Tag: victoria meyers architect

hMa : A Practice in the ArtsMerce Cunningham; John Cage; David Teeple; Michael J. Schumacher

May 13th, 2009

hMa has teamed with artists on several of their past and present projects. Composer Michael Schumacher and sculptor David Teeple have been in-house consultants on a number of hMa projects. For hMa’s new Community Center adjacent to Ground Zero, Michael Schumacher composed the ‘Birdsong’, establishing a formal language for a ‘frit’ pattern that will go on the glass façade of the building. David Teeple’s sculptural vision was part of the formal discussion both for Holley House, as well as Dune House (currently in design). hMa also works with several arts groups. For several years, hMa has served as an ongoing advisor to Mark di Suvero and Socrates Sculpture Park.

The following images and text are from a lecture by Victoria Meyers at Louisiana State University in 2004 called "A Practice in the Arts," examining hMa's relationship to the arts.

"The first slide is of 'hMa' – our firm's logo – referring to 'h' as the horizon line, and 'ma' as 'space', next to an image of three dancers dancing on stage – in this case three very special dancers including Merce Cunningham.

As a choreographer, Merce Cunningham engaged artists in many mediums as collaborators: John Cage and David Tudor (music); and Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Motherwell (painting). Following in Merce Cunningham's footsteps, hMa has pursued collaborations with artists in other mediums including music (Michael Schumacher) and painting (Bruce Pearson and Joe Amrhein).

To view the full presentation, click the link below:

Slideshow.PDF

two trees; examining the seam between realities: natural vs. man-made or 'fabricated nature'
hMa Archive : Academy of American Poets

April 20th, 2009

PHOTO BY PETER AARON FOR ESTO

Academy of American Poets is a project that hMa completed in 2000. Poets and poetry mean a great deal to us as architects. hMa considers architectural space-making as poetry that is made in solid form.

hMa started the design process for this project with a poem: SUR cen SURE - a poem by Marcel Duchamp. We started the project with this poem, and taking Duchamp’s method of using found objects and random selection as a means of designed the space for the Academy of American Poets.

"SUR cen SURE" A POEM BY MARCEL DUCHAMP; MODEL PHOTO

hMa’s final design was a ‘musical arrangement’ of book shelves and cases that define the edge of offices, and a library and performance space for poetry readings. hMa attempted to create an architectural alphabet of spatial poetry for the Poets, and a new center for poetry reading.

The Academy of American Poets was constructed from book walls: walls of windows; walls of books; a wall of simultaneity.

PHOTO BY PETER AARON FOR ESTO

Click here to see more of the Academy of American Poets on hanrahanMeyers.com.
White Space / Ash 4 Ways featured in New Publicationminimalist architecture

April 13th, 2009

White Space / Ash 4 Ways

hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) are pleased to announce that their project 'White Space apartment' is featured in a new book published by Loft Publications. The 204-page book feature 30 different projects of contemporary residential designs. The book is written by Ethel Baraona and Lilliana Bollini.

White Space (Ash 4 Ways) is a Manhattan apartment where ash is used in four different states of finish within a minimalist white envelope.

The original space was an apartment that was chopped into many spaces. hMa emptied the space to create a maximum infiltration of light and views of Central Park. The intention was to create a space that replicates the complex beauty of Nature in Central Park. The views extend one’s experience of the natural materials within the apartment into the Park beyond.

The goal was to create space that flows and accommodates the needs for living with a great sense of comfort. Although the space is completely ‘white’, the various textures, tones and materials create and overall sense of warmth. The free-form pieces of ash bring a sense of ‘Nature’ from the Park into the space.

Read more about hMa's 'White Space' apartment here.

View the book at Amazon.com.

White Space / Ash 4 Ways spread
Light ResearchInfinity Chapel by hanrahan Meyers architects

March 11th, 2009

HANRAHAN MEYERS ARCHITECTS: LIGHT STUDY MODEL

hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) have pursued investigations into light as an area of special interest. hMa has pursued light by developing new window and skylight prototypes, and through the use of color both as a direct and reflected medium.

The above project is hMa’s prototype study for a glass screening device. The screen can be adjusted to allow differing aspects of light through a set of metal pieces, which forms a flexible ‘fabric’ in front of a clear glass window. The window looks toward a busy urban street, and sits in front of a private library collection; a space for reading and storing books. The screen removes the disruption of an urban landscape, while allowing natural light to filter into the library. The library contains rare books, and the screen is designed to control the quantity of natural light.

Read more on Light research in Victoria Meyers' book Designing with Light.

LIGHT MONITOR DIAGRAM FOR HMA'S INFINITY CHAPEL

INFINITY CHAPEL SKYLIGHT ON CHAPEL STAGE, GARDEN CHAPEL IN BACKGROUND. PHOTO: MICHAEL MORAN

For more information about Infinity Chapel, visit hMa's website: www.hanrahanMeyers.com.
Pratt Pavilion in Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture

February 9th, 2009

hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) are honored to have the Juliana Curran Terian Pratt Pavilion featured in the recently published Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture.

The following is an excerpt from the book:

"This pavilion, a new focal point for the Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn, NY, is used by the students and faculty to exhibit the work of (the) institute’s students. Clad with stainless steel and suspended between two existing industrial loft buildings on the main Pratt Institute campus, the project includes a glazed entrance lobby for the pavilion and the adjacent Steuben Hall and Pratt Studios. Behind the Juliana Curran Terian Design Center Pratt Pavilion, which includes the glass entrance and a new circulation bridge to the south, a new courtyard makes an outdoor room for informal meetings and classes in warm weather. The building is clad with hand-finished stainless steel panels, and the glazed north-facing facade looks towards the institute’s main quadrangle, with screens that pull down to darken the space for slides or videos. To the south, the pavilion bridge ramps east and west, creating a circulation zone which connects the Pratt Pavilion, Steuben and Pratt Studios. The courtyard and pavilion are designed to work together as a ventilation system. Windows on the south facade open to bring air from the courtyard through the pavilion, and out through windows on the north facade."

