even before Hurricane Katrina. As the owners of A Studio in the Woods (ASITW), an artists center southeast of New Orleans, they have lived in the bottomland hardwood forests for 30 years using minimal energy resources. They rarely use air conditioning, even during humid Gulf Coast summers, and they always line-dry their clothes. The Carmichaels’ goal is to provide a retreat where artists can hone their craft—and give a lesson in living with nature. “The highest guiding principal of A Studio in the Woods is the opportunity to learn,” Lucianne says. Read more…
It’s every architect’s fantasy—getting carte blanche from a client. “It was excellent, and the first time for me,” Gus Wustemann says with evident glee, recalling how a couple contacted him after seeing his work in magazines, and offered complete creative license. The couple owned a 2,000-square-foot attic apartment in the historic quarter of Lucerne, Switzerland, and wanted it not just renovated, but transformed. Read more…
Philip Johnson was perhaps the most famous of the Harvard Five and the only one of these noted mid-century Modernists whose entire residentious oeuvre remains standing. That might soon change. The New Canaan Historical Review Committee’s demolition delay on his 1953 Alice Ball House, in New Canaan, Connecticut, expires today. Read more…
Open for just three months during the summer, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, located in London’s Kensington Gardens, could be a mere blip on the architecture radar. Yet it manages to garner the attention usually reserved for major projects. One can see why. Since its inception four years ago, the Pavilion has showcased work by some of the world’s most heralded architects for its annual architectural commission—Zaha Hadid (2000), Daniel Libeskind (2001), and Toyo Ito (2002). This year’s selection for the project, Oscar Niemeyer, Hon. AIA, is no exception. Ninety-five years old and busy at work, the Pritzker Prize winner continues to engage and excite the public with his designs. Read more…
Although Jorn Utzon, winner of the 2003 Pritzker Prize, created one of the most famous buildings in the word, both the Sydney Opera House and Utzon himself have remained elusive. Throughout his career, Utzon has closely guarded his privacy and declined offers to collaborate on monographs. However, after Richard Weston completed much fo the legwork for this volume, Utzon agreed to contribute to it. The result is a gorgeous, intimate monograph that overflows with images, anecdotes and Weston’s admiration for the Danish architect. Read more…
During its nine years of existence, the Farm Security Administration employed some of America’s best photographers to document the hardships of living on relief during the Depression. The project resulted in an archive of 200,000 images some of which are featured in Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-43, a show that tells the story of Chicago’s urban underbelly, African-Americans chasing the American dream, and the architecture that failed to sustain them.
Vito Acconci’s Island in the Mur defies definition. A convoluted mass of steel and glass connected to the banks of the Mur River traversing the city of Graz, Austria, the island houses an amphitheater, cafe, and playground, all of which flow into one another. Acconci is quick to point out his design’s metamorphic qualities: “The functions are mixed, there’s no hierarchy, no boundaries, no separation between inside and outside.”
Casa Poli is only a 30-mile drive from Chile’s second-largest city, Concepción, midway down the country’s coast, but it feels perched at the edge of the world: a place with limitless ocean views, a soundtrack provided by wind and pelicans, and no other human beings within eyeshot, except for local fishermen in boats, hundreds of feet offshore. Venture 45 minutes outside any major city in the United States, and you’re in an exurban tangle of highways, but here, half the roads remain unpaved. In the States, a weekend house such a quick jaunt from the city would mean high prices for land and construction, yet here, Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects (PvE) built almost 2,000 square feet for $63,000 dollars. But if the Coliumo Peninsula, on which Casa Poli rests, sounds too idyllic, the truth about its development should be told: On the bay side of this landform, construction cranes are busily erecting weekend retreats for city residents. Only the Pacific Ocean side has remained largely uninhabited, and mostly because many people consider its terrain less suitable for building. Of course, that could change now that word has gotten out about Casa Poli. (The house garnered first prize at the 2006 Santiago Biennale, where its architects, Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, a married couple, won the Best Young Chilean Architects Award.) Read more…