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Sacred Geometry: Won Buddhist Center; Dharma retreat by Architects; the architecture of infinity
won Buddhist Meditation Hall in construction. Post: Victoria Meyers architect
hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) Won Buddhist Retreat in Claverack, New York, employs simple materials (sustainably harvested wood) that blends into the landscape, and is shaped by the use of deceptively complex geometric forms.
hMa designed four courtyard buildings on the site, including the Administration building (below), as simple square shapes. The simplicity of the plan is made dynamic and complex, however, by opening the courtyards to the public areas through a spiral circulation pattern, and placing complex roof forms above the courtyard entrances.The roofs and ceilings above the 'entry porches' to each of the courtyards are cut into complex biomorphic, triangulated geometries. This triangulation speaks about the dynamic activity of walking into, and out from each private courtyard.
Won Buddhist Administration Hall in Construction: Post Victoria Meyers architect
The triangulating forms soften the roof shapes, and make the walking porches places of meditation. They also make the porches feel like they are natural extensions of the site.
Won Buddhist Connector – Meditation Hall / Administration: Post: Victoria Meyers architect
Won Buddhist Retreat, and the Bio-morphic design applied to the spiral porch roofs, is a further exploration of the architecture of infinity by hMa. The Won Dharma retreat design by hanrahan Meyers architects applies many of the firm's researches to date, including researches into light as well as complex triangulated construction, which can be used to create self-supporting structures.
hMa's first venture into triangulating, self-supporting structures was their 'sound booth' design for Vox Harbour, a collaboration with sound artist Jane Philbrick.
Won Buddhist Retreat will be open to the public in September, 2011.
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Life of An Architect Blog: ‘Women in Architecture’ features hanrahan Meyers Principal Victoria Meyers
Thanks to Bob Borson for posting this great article on his blog featuring hMa founding partner Victoria Meyers architect.
Digital Water i-Pavilion (Battery Park City Community Center) currently under construction in Manhattan, NY click here to see more photos of Digital Water Pavilion on www.hanrahanmeyers.com. Post: Victoria Meyers architect
Here is an excerpt from the post click here to read the full post :
"I have resisted writing a post about notable architects who happen to be women for a long time. Partially because these lists can be found on other websites that are most likely better researched and organized, but mostly I’ve held off because I’d like to think that a good architect is not defined by gender or that being a good architect and a woman isn’t a singularly special occurrence. I can’t presume to understand the nuances that come along with being a female working in this profession – it’s not just about sitting in an office with co-workers who respect your abilities regardless of gender. It’s about all the other aspects of being a practicing architect where challenges present themselves. I can’t recall having ever worked with a female contractor – what would it be like on a job site? Would a female architect have to endure (or enjoy) the same relentless number of fishing and hunting stories that I hear (despite the fact that I don’t hunt or fish)? I don’t know but I assume the tenor of the typical job site conversation would be different – not more
or less respectful, just different. It could be the little things like the type of shoes someone chooses to wear. Does that really matter? Probably not but I can bet you that the construction worker who has never noticed what shoes his wife is wearing would notice what is on the feet of a female architect visiting the site."Paraphrasing Borson's review of hMa principal Victoria Meyers architect in his post: 'Ms. Meyers has been the principal designer on a number of award-winning architectural projects with her firm, hanrahan Meyers architects, including public buildings, green urban designs, and award-winning residences.'
In addition to hMa principal Victoria Meyers, six other architects are reviewed in the post, including two Priztker Prize winners: Kazuyo Sejima, and Zaha Hadid. The post includes Marion Griffan, Jeanne Gang, Julia Morgan, Denise Scott Brown, and Julie Eisenberg.
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hanrahan Meyers architects’ Infinity Chapel wins 2011 AIA New York State Design Award
Infinity Chapel, hanrahan Meyers architects. photo: Michael Moran. Post: Victoria Meyers architect
hanrahan Meyers architects' Infinity Chapel has been recognized with a Citation for Design by the 2011 AIA New York State Design Awards Program.
Infinity Chapel, completed in 2010, is a 4,000 square foot cubic sanctuary where squares, golden section rectangles, and spheres surround worshippers with sacred geometries. The Chapel’s south, north and west walls curve inward, shaping the Chapel, and suggesting the presence of a sphere. The curved west wall is punctured by a large square opening to bring light to the sanctuary. The congregation looks west toward the curved wall and the outdoor Garden Sanctuary, open to the congregation through floor to ceiling glass openings behind the stage. The Chapel brings together nature, geometry and light to make a sacred space. A complete list of this year's winners can be seen here.
Infinity Chapel won an Honor Design Award from the Faith& Form / IFRAA International Awards Program for Religious Art and Architecture in 2010.
