Hasta La Ideas

News: architect Daniel Libeskind has been chosen to design a Holocaust memorial in the state capital of Ohio, USA.

A specially appointed selection committee this week approved Libeskind’s proposal for a five-metre-high memorial outside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.

The proposed design comprises two brushed stainless steel panels with cutouts that together form the outline of a six-pointed Star of David.

A walled limestone path would lead up to the memorial and provide seating, while both the walls and the panel would be inscribed with text.

The $2 million project will largely be privately funded, but the state will pay for site preparation costs.

Richard H. Finan, chairman of the advisory board that will make the final decision on the design, warned that the inclusion of a Jewish religious symbol in the design could invite legal challenges against the publicly funded portion of the project due to the separation of church and state in the US.

“If we get sued, it will be five years until this gets going,” he told the Columbus Dispatch, adding that Libeskind’s design would not fit in with the Civil War-era government building.

The shortlist for the project included Columbus-based artist Ann Hamilton, who proposed a limestone plinth designed to amplify sounds, and Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, who put forward a nine-metre-high sculpture of bronze leaves.

Elsewhere in the US, architect Frank Gehry’s proposed Washington D.C. memorial honouring President Eisenhower has lately faced a barrage of criticism over the project’s cost and controversial design.

In New York, Louis Kahn’s Four Freedoms Park commemorating President Roosevelt finally opened to the public last autumn, almost 40 years after it was designed. See all memorials on Dezeen.

Top image shows model of Libeskind’s proposed design.

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Holocaust memorial appeared first on Dezeen.

This six-sided building covered in mirrors is the new home for the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in Ohio by London-based architect Farshid Moussavi (+ slideshow).

The four-storey building, which opened this weekend, features faceted walls clad in mirrored black stainless steel and replaces the museum’s former address in the loft of an old playhouse complex.

Visitors to the museum arrive inside a full-height atrium, where the structure of the walls is left exposed and the surfaces have been painted bright blue.

White staircases lead up to galleries on each of the floors, including a large top floor exhibition space where the ceiling is coloured with the same blue paint as the walls to offer an alternative to the standard ‘white-cube’ gallery.

Located at the intersection of two major avenues, the museum faces onto a new public square by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and has entrances on four of its elevations for flexibility between different exhibitions and events.

As the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland is a non-collecting museum, it places extra emphasis on public programmes and events, which will take place inside a double-height multi-purpose space on the building’s ground floor.

Farshid Moussavi Architecture completed the project in collaboration with architects Westlake Reed Leskosky, who are based in Cleveland.

The museum first unveiled the designs for the building back in 2010, which you can see in our earlier story.

Farshid Moussavi launched her studio just over a year ago – find out more here.

Photography is by Dean Kaufman.

Here’s some more information from the architect’s website:

MOCA is a 34,000 sq. ft. non-collecting museum in the emerging Uptown district of Cleveland’s University Circle neighbourhood. Located on the corner of a triangular site at the junction of two major roads, the building will act as a beacon for this area of the city.

The new MOCA is arranged as a multi-storey building in order to produce a compact envelope and optimal environmental performance, and to liberate space for a museum plaza. The building in this location is exposed on all sides and has multiple entrances which will bring the museum added flexibility. Its prismatic form is clad in mirror black stainless steel panels which are arranged along a diagonal grid to follow the diagonal load bearing structure of the external envelope. These reflective panels will respond to weather changes and movement around the museum, providing visitors with constantly changing perceptions.

Upon entering the building, visitors will find the structure left exposed on the interior face of the envelope and treated with a fire-resistant, intense blue paint. The museum’s public and “back of house” activities will be interspersed along the section of the building and accessed physically and visually by a grand stair which ascends the museum’s vertical atrium. Each floor is designed to host a variety of configurations for maximum flexibility, with the blue inner surface which envelopes the different spaces providing a consistency across the various museum events. In the main gallery on the top floor, the blue surface will rise to form a deep blue ceiling, evoking the sky or a sense of boundlessness in contrast to the traditional idea of the gallery as a white, sealed, cube.

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by Farshid Moussavi appeared first on Dezeen.

Ohio’s only artisinal micro-distillery turns out small-batch spirits using local ingredients

You may know that a few big brands (The Limited and Abercrombie & Fitch) call Columbus, Ohio home, but more recently small-batch operations (Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream and Homage) have been helping get the Midwest some of the recognition it deserves. A new creatively-minded business, Middle West Spirits, is the latest to join the movement. Ohio’s first and only grain-to-bottle micro-distillery, the upstart brews their distinctly smooth Oyo vodkas and whiskey from soft red winter wheat that’s sourced locally.

Founders Brady Konya and Ryan Lang imported a 600-liter copper and stainless steel distillation system from Germany, which German master-craftsmen (in the business for over 200 years) came on-site to build in the 3,200-square-foot facility (a former taxi cab center).

Lang comes from a long line of distillers (his grandparents were even bootleggers) and uses that family history to marry cutting-edge technology to traditional techniques. Also a nod to the past, the name—pronounced Oh-Why-Oh—was the old-world name given to the Ohio River Valley by the Native Americans settled there, which means “beautiful river.”

We recently tried the three varieties on tap at Middle West Spirits—Oyo whiskey, vodka and a honey vanilla bean vodka, which infuses local wildflower honey and fair-trade vanilla beans from Uganda. All three are super pleasant on the palate, perfect for sipping or pouring over ice cream. Popping open the wax-sealed top immediately reveals an enticingly robust aroma begging for play.

With their hands in Columbus’ community arts scene and a host of liquors that embody a farm-fresh mentality, Middle West Spirits is a great example of the power of independent production and future Ohio endeavors. Each bottle is hand-numbered and sells for around $35.