Eames House Is First Project for Getty’s Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative

The sight of crumbling modern architecture—buildings often conceived and built in a flurry of systematic optimism, zippy colors (or pure, grime-magnet white), and, less than enduring materials—can be soul-crushing, as can the laborious and costly process of restoring a modern marvel to its former glory. The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles has committed to aid in this cause through the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative, an international program announced this week. “This research-based initiative will increase knowledge for the field and develop new tools to assist practitioners to conserve the architecture of the modern era,” said GCI director Tim Whalen in a statement issue by the The J. Paul Getty Trust. They didn’t have to look far for the first project: the Eames House in Pacific Palisades. A GCI team will undertake investigative work and analysis to understand the current condition of the house, built in 1949 by Charles and Ray, along with its contents and setting. They’ll also assist the Eames Foundation in developing a plan for the house’s long-term conservation and care. Architect Kyle Normandin, formerly of NYC-based Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, has joined the GCI to manage the new initiative, which is overseen by Susan Macdonald.

And speaking of valiant efforts to thwart the growing threats to modern architecture, our sharp-eyed friends at the World Monuments Fund are now accepting nominations for the 2012 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize. The $10,000 prize will be awarded this fall to a design professional or firm in recognition of “innovative design solutions that preserved or saved a modern landmark at risk.” The deadline for nominations is July 31. Click here for full details.

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Henry Urbach Named Director of Philip Johnson’s Glass House

Philip Johnson‘s Glass House will soon have a new leader manning the transparent and modern ship. Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced that Henry Urbach will be taking over as director of the historic architectural landmark in New Canaan, Connecticut. Urbach most recently served as curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA, having taken leave from the position last spring to work independently, which included research work at the Glass House itself. Previously, he’d also run a popular gallery in New York for nearly a decade, the eponymous Henry Urbach Architecture. It is currently planned that he will take on the roll at the Glass House on April 2, replacing its current interim director, Rena Zurofsky, who had this to say about his selection:

I met Henry last spring and was struck by his energy and enthusiasm for the site. He seems to me ideal to lead the dedicated Glass House team into even more innovative and exciting programmatic terrain, and to push restoration programs on track. I congratulate Henry, and also Estevan Rael-Galvez, Vice President of Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on his astute choice.

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C&G Partners Celebrates MLK Day with Debut of King Center Digital Archive Site

The design whizzes over at C&G Partners have many talents, but among the most mind-blowing is their ability to transform grayish-yellowish mountains of historical documents and artifacts into visually stunning, user-friendly exhibits and displays. Feast your eyes (and your web browser) on their latest archival triumph: a website for The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. A C&G team led by partner Maya Kopytman (working in collaboration with Chicago-based web development firm Palantir) created a site that builds on the graphic identity established for a related traveling exhibition that the firm completed last year. At the core of the site, which launched yesterday, is a new digital archive for The King Center Imaging Project, a JPMorgan Chase & Co.-backed initiative to “bring the works and papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. to a digital generation.” Browse the archive to pore over King’s handwritten notecards and telegrams or zoom in on a Flip Schulke photo of MLK enjoying lunch with his family in 1964, under the watchful gaze of Ghandi, whose image hangs on a wall above them. Next up: more meticulously scanned and eminently searchable letters, speeches, drafts, notes, and photos. The King Center Imaging Project digital archive will eventually contain about a million documents.

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Ambitious St. Louis Arch Redevelopment Project Gets Scaled Back

It’s now been more than a year since landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh‘s was awarded the project to redevelop the area around St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, and more than ten months since the project suddenly doubled in estimated costs. Now, like with many ambitious building efforts, reality seems to slowly be creeping back in. Despite having just landed a $20 million grant from the government to help the redevelopment, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the organizers have already had to start scaling back the project’s grand scope, as well as starting to consider what they can feasibly have done by 2015, when the Arch celebrates its 50th anniversary. Perhaps most telling is that the paper reports the project has raised just $57 million thus far, which includes that $20 million grant. Given that the effort was expected to cost somewhere in the $600 million range, that’s a lot of ground to make up. The new, scaled back plans are expected to be released sometime in January.

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Archeologist Argues Sex Pistols Graffiti As Important As Ancient Cave Paintings

Since Werner Herzog’s 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams was such a big hit earlier this year, should we now expect a follow up, wherein the adventurous director travels to the wilds of central London and dares enter a small apartment? If you’re a certain professor of archeology at the University of York, you apparently might consider it. The Telegraph reports that a handful of cartoons drawn by John Lydon (or Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols have been discovered behind a cupboard in what are now offices. The archeologist in question is Dr. John Schofield who has compared the find with the cave paintings at Lascaux in France, or at the very least, perhaps even more important than the “lost early Beatles recordings” the BBC found in the mid-90s. In that case, Schofield is careful to remind that a producer at the time of that finding said the discovery was “like finding Tutankhamen’s tomb,” so his comparison to ancient cave paintings shouldn’t sound so absurd. That said, the Guardian‘s Johnathan Jones isn’t buying any of it. Writing that “archeologists should know better” and that anyone from that field who agrees with the importance of the find is merely doing so “to provoke their own profession” without really understanding that modern culture constantly “glorifies the immediate.” In a general sense, his argument seems to boil down to: why stoop to pop culture’s level when there’s legitimate, albeit less sexy, work to be done? Our personal addendum is that, while we genuinely like Lydon’s drawings, and realize their importance to the comparatively very recent history of music, isn’t it a bit premature to label something a major archeological find when the guy who drew them is still alive, and could likely redraw the same cartoons today?