Click here to see more photos of Infinity Chapel at www.hanrahanmeyers.com
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Giant Redwood, California: Collage by Victoria Meyers
Giant Redwood, Ca., collaged photographic study: Victoria Meyers architect
hanrahan Meyers architects are presenting a series of collages created by hMa principal Victoria Meyers. The series is titled 'manipulated nature', and the collaged pieces are referenced in various hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) built projects. hanrahan Meyers has developed a consistent body of work by placing pieces of nature within abstract minimalist envelops. Manipulated Nature explores the firm's work through manipulated photographs, and the series includes trees, sky views, water views and flowers.
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Architecture and Design Process: Collage Studies of natural forms influence hMa designs
collaged 4×6 photographshanrahan Meyers architects present a series of collages created by hMa principal Victoria Meyers. The series, titled 'manipulated nature', is referenced in various hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) built projects. hanrahan Meyers has developed a consistent body of work by placing pieces of nature within abstract minimalist envelops. Manipulated Nature explores the firm's work through photographs, and the series includes trees, sky views, water views and flowers.
Sky, California,. collaged 4×6 photographs
Two skys over two randomly chosen days, sky location is Los Angeles.
An example of hMa's interweaving of nature within an abstract envelop includes the firm's Infinity Chapel project completed in 2007:
Tenth Church of Christ, Scientist in New York City: a project by hanrahan Mayers architects based on natural forms from naturehanrahan Meyers architects design buildings, master plans, and spaces that incorporate precise interpretations of natural forms. These interpretations are possible through the firm's investigations of natural forms and processes.
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hanrahan Meyers architects recommends: Mastering the Polka Dot – Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama 'The Moment of Regeneration', 2004
The following is an article orginally published in the Wall Street Journal
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has lived in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital for decades, shuttling between there and a fully functioning studio nearby. But the artist, still busy at age 82, also happens to command some of the highest auction prices for a living female artist.
Inspired by American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, Ms. Kusama made her way to New York City in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s, she had completed what many critics and collectors regard as her most important work—large, predominantly white "Infinity Net" oil paintings, covered with a seemingly endless array of small circular shapes.
These New York paintings anchor a major new retrospective of Ms. Kusama's diverse six-decade career. The show, which opened last month at Madrid's Museo Reina Sofia, runs through Sept. 12. A version will travel to Paris's Centre Pompidou in the fall. Then, in January 2012, it's on to London's Tate Modern gallery (which organized the show), and finally to the Whitney Museum of American Art in June 2012.
The show's 150 works reflect Ms. Kusama's particular range. Using motifs pioneered in the "Infinity Net" period, she went on to make related sculptures, films and performances. She returned to Japan in 1973. In the past decade, she has become known for outdoor sculptures and huge, ambitious installations, often featuring colorful polka dots. Five of these installations are on view in Madrid.
"The New York period is key," says Frances Morris, the Tate curator who has overseen the show. She has also tried to bring attention to Ms. Kusama's art before she arrived in the U.S. These colorful, hallucinatory works on paper, which preview her trademark use of obsessive imagery, are mostly from Japanese collections.
Top prices for Ms. Kusama's work are for paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s. A 1959 "Infinity Net" painting, "No. 2," sold for almost $6 million at Christie's in New York in the recession-darkened days of fall 2008, $2 million more than its high estimate.
Buyers are beginning to show more interest in other works by Ms. Kusama, says Koji Inoue, a New York-based specialist in postwar and contemporary art at Christie's. Earlier this month at Christie's New York, a mixed-media ensemble of objects, featuring six life-size painted mannequins, sold for $1,022,500, far more than its presale estimate of $300,000 to $500,000.
Until recently, fully realized installations tended to pass to public institutions rather than to private collectors, who often lack both the space and the technical ability to maintain this kind of art. But that's changed since the recession, says Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at London's White Cube gallery. Museums "have been squeezed," while "private institutions and collectors are significantly more able now" to accommodate works like Ms. Kusama's installations.
—J.S. Marcus
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Putting Environmentalism on the Urban Map
In 2000 hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) were hired as the Master Plan Architects for Battery Park City Authority’s North Neighborhood, the most forward-thinking urban master plan in the United States. The North Neighborhood is the location of the first green high-rise residential tower in the United States and is the first sustainably designed high-rise neighborhood in the world. When the North Neighborhood is complete in 2012 it will include a total of 5 million square feet of sustainable buildings, an array of new technologies and operating practices and a unique integration with the spectacular natural features of New York's waterfront.
Battery Park City North Neighborhood Master Plan by hanrahan Meyers architects : isometric showing Green Roofs and Parks/ Post: Victoria Meyers architect
Below is an exerpt from a May 17, 2006 article about Battery Park City's Master Plan's state-of-the-art green features. hMa are proud to have been key participants in the development of the most forward-thinking high-rise development in a complex urban center, for the past eleven years.
