Last week, we posted on the off-site fabrication of the panels for the coffered roof above the studio hall at the University of Melbourne. The first bay has been assembled and craned in place! Stay tuned for the full reveal.
JWA in collaboration with NADAAA. Photo credit: JWA
Comments Off on Coffered Roof Taking Shape
Last Friday, NADAAA joined the rest of the Boston architecture community in celebrating the 3rd Annual BSA Design Awards. NADAAA won an Unbuilt Architecture Award for University of Toronto DFALD, Unbuilt Architecture Honorable Mention for New Hampshire Retreat and the People’s Choice Award for Macallen Building. Thank you to everyone that voted! More photos here.
Comments Off on BSA Design Gala
Archinect’s Working out of the Box series previously featured Moneta Ho, a classic MIT grad, who has taken her architectural knowledge base as a platform for other parallel practices beyond the realm of buildings. Along with other peers, such as Matthew Trimble (Radlab founder), Axel Kilian and Carl Lostritto, MIT continues to imagine alternative futures for architectural applications. Read more on Archinect!
Image via Archinect
Comments Off on Working out of the Box
I have been passing some websites and reading back and forth with people and thought it might interest others out there. So here it goes:
GRASP article is my favorite one so far. I have read it about once a day for a week. Dezeen post on architects and social media is also an excellent read. Browsing through Molo shop is inspiring.
Comments Off on READINGS FOR 2014
The glu-lam coffers at University of Melbourne are being prefabricated off-site and prepared for installation. Each module differs in dimensions, faceted to integrate with the suspended studio.
JWA in collaboration with NADAAA. Photo credit: JWA
Comments Off on Melbourne Coffered Roof
A large section-model of our proposed design for the University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design was commissioned for an on-site exhibition. Challenged by an extremely fast delivery schedule, the model was an opportunity to flex our digital design and fabrication capabilities.
The 7’x3′ landscape is cut on our CNC router out of laminated fiber board.
The model base incorporates a internal steel frame for strength and rigidity.
Model pieces are cut on the router, cleaned, and arrayed for ease of assembly
A system of interlocking joints ensures strong, accurate connections and incredibly rapid assembly.
The model is pegged, clamped, and glued like a robust piece of furniture.
The completed model on display at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Design.
Many parts of the model, like the roof surface, required milling on both sides.
A laser-cut jig was used to accurately position the decorative fins on the north facade of the building.
Comments Off on DFALD Section Model
Tongva Park is an impressive new project by Field Operations at the corner of Colorado and Ocean Ave. in Santa Monica. Besides its stunning location and diverse amenities and horticulture, it caught our eye for its implementation of welded flat bar fence and lattice enclosures. NADAAA had ambitions to implement similar parallax and gradient effects in steel along the sides of some of the bridges during the Cornell U. and City of Ithaca Bridges Means Restriction Project. These plans ultimately did not fit the client’s goals for the project, so it was satisfying to see a similar design realized elsewhere.
Comments Off on Flat Bar Fences
For the Manhattan office of engineering firm Simpson, Gumpertz and Heger we harnessed the material and processes frequently analyzed by SGH staff to produce minimal furniture for their copy-room and reception area. The pieces were built by NADAAA in our Boston fabrication space.
Plate steel is plasma-cut off-site. Extruded stock is cut and prepared in-house.
The CNC-cut plates are used to jig the steel frames of the shelving units, which are fully-welded, then tacked to the plate.
Blocking and clamps are used for fit-up, ensuring all elements are square and parallel.
The randomized fin pattern of the reception desk is achieved with spacers of different widths. These spacers ensure that all fins are perfectly parallel. The fins are subtly tacked to the back of the frames so that the connection is not visible.
The 3/8″ thick base plates of the reception desk are leveled and the vertical elements are plumbed, clamped, and welded.
The reception desk is built in three monolithic elements, each carefully designed with respect to the clearances necessary for installation.
Parke failed to measure the truck… good thing he’s lucky.
The robust copy-room tables and shelves resolve functional requirements with an absolute minimum of details: Vertical planes float past slender vertical members.
The reception desk operates as an “inflated” I-beam, with blackened-steel plates connected by a web of irregularly spaced fins.
The patterning of the fins creates shifting perceptions of transparency and opacity from different vantages.
Welds are placed in such a way that the end product reads as a pure assemblage of orthogonal planes.
Comments Off on SGH-NYC, STEEL OFFICE FURNITURE
Last October, NADAAA submitted its design for the Parramatta Square Competition. Although the design was not selected, it was a great exercise in NADAAA’s continual commitment for its projects to engage with urbanism, constructing a dialogue between building and landscapes at one scale, as well as skylines and urban formations at another. Visit the project page for design concept and images.
Comments Off on PARRAMATTA GEMINI TOWERS
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!”
Comments Off on Farewell to Higgins Armory Museum