The Melbourne School of Design has received an Education Facilities Design award from the Boston Society of Architects. The award level will be announced in a few months at the BSA’s annual gala.
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Since 1908 the Northern Avenue Bridge has been heavily used by the Bostons public. Extensive corrosion of the original steel structure created the need for a replacement. The BSA together with the City of Boston and Mayor Walsh recently hosted an ideas competition to explore the future of the beloved bridge. The following is one of two ideas proposed by our office, this one taking the vertical approach. A big thanks to our team Arthur Chang and Nick Safely!
A city’s skyline is one of its most precious attributes, it defines an iconography, and figures a recognizable identity in the common imagination. As Boston’s downtown core expands into the seaport district, a gap is forming along the north avenue bridge site as the city grows around it. The Flat Stanley Storage structure leverages a large infrastructural building –housing boats, cars, bikes and basic harbor functions– to produce a continuity of form in the skyline of Boston, and provide mobility and programmatic amenities unique to the site. The project functions as an icon for and a gateway to the expanded downtown, linking the historic business district to South Boston.
While much like the children’s book character, the Flat Stanley uses its extreme proportions to accomplish what other, more rotund buildings are incapable of, capitalizes on its eccentricity for the production of a public a pedestrian walkway, and a legible civic figure. Leasable high density parking, boat storage, and rentable bridge level retail provide the capital to fund and sustain the new pedestrian path. In addition thin film organic photovoltaics cover the ample south facing façade, powering the automatic parking apparatus and providing the development with additional capital when net positive energy is sold to the grid. The Flat Stanley synergizes several much needed infrastructures into a new icon for the skyline of Boston.
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Since 1908 the Northern Avenue Bridge has been heavily used by the Bostons public. Extensive corrosion of the original steel structure created the need for a replacement. The BSA together with the City of Boston and Mayor Walsh recently hosted an ideas competition to explore the future of the beloved bridge. The following is one of two ideas proposed by our office, this one taking the horizontal approach. A big thanks to our team Arthur Chang and Thomas Tait!
Traditionally, bridges have served to connect remote areas, as conduit; here is an opportunity to create a bridge as destination: a new center that connects the historic Boston Downtown with South Boston. We reconnect the Greenway with the Seaport district for pedestrian and bicycle access. It is not merely a path, it is itself a new locus, with open space, and programs for all ages. With variegated green areas catering to different needs, an elevated vantage point that overlooks the harbor, a restaurant and cafe on its lower deck, the New Northern Ave Bridge becomes a place that draws, connects, and projects further into Seaport District.
Improving on the original bridge, boats and other water-born vehicles can pass underneath thanks to its generous arching from bank to bank. While the northwest tip of the distorted quadrant touches the Seaport Boulevard Bridge allowing pedestrian crossover, the southeast tip points upwards in an elegant gesture – a peak that once climbed allows an overlook over the waterfront, an urban mountain top everyone will want to scale.
The bridge surface shears and creates an opening in its center that extends out into the water in the bay. A cafe and restaurant, right at the water, make for an exclusive location for eating out or getting a drink. A water station serving small boats, kayaks and other small transport vehicles awaits whoever is ready to cut into the water.
The bridge surface is divided into 4 distinct areas. An open meadow for frisbee throwers, a playground for children, a bosque around a large weeping willow with seats for reading and a large seating landscape facing downtown for relaxing while looking at the skyline.
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For this inaugural issue of the AIA Small Practice Practitioners Journal: Pleasure, Nader writes about his own history of practice and the intellectual project that continues to evolve in and out of NADAAA. “Launched as small endeavors under the banner of Office dA some thirty years ago, and now serving as the very platforms from which NADAAA undertakes explorations, this speculative ethic has helped to bind the research through the years, and in turn, connect the small scale experiment with the potential of large scale results.”
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In A Disaggregated Manifesto, an editorial critique for The Plan, Nader discusses the fragmentation of practice, as a result of an expanded domain and ever-growing breadth of specialized consultants. The editorial is composed as a series of reflections, notes and projections, an index, comprising a broader research, “to reconstitute the political agency of the architect by re-engaging the means and methods of processes – which are ever expanding by the day – if only to reconnect with the very protocols of making that provide for the instrumentality of the designer’s intellectual craft.”
Find the article here as PDF.
