hanrahan Meyers architects BLOG

Urban Design: design timeline for Pratt

Campus Master Plan

Urban Design: how a 10,000 square-foot pavilion changed the master plan for an urban campus

Pratt Pavilion began with a gift by a Pratt Board member to unite two existing buildings into one Design Center.  hMa's generating design idea - a drawing of two ‘boxes’ floating above a ramp – is on hMa’s cover page. Pratt Pavilion developed from three-dimensional and material studies, starting with drawings and study models, followed by digital and refined physical models.  The Pavilion site was a small opening between two buildings. The insertion in this space would be the public face for the Center, and fuse itself and the buildings into one entity.  The end result was in jeopardy because of the cost of custom cladding.  During construction Milgo Bufkin donated the development of hand-rubbed steel panels to match hMa’s material studies. The final building represents the original concept of a volume in the air crafted from fine materials.  The craft of the building underlines Pratt’s legacy of design arts, housed in the new Center.

time, distance, form, and architecture

Time : the diagram for Hudson River House as a hieroglyphic

Distance : the BPC Community Center’s facade incorporating a musical score

Form : Pratt Pavillion: deformed cube floated above a glass entry

In early modernist architectural thought the clearest thesis that connected the modernist idea of spatial design to geometry was Le Corbusier’s ‘Modulor’ – a small booklet published by Le Corbusier in 1948, describing his method of laying out architecture using the golden section rectangle.  More recently, in 1995, Robin Evans' The Projective Cast, a collection of essays, traced mathematical thought as it informs architecture from the Renaissance through modernism. 

covers of Le Corbusier's 'Modulor'

Any great architecture stands in recognition of mathematical ideas.  Mathematical principles applied to space brings us in contact with:

time : the Cartesian grid;  distance : space;  and form : geometry.

Through the application of mathematical forms, we are put in touch with great mathematical minds:

Pythagora, Decartes, Newton, Fibonacci, Euler, And Nash –  for example.

It is in this vast reconnection through space and time that architecture can produce a profound revelation for each of us:  connecting back through time for thousands of years; and, vice-versa -  connecting us to the open-ended future state of human exploration and endeavor.

Projection and its analogues: The Arrested Image, Robin Evans (from The Projective Cast, MIT, 1995)

Infinity Chapel in Construction : Curved Walls

Infinity Chapel- chapel view looking out toward storefront

In construction - curved wall and stair to mezzanine

NY Apartment design by hMa featured in Met Home's Glamour : Making it Modern Book

hMa is pleased to announce the publication of Metropolitan Home's Glamour : Making it Modern.  The book features hMa's Ash 4 Ways / White Space Apartment both inside and on the back cover.

More about the book from barnesandnoble.com:

Glamour. It's hard to define yet most know it when they see it. Today, glamour may still invoke the sophistication and refinement of the golden years of Hollywood art deco, but country, industrial and even nature glamour have joined the more traditional modes.

The 21st century has brought glamour-and her sisters, decoration and ornamentation-back into home design news. Today's most cutting-edge homes embrace design of every kind from every corner of the globe. It's a marriage of disparate styles that finds no contradiction. Glamour is in vogue in homes that are castles (literally) and in one-bedroom rentals at the fringes of downtowns.

Looking at homes recently featured in Metropolitan Home, Glamour, Making It Modern reconsiders them through the following sections:

• concepts: looks at the defining general notions of Modern Glamour, such as sheen and scale,
• objects: examines elements of home decoration which are inherently glamorous,
• rooms: tours homes where everything comes glamorously together.

With a directory of the designers, some of the best in the business, and a list of resources for available products, Glamour, Making It Modern is purely inspirational and absolutely accessible.

Click here to view more photos of Ash 4 Ways / White Space Apartment on hanrahanmeyers.com

Click here to view and/or purchase the book at barnesandnoble.com

Houses of Sagaponac : Glass House: Contemporary Residence

hMa was recently contacted by Richard Reinhardt, who took over the Houses at Sagaponac Development, and asked to revisit their design for the original development.  hMa's new house design is a modernist glass box poised on top of an artificial 'ground plane' (the lower level of the house housing the bedrooms, garage, and swimming pool).  hMa's house design is scheduled for construction in 2009.

bird's eye view facing the street

About the Houses at Sagaponac project (http://www.housesatsagaponac.com/) :

"Houses at Sagaponac is an acclaimed development by the late Harry J. Brown with the assistance of Richard Meier.  The project features 34 summer houses designed by internationally recognized architects to acheive design excellence on a modest budget and scale, leading to a community by and for thinking people.  The houses represent an appreciation of artistic vision and sensiblity, challenging the current standards of gradiosity and repetition. 

American Dream: Houses at Sagaponac was published by Rizzoli NY in 2003."

swimming pool

Urban Reserve in the Wall Street Journal

The following is from an article published in the Wall Street Journal on 5/01/2009.

" Some residential suburban communities insist on tiled roofs; others dictate color palettes and lot sizes. Often, the goal is to capture the look of a time in the past, before modern living and high housing costs changed tastes and materials.

But a small number of new developments is taking the opposite tack. Here, buried amongst a middle-class community and near the Central Expressway, is a street where the construction of Colonials and Tudors is expressly forbidden. Even mid-century modern is considered passé. "Make no mistake. It's a dictatorship and I make the rules," project developer Diane Cheatham says half-jokingly.

The result is Urban Reserve, a 13-acre development devoted to contemporary design. Pass a neighborhood of standard issue brick tract ranches and turn onto Vanguard Way and suddenly one confronts what looks like scene from a science fiction movie...."   -written by Nancy Keates

Click here for the full article and slideshow at wsj.com

Top left:  Exterior of See-Thru House, hMa's design for the Urban Reserve development.  Above : Interior view, See-Thru House

Learn more about See-Thru House on hanrahanMeyers.com

New hMa blog: Cultural Conversations

Cultural Conversations is a new blog from architect Victoria Meyers dedicated to aspects of culture and life as experienced in the American Landscape.  Here's a sampling if what's to come:

www.culturalconversations.com

Light in Architecture

Designing With Light by Victoria Meyers on Amazon.com.  

For more information about the book, and for Victoria Meyers' biography go to designingwithlight.us/.

Victoria Meyers featured in ArchNewsNow

hMa partner Victoria Meyers was quoted in an article by Norman Weinstein entitled, “WORDS THAT BUILD: Translate Images Into Touching Performances”.  The following is an excerpt from the article, which is part of a series by Norman Weinstein focusing on the overlooked foundations of architecture: oral and written communication:

A crucial and commonplace communications breakdown between architect and client occurs when an architect does his or her detailed presentation. The architect and educator Victoria Meyers addresses this disconnect incisively: “Space is a very abstract art form and it is very difficult to communicate to a client ahead of time what they are buying into. We will build very specific physical models and computer models, we’ll do renderings, we’ll provide material samples, and I know exactly what the space consists of before it goes into construction. Still, it’s always a shock for the client.”

Read the full article here.

Infinity Chapel