Clean lines, glass, cascading water, fire and light come together on Red Mountain in Aspen. A project designed for family fun and entertaining. We look forward to working through the various design challenges and seeing his project through completion.
Stay tuned…
For more please visit us online at www.cunniffe.com.
Architectural Digest recently featured a look at the new museum at the prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia. The SCAD museum is housed in an 1853 railroad depot. According to Preservation Nation “The depot, built to serve passengers and freight traveling on the Central of Georgia Railway, had deteriorated beyond repair. Long abandoned and lacking a roof, its beams were exposed to the elements; only two brick walls remained intact.”
The Central of Georgia Railroad Depot before renovation.
Savannah College of Art and Design, Museum of Art
The architecture firm behind the restoration is Sottile & Sottile. Their $26 million project beautifully blends contemporary design with old world charm. To learn more about the museum take a look at this video we found which captures the essence of the construction and design.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvD1-IsJ1aI[/youtube]
For the past two years, a 30-year-old underemployed architect from Joplin, Mo. named Faris Al-Shathir has carved out a career in New York by facilitating the transformation of odd and abandoned spaces into dazzling retail institutions. He does so by pairing architects and fashion designers through Boffo, the non-profit he founded with Gregory Sparks. The New York Times’s Bee-Shyuan Chang reports that during last fall’s New York Fashion Week, he paired “bad-boy designer” Nicola Formichetti with Gage/Clemenceau, a trendy Lower East Side architectural firm. For his firm’s previous project, he took over an abandoned trailer under the High Line Park and had five teams of fashion designers and architects install a series of temporary stores. “We’re like professional squatters,” Mr. Al-Shathir says. He and Sparks named the firm “Boffo” after thumbing through a dictionary and finding that, during the Depression, the word meant “success.”
Photo via The New York Times
To ready the story in its entirety please visit NYTimes.com.
A fantastic new museum recently opened in downtown Denver. The museum is a single-artist institution devoted to the life and work of one of the 20th century’s most influential and enigmatic painters – Clyfford Stills.
The Museum was conceived as a solid, continuous form that is opened up by natural light. Walls of textured concrete form the primary building envelope, interior walls and structural system. The entrance, deeply recessed beneath the cantilevered walls, holds the visitor to the earth. The lower level houses the education, archive and storage spaces. In the upper level galleries, the visitor moves through a series of nine distinct volumes where they encounter the work of Clyfford Still. Overhead, an open lattice of concrete unites the body of the building and offers illumination and connection to the atmosphere of the city. The galleries respond to the evolving character of Still’s art, changing scale and proportion, while varying the intensity of light.
Certainly a site to see – both inside and out.
For information, please visit: clyffordstillmuseum.org
All eyes were on Samsung’s “Smart Window” technology that was unveiled at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Just imagine a touchscreen window that allows you to see not only the outside world, but the weather and other media outlets as well.
This LCD transparent screen can also double as a digital photo frame. There are endless possibilities where this technology is concerned.
Take a look at Samsung’s Smart Window in action below.
Now imagine what would happen if a child accidentally threw a ball through this window.
Recently we have been working on projects for multiple generational homes, and the kids have been playing a large part in the design process. We are having so much fun working with these “junior designers” and learning from them everyday.
The Wall Street Journal’s article “Silly Parent, Good Design Is for Kids” has really struck a cord with us and as we have learned, sometimes your youngest clients are the most knowledgeable about what they want.
Gone are the “Disney-themed” rooms of yore and in its place is a more sophisticated design that can grow with the child.
Rita Konig with the WSJ writes “When you decorate a child’s room, you are really just giving them a canvas. The art is their plastic toys, swimming trophies, pictures, books and hideous horse and fairy ornaments. It’s similar to how we grownups use accents (cushions, vases, lampshades), for the colors and patterns that are fashionable at that moment, or to satisfy a phase we’re going through.”
Photo via The Wall Street Journal
We are looking forward to exploring the design mind of our youth in the upcoming future.
Ever wonder about the details that go into planning out a city’s streets? How about a city that is as complex as Manhattan? The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 at the Museum of the City of New York does just that. The exhibit, which runs through April 15th, “celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, the foundational document that established Manhattan’s famous street grid.”
It also features the original hand-drawn map of New York’s planned streets and avenues and other rare historic maps, photographs and prints of the streets of Manhattan. You’ll be able to witness “the evolution of the city’s streets” from a rural scene to a bustling city filled with skyscrapers and yellow taxi cabs.
Photo via Museum of the City of New York
