Final Opportunity to See Urban Timber at BSA

Posted on September 28th, 2014 by Nader Tehrani

Posted under: Events, Installations + Exhibitions, Things We Like

A final opportunity to view Urban Timber, in what is the final week of the exhibition at the BSA Space. Curated and organized by Yugon Kim, the exhibit was the result of a competition, resulting in dozens of submissions. Targeting innovative ways of building with wood, the agenda of the competition was to assemble four design teams to develop their proposal with the guidance of architectural mentors —Alan Organschi, Alex Anmahian, Andrew Waugh, and me, Nader Tehrani– towards full scale mock-ups that demonstrate through making. With the four projects, also an expansive overview of the uses of wood in history, new means and methods developed in recent times and the range of products that are the result of the wood industry. Not to be missed!

I helped mentor Christina Nguyen and Sean Gaffney, two brilliant young designers who took on the structural challenge of fabricating laminated plywood slabs –post-tensioned– that could take on variable geometries to construct a landscape: a new ground. Also participant to their project, C W Keller Associates, who have done amazing work with us in the past, with Steven Holl and Mark Goulthorpe.

http://www.architects.org/bsaspace/exhibitions/urban-timber-seed-city

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Duck-Work: Sean Gaffney, Christina Nguyen

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Coopered Column: Timothy Olson

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Four Corners: Yasmin Vobis, Aaron Forest, Ultramoderne

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M2X3: Christopher Taurasi, Lexi White, Jeffrey Lee

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Green Good Design Awards

Posted on June 27th, 2014 by Sia Herr

Posted under: Awards

NADAAA has always been dedicated to advancing construction and green development. We are proud that two our projects, University of Melbourne FABP and University of Toronto DFALD, are receiving Green Good Design Awards for 2014.

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Farewell to Higgins Armory Museum

Posted on January 10th, 2014 by Katie Faulkner

Posted under: Things We Like

Many of you may know that on December 31, Worcester’s Higgins Armory Museum closed its doors after 83 years of operation. This had been announced earlier in the year, and I scheduled a couple of visits to say our formal farewells. The Armory has become a family favorite – both for its amazing exhibits and its overall strange existence. Anyone travelling north of Boston on I-90 has passed the steel and glass structure, festooned daily with billowing flags and a bowsprit knight. If you did not ask yourself what it was doing there, shame on you.

It is unclear what will become of the 42,000 square foot building; the 24 suits of armor and incredible collection of oddities will integrate with the holdings of the Worcester Art Museum. Apparently the Higgins had been running in the red for years, and they repeatedly turned down offers from major institutions to purchase the collection. I can imagine that Higgins loyalists would not want to separate the armor from the building, the interior of which is nothing short of a medieval castle, with pointed arches, high stone ceilings, and several large steeds roaming the halls.

John Higgins was an industrialist who owned the Worcester Pressed Steel Company. Suits of armor were his passion, and in 1929 he built a museum next to his factory, appropriately mannered with a steel exoskeleton over glass skin. Being in the building was a strange experience of traveling back and forth in time – cloisters and great halls on every floor connected by muscular steel and glass staircases. But the greatest thing of course, has always been the collection. I am a nut for chainmail, and there was a lot of it – not only with the 13th through 16th century European armors, but Asian and Middle Eastern as well. While I have longed to wear it, mail (maille) weighs a ton which is why you only see it as something you would not be caught dead in, as furniture, or on runway mannequins. Maybe the 21st century laser-cut dress will allow us to put it back in style, clingy yet practical with just the right amount of sparkle.

My sons were always disappointed that John Higgins was not much into swords and other weaponry. There is the odd battle-ax, lance and maul, but they are not the stars of the show. The Higgins Armory was all about male fashion, and this kind of fashion needs no accessorizing. So if you can arrange a visit to the Armory building, run don’t walk. Otherwise, visit WAM in the Spring when they launch their show “Knights!”

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NOTES FOR THE NEW YEAR

Posted on January 6th, 2014 by Katie Faulkner

Posted under: Competitions

On January 2, NADAAA turned three years old, which seems as good a time as any to look back on 2013 and look forward to the New Year. While we never forget our legacy of Office dA, we annually set goals that surpass achievements and provide opportunity to expand our craft. Over the past year, the paramount objective remained to enable the designs to be built, with a close second being the expansion of our fabrication lab to both inform the design and support the first objective of GETTING IT BUILT. Thirdly, NADAAA continued to expand globally, with projects in Melbourne, Toronto, Villa Varoise. Tropez, and Kuwait. Closer to home, the office sought to more boldly occupy our Lower Roxbury address by renovating our storefront, as well as work with Urbanica toward the successful development of Melnea Cass’s Parcel 9. As a gift to both our peers and ourselves, we endeavored to invite the broader public to scheduled gallery shows as a way to inspire conversation and debate regarding the potential of Architecture.	KUWAIT HOUSE: A complex residential organization, the result of nuanced mediation between public, private and services area.