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In an event organized by Oris House of Architecture, Nader will lecture in Zagreb Monday, May 30th at 7.30 pm for the Faculty of Architecture in Multimedia Hall.
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On June 2 Nader will take part in a panel discussion in the Techincal University of Berlin joined by MVRDV co-founder Jacob van Rijs, Tobias Armborst of Interboro Partners, Freek Persyn from 51n4e, and Pier Paolo Tamburellli of Baukuh. Ralf Pasel and designer Ilka Ruby will moderate and Toyo Ito will give the keynote lecture on Friday, June 3rd.
The conference will look at the fundamental aspects of practices in architecture, in particular, the Design panel ‘will look at the design conception of architecture and thus at the design process as an agent and catalyst between idea and realisation’.The panel will be moderated by architect , and will also include and Nader Tehrani from Nadaaa. for the event.
For more information please visit the event website here.
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NADAAA (Design Architect) and Perkins+Will (Architect of Record) are collaborating on the design and development of a significant gateway project for MIT on East Campus at Kendall Square, pending the ongoing approval process of the City of Cambridge. The project is part of a multi-building institutional and commercial development that will revitalize existing buildings on Main Street with new high rises and a new open space to the south. The diverse program typologies and the urban influences from adjacent developments and the existing fabric have largely factored into the organizational framework and design concept. The project is a combination of renovated buildings at the podium and new construction in a tower. The program will include approximately 450 graduate student apartments in a mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and efficiency units. The podium of the project is a combination of existing buildings and new construction. The entire ground plane of the podium will be for retail use. The upper levels of the podium for the new construction scope will include a new Child Care center with an elevated playground, and the Social Commons for the residents of the apartment tower with an outdoor terrace. The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center will be in the upper levels of the existing buildings, along with additional space for future tenants.
More information on the project is also available here.
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NADAAA’s Amin Tadj, with his partners at VAV Studio, completed their installation, AND, at the Venice Biennale. The installation, a cylindrical gallery, acts as a narrative of work produced by the generation growing up in the 1979 revolution in Iran. Launching practice in the post-war aftermath, VAV Studio gained recognition through collaboration on successful competitions.
“In a broader view, “AND” stands for the way our generation acknowledges its drastically diverse society, and for our mission of conjunction. It represents the eclectic identities of ourselves. “AND” represents our praise for democracy. It introduces the possibility of resisting and negotiating simultaneously. “AND” represents our openness to collaboration, the belief that no one holds the ultimate answer, but rather that the answer can be found collectively. “AND” means that we are just a link in a chain.”
See more instagram photos of the installation here.
Soheila Beski and Nader in Iran, 2004
VAVStudio,
Principals:
Arash Aliabadi, Afshin Farzin, Saman Shamsbeki, Sakhi Shirmohammadi, Amin Tadjsoleiman
Design team:
Reza Katebi, Nazanin Mojahed, Mahsa Hosseini, Mahnoosh Nazari
Research Team: Homayoun Askari Sirizi, Khosro Salarian,
Film Director: Khosro Salarian,
Cinematographer and Editor: Mojtaba Yazdizadeh
Graphics: Elmira Mahnia
Fabrication: CARBON Studio,Ali Mirakbari
Web Design: Farzad Kafaei
Contributors:
Arsh 4D Studio (Pantea Eslami, Alireza Sherafati), Bonsar (Mohammad Majidi), Diba Tensile Architecture (Leila Araghian, Alireza Behzadi), Experimental Branch of Architecture Metropolitan (Arash Mozafari, Babak Rashedi, Aqil Bahra, Ashkan Sedigh, Pedram Dibazar, Siavash Ghabraie, Siavash Afshar), Farshad Mehdizadeh & Ahmad Bathaei, FEA Studio (Ensieh Khamseh, Arash Nasiri), Fluid Motion Architects (Reza Daneshmir, Catherine Spiridonoff), Hooba Design (Hooman Balazadeh), Logical Process Office (Elham Geramizadeh, Ehsan Hosseini), Metamorphosis Method (Amirhossein Taheri), Next Office (Alireza Taghaboni), Rai Studio (Pouya Khazaeli Parsa), Shift Process Practice (Rambod Eilkhani, Nashid Nabian), ZAV Architects (Mohamadreza Ghodousi,Parsa Ardam, Fati Rezaiee)
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