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More Issues, Delays for September 11th Museum

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While the National September 11th Memorial was met record demand, received generally positive reviews, and has already had more than half a million visitors, that doesn’t mean the rest of the larger project is progressing along as smoothly. In a story nearly as old as when the rebuilding effort began, and a slowness you might recall 60 Minutes once called “a national disgrace,” there’s been yet another slowdown in the construction efforts on the Snohetta and Davis Brody Bond-designed museum portion. The Wall Street Journal reports that the two bodies overseeing the effort, the Port Authorities of New York and New Jersey, have “stopped approving new contracts and extensions of existing contracts,” all stemming from disagreements with the foundation behind the project, as well as financial issues, which have seemingly plagued the development from the very start. This latest series of hurdles seems to indicate that once again the opening of the museum will be pushed back from its original planned opening date next September.

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We Told You So Edition: Dinosaur Auction Boom Continues

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We don’t want to toot our own horns here, but we’d just like to remind you that we’ve been talking about the importance of dinosaur bone auctions and purchases for years now. Heck, we even went so far as to label 2009 “The Year of Dinosaur Sales.” So here we are at the very end of 2011 and Bloomberg, the very bastion of business and economic news, has published a piece about “the escalating demand for dinosaurs.” In the piece, they report that both prices and demand for all those dusty prehistoric bones has risen considerably, and that “the U.S. remains the world leader in mining luxury dinosaurs.” There’s also a lot of information about the growth of the dino auctions and an interesting profile on some of the people who do both the digging and the sales, but we think the really important takeaway from all of this is that we are clearly market visionaries who saw this budding financial opportunity coming years ago and therefore you should probably wire us all of your savings so we can invest in the next big boom. And just to show we mean business, our first hot tip is free: eco-friendly mega-yachts are going to be coming back in a big way. We’re certain of it (probably).

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Chicago’s Navy Pier Redesign Competition a Draw for Teams of All-Star Architects

Looks like a major redesign to a staple location within a large metropolitan area is just the sort of thing that draws in a batch of architecture’s heaviest hitters. There was speculation that the contest to redesign Chicago’s Navy Pier, which launched at the start of last month and which seeks to turn the large space into something better and more functional than its current status as the city’s central tourist trap, would bring in some substantial and well-known talent. Cut from a list of 50, there are now eleven teams selected. Among them, as if the top names like Zaha Hadid and Rem KoolhaasOMA/SGA weren’t enough as the leaders of the teams, the groups are also made up of others high-profile firms, like Bruce Mau Design and nArchitects joining James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro getting set up with Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, and Arup among the list on SHoP‘s squad. These eleven impressive teams will eventually be cut down to just five, who will then be given $50,000 each to develop proposals, which are set to go on public display sometime early next year. One thing we’d be willing to bet on is that design firm Pentagram will at least make it to the next round, if not all the way to the finish line, given that they’re included in no fewer than four different teams at the moment.

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Rocky Opening to the Musee d’Orsay Briefly Delays Checking Out Its Non-White Walls

It was a bit of a shaky restart for the recently rehabbed Musee d’Orsay in Paris. Planning to reopen on Thursday after a reconstruction effort to the 200-year old former train station that cost nearly $30 million and required a closure of two years, the museum was hit by staff protests, which pushed back its opening. The NY Times reports that the staff, most of whom were security guards, were angry over planned “broad government cutbacks that see retiring civil servants – including museum workers – not replaced by new hires” and decided to use the reopening as a publicity-heavy method of getting their message across. That temporary disruption eventually lifted on Friday, giving people a first look at the addition of more than 20,000 square feet, the newly hung Impressionist masterpieces, and most importantly: get a look at the color of those new walls. Perhaps one of the more talked about aspects of the rehab effort is the museum’s decision not to go with the standard all-white gallery walls. Saying that “white is the enemy of painting” given that it can reflect light too brightly and create a subtle aura that washes out the works of art, the museum decided to go with subdued shades of green, gray, etc. Thus far, no one seems particularly bent out of shape over the decision, but the Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones has stood up for white walls in one of his most recent columns, arguing that “there are lots of whites, good and bad” and that sometimes it’s just the best color for art to exist alongside.

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National Mall Design Competition Selects Its Jurors

Speaking of government-based contests as we were in that last post, we turn to something a bit more positive (or at least something that fewer people seem angry about). Launched last month, the National Mall Design Competition, which is attempting to rehab three specific areas to focus preservation efforts on (Union Square, the Washington Monument grounds at Sylvan Theater and Constitution Gardens) has now named their jurors. Picking their favorite entries for the estimated $700 million project are a list of, as was expected, luminaries from a number of fields. They include the Washington Post‘ former architecture critic, Benjamin Forgey, Pentagram‘s Michael Gericke, and architect about town, Thom Mayne. Thus far, the competition has reportedly registered more than 1,200 designers and firms from 10 countries and 30 states who are interested in participating. Out of those, the jurors will pick 58 to move forward. Here’s a bit about the process:

“In Stage I, the Jury will evaluate lead designers based on past design performance, philosophy, design intent, thoughtfulness, creativity and overall resume,” said Donald J. Stastny FAIA FAICP FCIP, the Competition Manager. “The Jurors’ professional expertise and diverse perspectives will be valuable assets in the selection process.”

The Jury will meet over three days to select the lead designers who they recommend be invited to participate in Stage II. That recommendation will be made to the Steering Committee, which will confirm that the designers met all of the requirements as stated in the Competition Manual and that there were no conflicts of interest in the Jury process.

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