1920 WASHINGTON ST: NADAAA facade opens up onto the street with eyes wide open.
Building the Parts and the Whole Several projects were completed: Cornell Bridges, Beacon Street Residence, 57 East Concord, and SGH NY Office and Furniture. For Aesop USA, we delivered stores in East Hampton, Toronto, Venice Beach, San Francisco, and Hong Kong. This was the first year that we detailed, fabricated, and installed significant components of our design work, a trend that began with Aesop Toronto. During the last quarter of the year our team enjoyed the success of executing a full scale mock-up of a simple-to-install but complex-in-appearance gypsum ceiling – demonstrating to the Construction Manager the system’s feasibility, and resulting in a significant cost reduction of the sub consultant’s estimate. Reaching Globally Architecture has always been an international profession, made more possible than ever through digital platforms and teleconferencing. New opportunities were explored in Saudi Arabia, Basra, and Tehran, while ongoing work continued in France. Two competitions were entered: a tower for Parramatta, Australia; and a chapel in Ireland. Phase One of University of Toronto, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design broke ground in June; University of Melbourne Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning proved to be moving well ahead of schedule with substantial completion anticipated in 2014.	CORNELL BRIDGES: Safety mesh barriers work in tandem with structural configurations to form a new figure over the ravines in Ithaca. Photo by John Horner

CENTENARY CHAPEL: A concrete suspension structure forms the vault for the funerary space of mourning.
Working in the Neighborhood We had mixed success in our own back yard. On the one hand there were multiple successful exhibits; we kicked off 2013 with PINNED UP, an exhibit demonstrating the developments of NADAAA’s work. In April, NADAAA introduced Drawing Surfaces: Computing and a Vintage Pen Plotter. The November show, Makers in the Making, featured the work of six MIT faculty who share a progressive stance toward their respective disciplines. Becoming more involved in the urban design of our own city is a goal to carry forward. Watching much of the current Boston construction from the sidelines, we remain committed to proving that excellent design does not burden Project Costs. Like everyone else in town, we are watching the transformation of Dudley Square thanks in part to the renovated Ferdinand’s Building, and we remain confident that our block is not far behind. A small contribution will be the storefront development (the design for which is complete, provocative, and approved by the Washington Gateway Main Street) of our offices at 1920 Washington Street. A larger stake would be the commencement of Parcel 9, a mixed used development on Melnea Cass Boulevard featuring a hotel, housing, retail and underground parking. Finally, the greatest achievement of 2013 remains the collective talent of NADAAA employees, who take the firm’s ambitions as their own, and somehow make possible the impossible. Their abilities, ingenuity, and hard work continue to amaze our clients as well and Nader, Dan, and me. May all of you find as much joy in your work as we do in ours — Happy New Year from all of us at NADAAA.	PARRAMATTA: The Gemini Towers help to form a new skyline for Sydney, creating a new hybrid that engages the urbanism of the site.
PARCEL 9 DEVELOPMENT: Mixed-use block designed to create a public base with a residential and hotel mass above.

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Makers in the Making Soft Opening

Posted on November 30th, 2013 by Lisa LaCharité

Posted under: Installations + Exhibitions

In recent years, the privileged role of representation has given way to other critical forms of pedagogy within the Academy of Architecture. Beyond acts of drawing, specification and communication, the architect’s role has not only been expanded to include a political domain that challenges the industry’s means and methods of fabrication, conventional protocols of building, and a subservience to the construction industry at large, but also a re-evaluation of the instruments of analysis to include tactics from the arts, sciences, and cultural media to expand the critical terrain of the discipline at large. Architects are, more than ever, researching, making, testing and simulating with materials – both physical and cultural– as a foundation for imagining other ways to transform practice as we have come to know it. In the Academy, instead of preparing students for a practice on the verge of obsolescence, our faculty is taking on material practices that invent alternative ways of creating architectural organizations, smart systems, interactive environments and an architecture that is responsive to complex social and cultural demands. This is MIT, and these are Makers in the Making. – Nader Tehrani

MIT SA+P tweet from Makers in the Making soft opening on November 14, 2013:

Preview the MITM: Makers in the Making exhibition at the NADAAA gallery in Boston tonight at 8pm. #MITmitm http://t.co/S7gHovaLAE
— MIT SA+P (@mitsap) November 14, 2013

NADAAA Gallery and MITM exhibitors are now in preparation for the Makers in the Making (MITM) opening in December. The NADAAA Gallery doors will be open to visitors after December 13 for regular viewing. More details to come. See photos from our soft opening in November below.

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