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. Read more…
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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…
Sarah Morris’s art is touted for its allusions to and interpretations of the urban environment. With deft mimcry of the grids found in cityscapes, her Midtown series of paintings (1998-99) recall the green-glass-windowed facades of a Gordon Bunshaft building. She followed these up with the series Los Angeles (2005-06), in which her Mondrian-like abstractions were more frantically paced and garishly colored, referencing architectural icons in Los Angeles.
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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…
A decade after Swiss architect Peter Zumthor won a competition to design a new home for the Kolumba Art Museum, in Cologne, his building is finally set to open September 15. Best known for his Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland, Zumthor here puts his minimalist imprimatur on a monolithic gray-brick facade with only patches of decorative perforations and oversized windows to let in daylight. The museum envelops the Madonna in Ruins chapel, designed by Gottfried Bohm in 1949, and sits atop the remains of the 1853 St. Kolumba church, destroyed in World War II. Zumthor’s voluminous structure will better accommodate the collection—ranging from Leonhard Kern’s 1630 frieze of Adam and Eve to Josef Albers’s 1962 Homage to the Square.—Diana Lind