"Green Map" of Battery Park City
The following is an excerpt from "Putting Environmentalism on the Urban Map". To see the full article, follow the link: www.nytimes.com.
By ROBIN POGREBIN
Published: May 17, 2006"YES, there are sweeping views of the Hudson River, 35 acres of parkland and waterfront promenades. But what gets James Cavanaugh especially jazzed about Battery Park City is the reclaimed toilet water, processed by a waste-treatment plant in the basement of an apartment building at 20 River Terrace.
In fact, Mr. Cavanaugh, the president and chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority, has tasted it.
The plant is located in the base of the Solaire, the first residential high-rise building in New York City to be certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.
The Solaire, certified in 2004, is still the exception in the city; only recently have architects, developers and construction managers begun to integrate so-called sustainable design into their high-rise projects. But in Battery Park City, the Solaire has become the rule.
By 2009, when all the available sites on its 92 acres will be developed, Battery Park City will have eight green residential buildings and a green Goldman Sachs headquarters. All these projects are expected to be certified gold — with three potentially rated platinum — under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ratings system, including hanrahan Meyers architects' (hMa's) DWiP.
The LEED ratings were established by the Green Building Council to evaluate a building's efforts to use renewable materials, conserve energy and water consumption and enhance indoor air quality. This makes Battery Park City an experiment in creating an all-green neighborhood, which so far appears to be unmatched in the United States.
DWiP is scheduled to open September 1, 2012; Post, Victoria Meyers architect
"It's looking at the way an entire built community comes together — Battery Park City is visionary in that regard," said S. Richard Fedrizzi, president and chief executive of the Green Building Council, a coalition of building industry leaders who promote environmentally responsible — or sustainable — design. "It's a beacon for what communities all over the country and all over the world are doing."
The greening of Battery Park City started in 1999, when the authority — a New York State public-benefit corporation — drafted its own green building guidelines, which require that every residence in the area meet strict sustainability criteria. (The guidelines for commercial properties followed in 2002.)
Battery Park City is now insisting that developers retrofit their existing pre-guideline buildings to make them green, a process under way at the New York Mercantile Exchange's building.
"We have the opportunity in Battery Park City — because our authority is in control — where we can make it a condition for all future development," said Gov. George E. Pataki, in a telephone interview.
People have come from all over to learn from Battery Park City, including contingents from the Czech Republic, China and Korea. The authority recently made a presentation to the United States Conference of Mayors in Albuquerque and was part of an international green building challenge at the international Sustainable Building Conference in Oslo.
Green Diagram showing hMa's approach to installing Parks and Green Roofs at Battery Park City; Post Victoria Meyers architect
"This is a movement that is taking hold and moving forward," said Timothy S. Carey, the former president and chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority.
The visitors come not only because of the high concentration of green buildings there, but also because the authority's green guidelines are so stringent. In many cases, the guidelines exceed those of the Green Building Council. The buildings also have to be 30 percent more energy efficient than New York State building code demands for all types of construction.
The authority requires photovoltaics, which capture heat from the sun and turn it into electricity. Green roofs are required for 75 percent of a building's nonmechanical roof area. All the parks are run organically, using horticultural soap instead of pesticides, and the ball fields feature waterless urinals and composting toilets.
In evaluating developers' proposals, the authority gives almost as much weight to the environmental pitch as it does the financial. "We expect potential developers to go beyond our guidelines and do even better," Mr. Cavanaugh said. "We're not just looking for top dollar, but also sustainable design. The developers are really on notice. They've got to push the envelope every time we engage them to be as aggressive as they can."
Mr. Carey said that at first the authority's board did not know what to make of the idea. "Some thought I meant green bricks." "
Click to read the full article on nytimes.com
hanrahan Meyers architects' community center, 'Digital Water i-Pavilion', DWiP, on North End Avenue in Battery Park City click here to see more images of DWiP on www.hanrahanmeyers.com, Post Victoria Meyers architect -
Progress Report: Won Dharma CenterClaverack, NY
Won Dharma site in construction, June 2011
Counter-clockwise from left foreground: Meditation Hall, Administration, Permanent Residence, Guest ResidencesThe Won Dharma Center, USA, is a 28,000 square foot recreational and spiritual retreat in Claverack, New York for the Won Buddhists, a Korean organization that emphasizes balance in one's daily life and relationship to nature. The center is located within a 500-acre property on a gently sloping hill with views west to the Hudson River valley and the Catskill Mountains. The buildings for the Center, including permanent and guest residences, an administration building and a meditation hall, are sited as far as possible from the highway and are oriented toward the west and south to maximize views and light. The symbol of this organization is an open circle, suggesting both a void without absence and infinite return. The buildings are organized around these dual concepts of void and spiral.
