Some of you may be aware that Globizen is working on a new project in Park City, Utah right now called the Parkview Mountain House.
It was first announced on the Globizen Journal back in the summer and then a later announcement was made appointing New York-based Mattaforma as the project architect. It's kind of a great story because Mattaforma is a relatively new firm that was formed by two architects who used to be at Studio Gang. So we have a long history of working together.
The vision for the project is a creative retreat in the mountains. A place to unplug, be active, and hopefully a place to foster creative expression, whatever that may be for you. It was inspired by the trip that I have been making to the mountains each year where we try and do exactly this. It's one of my favorite times of the year and one that I look forward to the minute the last one is over.
The team has just finished the schematic design phase for the house (see above axonometric). And we are now working through some of the structural and geotechnical issues that come with building in the mountains on very steep terrain.
To give you all one example, we had initially contemplated large multi-storey retaining walls to hold back the earth and embed the house into the side of the mountain. But that is now being changed to a stepped foundation that minimizes the amount of excavation and reduces each retaining wall to no more than a single storey. This move will also result in more wood and less concrete. It has been a fun learning process.
The creative retreat concept has also been evolving and we recently decided to make digital NFT art an integral part of the experience. We have a few collections that we have been stocking up on, but if any of you have any recommendations we are, of course, all ears.
Once the floor plans have been finalized, they'll be posted up on the Globizen Journal. So make sure to e-mail subscribe and follow along on Instagram at @parkviewhousepc.
OMA NY -- the New York office of OMA -- has just published its first monograph. It's called OMA NY: Search Term. For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an architecture firm that was founded by Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam in 1975.
The firm is considered to be one of the most influential in the world because of their projects, the writing and thinking of Rem Koolhaas, and because of how many notable architects developed their craft under his tutelage.
When I was in architecture school, OMA was a firm that people wanted to work at and I had friends who did. You weren't paid very much from what I remember, but people put up with that because you wanted OMA on your resume and you wanted to learn things from Rem (apparently he's a big fan of Raisin Bran in the morning).
The New York office of OMA is run by Shohei Shigematsu and Jason Long who are both partners. The practice started out as an American outpost, but it has become more independent over the years and, from what I can gather, it now prides itself on having its own attitudes and views on architecture and urbanism.
This monograph is about that. Twenty radical projects from the firm's new guard. It also includes interviews from people like Virgil Abloh (Off-White). I don't have a copy yet, but if you're an architecture and urbanism person, you probably want this one on your bookshelf.
Image: Rizzoli
This past summer, the Bentway (in collaboration with the City of Toronto, the Waterfront BIA, and the Toronto Downtown West BIA) issued a call for expressions of interest to re-imagine two key intersections under downtown Toronto's elevated Gardiner Expressway. The York Street intersection and the Simcoe Street intersection.
That process has run its course and the following six teams have now been shortlisted:
York Street
Sans Façon + Zeidler (Calgary/Toronto)
LeuWebb Projects + DIALOG + Mulvey & Banani Lighting (Toronto)
5468796 Architecture Inc. (Winnipeg)
Simcoe Street
O2 Planning & Design Inc. + Mulvey & Banani Lighting + ENTUITIVE (Calgary/Toronto)
Daily Tous Les Jours + SvN Architects + Planners + Latéral (Montreal/Toronto)
SOCA + Tiffany Shaw-Collinge + SHEEEP (Toronto/Edmonton)
The next step in this process is a nine-week design exercise where the above teams will go away and prepare their design concepts. We work with a number of the companies on this shortlist and I am sure that there will be some fantastic ideas that are put forward. After selecting the two winners, the plan is to then start construction in 2022.
The Bentway is doing some fantastic work in reimagining the underside of our downtown highway. This is yet another example of that. For more information about the competition, click here.
Photo by Brian Jones on Unsplash