Our hearts are with everyone affected by yesterday’s tragedy.

From New York with love

William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc. – Northeastern University Building F, in Boston

Photograph: © Alan Karchmer

As the sixth building designed by the firm for Northeastern’s new West Campus, this 140,000 square foot mixed-use building completes the build-out of the 1.2 million square foot Master Plan.

The building reinforces the university’s academic mission and commitment to creating a new mixed-use sector of campus. Creating a vibrant, high-density environment that is active at all hours of the day, the building embodies the spirit of “living & learning.” It includes three significant components: Freshman Honors Housing, a Cultural Center, and an Academic Center.

The Honors Housing, with 230 beds in six-person apartments, celebrates academic excellence at the heart of this new mixed-use precinct. A two-story, four-part lounge (including Lounge, Study Room, Laundry, and Study Nook) encourages interaction among residents while simultaneously offering places for group/individual study. The Honors Program offices occupy a prominent ground-floor location at the front door to the Honors Housing.

The Cultural Center, located on the lower two floors, celebrates academic diversity and outreach. Together with the building’s residential and academic spaces, it makes the building a hub of student life.

Photograph: © Alan Karchmer

The Academic Center complements the Honors Housing, helping the university achieve its goal of strengthening the Honors community. It includes seven classrooms (300 seats total) and a 270-seat auditorium. The Academic Center anchors the lower three floors to the central pedestrian promenade of the West Campus.

Photograph: © Alan Karchmer

Project details

Architect: William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc.
Associate Firm: Stull and Lee, Inc. Architecture and Planning
Owner: Northeastern University
Location: Boston

Engineer, MEP/FP: Cosentini Associates, Inc.
Engineer, Structural: LeMessurier Consultants, Inc.
General Contractor: Turner Construction Company
Landscape Architect: Pressley Associates, Inc.
Lighting: Ripman Lighting Consultants
Via archinnovations

Boston Society of Architects Headquarters by Höweler + Yoon Architecture

The following text and images are courtesy Höweler + Yoon Architecture for their competition-winning design — Splipstream Public Exchange — of the Boston Society of Architects Headquarters. The 154-year-old organization will move from 52 Broad Street to Atlantic Wharf.

SLIPSTREAM maximizes the BSA’s engagement with a larger public by creating a series of interfaces, both physical and informational. The physical design of the new headquarters introduces a “cloud” ceiling that capitalizes on the viewing angles between the sidewalk and the second floor, to create a highly visible signature feature that doubles as gallery ceiling and supergraphic signage. The information interface utilizes wireless technologies to deliver site specific content to visitors, while also creating a BSA application for smart phones and location-aware hand held devices.

BROADCAST
Drawing the public up to the second floor, a grand stair drops down from the ceiling above, and provides a fluid transition between floors with a single gesture. The stair and ceiling form the primary figure of the physical interface. Information technologies are also embedded in the “cloud” ceiling, allowing its edge to broadcast messages through an LED sign band, while projectors display a digital wayfinding entrance mat, and wireless transmitters stream video feeds. “Public Exchange” consoles are located throughout the space, allowing the public to access curated information about the built environment, construction billings index figures, and databases of designers, products, and services.

PERIMETER
The contoured media surface wraps around the perimeter of the space, creating a continuous gallery and event circuit. Program areas are held back from the edge, allowing the public circulation to flow along the perimeter. The gallery program is conceived as a series of fluid paths and not as a discrete room. The content of the exhibitions produce the programmatic “current” to the flow of the gallery. Placing the gallery along the edge reinforces the cognitive parallax between the contents of the exhibitions in the foreground and the city in the background. This is consistent with the BSA’s core mission to support the active engagement between the process of design and the resulting product of the built environment.

PODS
Conference rooms are distributed within the free-flowing gallery zone. The conference rooms form an archipelago of program distributed within the flows of public gallery, maximizing the contact between the BSA members, visitors, stakeholders, and members of the general public.

SLIPSTREAM
The new BSA produces “Public Exchange” through its organizational and material logics, as well as through its network and media strategies. The fluid spaces of the linear gallery parallel the constant streams of broadcast information. The archipelago of programs and exhibitions will create a smooth mixture of audiences and content within the flows and eddies of the BSA’s slipstream configuration, resulting in the productive discourse that is BSA’s mission.

Design Team:
Höweler + Yoon Architecture: J. Meejin Yoon, Eric Höweler (Principals in Charge), Ryan Murphy, Parker Lee, Liu Xi, Thena Tak, Cyrus Dochow.
Structural Engineer: ARUP
MEP Engineer: AHA Consultants

Hat tip to A Daily Dose of Architecture

BSA design/practice workshop series – Earn AIA LU’s

Click for class schedules and descriptions

Boston’s KidsBuild is May 29 and 30

From the BSA Currents online Newsletter, May 21, 2009 – Bring your children on May 29 and 30 to learn about architecture and design from the ground up at KidsBuild! Adults and children ages six and older will design the building of their dreams and see a city come to life at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston). Friday, May 29 is reserved for school and community groups and ICA members from 3:00 to 7:00 pm. On Saturday, May 30, the public is welcome to participate from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. The activity takes approximately two hours. Pre-registration is required.

For more information, visit KidsBuild.

The unemployed architect

photo via Seattle PI

First in a series of discovery…

What one unemployed architect is doing now that she has nothing to do.  Click