The Won Dharma Center project was given a Design Award from the Faith&Form / IFRAA International Awards Program for Religious Art and Architecture in 2010.
Click here to view more photos of the Won Dharma Center on www.hanrahanmeyers.com
A skylight allows natural light into the Meditation Hall
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hanrahan Meyers architects likes: “Howl Festival 2011” – City as Urban Theater
Allen Ginsberg reading his poems to the crowd in Washington Square Park in 1966: Photo by Jack Manning / The New York Times
For more than a century, the East Village has been home to poets, jazz musicians, Vaudeville and Yiddish theatre, artists represented by blue chip galleries and those painting in the subways, rock stars, and performance artists. Building on this tradition and inspired by long time East Village resident Allen Ginsberg's epic poem, the HOWL! Festival was founded in 2003. The mission of HOWL! Festival is to honor, develop, create and produce. With an estimated 100,000 visitors last year, the many performances celebrate local cultural icons and lionize, preserve, and advance the art, history, culture, and counterculture unique to the East Village and Lower East Side. (from www.howlfestival.com)
The most recent Howl Festival took place last weekend June 3 – 5th. More photos and information on the festival can be found here and here.
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hanrahan Meyers architects Likes: “Parks to Parking Lots: All the City’s a Stage” – City as Urban Theater
Photo: Yana Paskova for The New York Times
Excerpt from "Parks to Parking Lots: All the City’s a Stage" from www.nytimes.com
By: Stephen McElroy
“Don’t I have a nice theater?” Stephen Burdman asked as he stood in a green field in Central Park near West 103rd Street on a recent Saturday afternoon. During a rehearsal break he was pointing out sites used in past productions by his company, New York Classical Theater.
Enlarge This Image“This was the heath in ‘Lear,’ ” he said, and then, “This was the forest of letters in ‘As You Like It.’ ” Ten minutes later Mr. Burdman, along with cast and staff members working on Molière’s “School for Husbands,” were huddled under a tree during a downpour.
So it goes for providers of outdoor entertainment.
Clouds loomed over Riverside Park in Manhattan the next day, but the stars were better aligned for the cast of this month’s Hudson Warehouse production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” The weather was chilly but dry as the company rehearsed, and though every so often a dog and its walker traipsed across what stood for the stage, things went smoothly.
New York Classical and Hudson Warehouse are among a number of companies preparing free outdoor productions of classic plays — mostly Shakespeare — for performance this summer in parks from Inwood to the Battery in Manhattan, and in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, too. The smaller companies may find themselves competing for attention not just with the Public Theater’s shows at the Delacorte in Central Park, but also with the Royal Shakespeare Company, presenting a five-play repertory at the Park Avenue Armory (where tickets are decidedly not free) as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.
“I try to think of it as a fantastic boon that there is continued interest in exploring Shakespeare’s work,” said Hamilton Clancy, artistic director of the Drilling Company, which offers Shakespeare in the Parking Lot (literally) on the Lower East Side.
Some other artistic directors had a similarly glass-half-full view of the crowded theatrical field. “Good theater benefits all theater,” said Judith Jarosz, a producing artistic director (with David Fuller) of Theater 2020. “If somebody on the Upper East Side goes to the Armory and has a positive experience, it’s all the more possible they’ll go to the park and see something else.”
Jason Marr’s feelings about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s coming to New York from Britain are a bit more complicated.
“To be honest, as a theater artist, I’m always left feeling very torn about the projects that are of this scope and scale,” said Mr. Marr, the artistic director of Hip to Hip, a Queens company. He acknowledged wanting to see some of that company’s shows himself, “but at the end of the day, I feel that they’re preaching to the choir,” he said. “Sometimes these sorts of projects are for the culturally elite.”
Mr. Marr’s mission, similar to those of several artistic directors interviewed recently, is inspired by Joseph Papp, who started presenting Shakespeare more than 50 years ago and saw his work as anything but elitist.
“I always felt that we should travel,” Papp is quoted as saying in “Free for All,” the 2009 book that provides a history of the Public Theater through interviews with Papp and others. “I wanted to bring Shakespeare to the people, that was the whole idea. I had to reach the thousands of people who lived and died in their neighborhoods.”
But today it can be tough to get even a free ticket to the Public’s summer shows at the Delacorte. Fortunately, though, for those in New York, enthusiasts of the classics can try to check out the productions of the Public and the Royal Shakespeare Company, but can also find plenty of free alternatives, including an all-female “Henry V,” one of at least three productions of that play (another involves a boat ride to Governors Island).
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