Second-floor gallery in the Pratt Pavilion; Pratt Institute main campus; Brooklyn, NY

click here to view or purchase the "Phaidon Atlas" on Amazon.com. To read more about hanrahan Meyers architects, visit our website: www.hanrahanMeyers.com.
Victoria Meyers to participate in the first “Sustainable Cities Design Academy”

January 9th, 2009

North End Avenue in Battery Park City's North Neighborhood for which hMa were Master Plan architects (photo: Paul Warchol); click here for more about this project on hanrahanMeyers.com

Victoria Meyers has been invited to participate as a Resource Team Member for the first Sustainable Cities Design Academy, a conference that is being hosted by the American Architectural Foundation. Ms. Meyers was chosen as a Resource Team Member based on the expansive experience that her firm, hMa, has in the area of complex, Green and Sustainable Master Plans, as well as Landscape Designs.

Since 1997, hMa have been the official Master Plan Architects for Battery Park City’s North Neighborhood. In that capacity, hMa has overseen the development and written guidelines for the design of the first Green high-rise residential development building in the United States. When Battery Park City is built out it will include four million square feet of sustainable construction, with even its parks maintained without fertilizer. In 2003 hMa were part of the team receiving an Environmental Excellence Award for the green planning and design which has set standards for green construction and planning throughout the United States.

Other master plans that hMa have overseen as designers include the design of Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York, as well as Pratt Institute’s Main Campus redesign. At Pratt hMa was part of the team that redesigned the campus, and hMa also designed the first building that implemented the new master plan: the Juliana Curran Terian Pratt Pavilion. This building marked the first piece of a major redesign and rethinking of the Pratt campus.

Read more and see photos of hMa's Master Planning projects at hanrahanMeyers.com/masterplans

Read more about AAF and SCDA at www.archfoundation.org
Architecture + Energy

December 22nd, 2008

BATTERY PARK CITY COMMUNITY CENTER, NYC

hMa’s Battery Park Community Center is designed to meet the standards for a Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating. hMa believes that good buildings should have the efficiency of the best hybrid cars.

hMa has experience designing buildings using passive energy systems including solar panels, geo-thermal energy, and other sustainable sources. We hope to achieve zero carbon footprint in 2009. hMa was part of the team that drafted the original Green Guidelines for Battery Park City. We’ve used our experience and expertise from multiple projects to create green standards that we apply to all projects.

We look forward to 2009. hMa supports Farm Sanctuary, and the Nature Conservancy, as part of the firm’s ongoing commitment to ecologically friendly construction practices in architecture.

BEST WISHES FOR 2009!

hanrahanMeyers architects
Project Update : Won Buddhist Training Center

December 22nd, 2008

hMa's Won Buddhist Training Center is a future spiritual retreat located in rural Claverack, New York. The property gently slopes toward the west, offering views of the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains. The project is scheduled to enter construction in May 2009. The Won Buddhist Center will feature all wood-frame buildings made with local materials to sympathize with and reflect the Center's natural surroundings.

AERIAL PERSPECTIVE

GUEST RESIDENCES

GUEST RESIDENCE COURTYARD

MEDITATION HALL
Sound Sculpture, Art Installation : Vox Harbour in Queens, NY

November 17th, 2008

hMa sound research : Vox Harbour
conceptual installation
collaboration with Jane Philbrick and Bob Bielecki

SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK : SOUND FIELD DIAGRAM

Vox Harbor proposes three body-sized bandshell sound booths that will enable participants to communicate across three banks of the East River, connecting the distinct but proximate communities of the Sculpture Park, Roosevelt Island, and Astoria Housing in a sidewalk-type dialogue. Conversations will be sampled and play back, referencing the sound of the ocean in a seashell, but here the din will comprise the soundscape/urban landscape of New York’s most diverse, polyphonic borough.

The soundtrack will also include a spoken word panorama recorded by the artist in situ at each of the three Vox Harbor sites. Bracketing the river in these formally parenthetical structures, Vox Harbor invites and celebrates the diversity of discourse that constitutes New York’s dynamic voice, where world-wide street talk is at home in Queens.

SOUND BOOTH DIAGRAM

To read more about Vox Harbor on our website, click here, www.hanrahanmeyers.com.
The Museum of Women : Green museum design / Women and Culture

November 11th, 2008

A Woven Text

hMa used research into women’s voices to weave a rich text that weaves itself into a building that is itself a fabric. This woven fabric creates a fresh and relevant approach to the design of a Museum of Women. The fabric is woven from collected ‘testimonials’, as well as from a considered investigation into the life of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other women active in the fight for women’s rights.

Sustainable Fabric

The skin of the Museum of Women uses weaving and layering to make an environmentally sensitive enclosure. The Museum will be a transparent building covered in a ‘woven fabric’. This fabric will be a series of sun shades and rain catches that make the building an ecologically sensitive ecosystem. The skin is an important part of that ecosystem, and keeps internal temperatures and humidity levels controlled with a minimum use of fossil fuels. This layered or woven skin is environmentally appropriate and fosters the use and application of sustainable technologies.

To see more about hMa's Women's Museum design, visit our website, www.hanrahanMeyers.com. hMa specializes in desigining public buildings with unique design concepts that incorporate cutting-edge green technologies.