5 Under 40 is New England Home‘s annual celebration of young talent, and this year’s awards ceremony is coming up.

On Thursday, September 15, join New England Home at presenting sponsonr Landri & Arcari‘s showroom on Stuart Street, where they will honor this year’s winners:

Architecture

• Jinhee Park, AIA – Principal at Single Speed Design
• Nima Yadollahpour – Founder and Principal at ONY architecture

Interiors

• Rachel Reider – Founder of Rachel Reider Interiors

Furniture & Home Accessories

• Debra Folz
• Kelly Harris Smith – Co-Founder of FilzFelt

Each winner was given the chance to design a custom rug, which was then produced by Landry & Arcari. The rugs will be auctioned off at the event, with the proceeds going to benefit Barakat, Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.–based charity promoting educational opportunities for women and children in central and south Asia.

I’m excited about this year’s event, as I’ve been a big fan of two of these designers for some time. The work Jinhee and her partner John Hong have done around the region — particularly the modern residences throughout the suburbs — are outstanding. Their Big Dig House is an icon of modern (as in of the present time) design.

Always a collaborator, Kelly’s been involved in the Boston design community for many years. I first came to know her through Etcetera Media, a textile product company she started with her husband, Chris Grimley of Over,Under. Then there’s Design Nearby, an annual holiday sale she curates with Ann Karash (of smartdames and the 47th.)

Tickets are available for $35 in advance, or $45 at the door. This is most certainly a can’t-miss event, and I look forward to seeing you there!

Through its previous events, SHIFTboston has asked designers to rethink Boston, rethink experiencing Boston Harbor, even rethink the Moon. This time, SHIFTboston wants you to rethink… a commuter rail line?

For “WHY STOP?”, SHIFTboston has partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s South Coast Rail Economic Development and Land Use Corridor Plan (great name, huh?) to challenge “urban planners, architects, urban designers, designers and landscape architects — professionals and students — to explore and visualize destinations along the proposed South Coast Rail extension, which will connect Boston to Taunton, New Bedford, and Fall River, Massachusetts.”

This is a great idea. As a Bostonian that doesn’t own a car, the idea of traveling out to New Bedford or Fall River would need to include a lot of planning — let alone a reason for making the trek. Why would we go through the effort?

This is where SHIFTboston comes in.

The planned extension of commuter rail lines from Boston’s South Station to the Massachusetts South Coast has the capacity for broader re-conception and re-imagination of the region. We encourage competitors to investigate and to explore the potential of this new network and its RESOURCES. Competitors might animate the rail system by adding to or enhancing the latent urban NETWORK. These NEW destinations could draw from the regional and local resources, industry and culture such as, universities, agriculture, arts, marine industry, historical institutions, tourism and recreation. FUN? Consider what has not yet been considered — contemporary communal and PUBLIC meeting places, open markets for local food production, a regional cultural campus of performance space and theaters connected by rail, or new research and development campuses or dense residential districts. The submission might explore these stopping points along the rail as part of system of supporting links which make up a greater network. The competitor might also choose to focus on further developing the central core of one or more of the cities on the line, such as Fall River or New Bedford.

Competitors can choose to submit a proposal for one of four locations: the New Bedford stop, the Fall River stop, Environment, or “You Tell Us” (which sounds at once like a cop out AND much more complex).

The jury includes representatives from architecture, urban planning, academia, and government:

• Julia Czerniak, Director of UPSTATE and Associate Professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture, Syracuse, NY
• Diane Georgopulos, Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency (Mass Housing), Boston, MA
• Greg Guimond, Deputy Director and Comprehensive Planning Manger of the Southeastern Regional Planning & Economic Development District (SRPEDD), Taunton, MA
• Scott Lang, Mayor, New Bedford, MA
• Edward Mitchell, Assistant Professor at Yale University School of Architecture and Principal of EMA, New Haven, CT
• Chris Reed, Principal and Founder of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Boston, MA
• Adèle Naudé Santos, Dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture, Cambridge, MA and Principal of Santos Prescott and Associates, San Francisco, CA
• Michael Sorkin, Principal of Sorkin Studio, New York, NY

The winning competitor, as chosen by the jury, will present his or her concept at the SHIFTboston WHY STOP Forum in Boston in October among members of the jury, government, community and business leaders, local developers and regional economic development groups.

The winning entry will be featured in a new game for mobile devices which will be featured at the Forum and as part of the WHY STOP Exhibition. Winning and select submissions will be on public display as part of a traveling exhibition which will begin at South Station in Boston, the New Bedford Public Library and then Fall River begining in January of 2012.

Interested in submitting an entry? The deadline for submissions is one month from yesterday, Friday, September 16, 2011. To register, visit http://shiftboston.org/competitions/register.php

The Globe, Herald, and Universal Hub have reported that apartment developer Avalon Properties has proposed building a 29-story residential tower on Stuart St. in Boston.

If approved, the 404-unit apartment tower, designed by Boston’s own CBT Architects, will take the place of a parking lot adjacent to the Jacob Wirth tavern. The building will feature “luxury studios renting for $1,800, one-bedrooms in the low- to mid-$2,000 range and two-bedrooms starting at $3,000 a month.”

While the image doesn’t show much detail, the building will be shaped like a T, with narrow street frontage. The design is generating split opinions on the ArchBoston forums, with some negatively comparing it to Vancouver’s residential towers, and others wishing it was an even stronger reflection of the West Coast Canadian city’s noted architectural style.

Personally, I think it’s a tasteful — if not terribly awe-inspiring — design, and it will be a good addition to the downtown landscape.

Mine is an opinion shared by some… and not by others. The Herald article quoted Ken Ham, president of the Bay Village Neighborhood Association: “It’s a great project,” he said. “It gets rid of another parking lot, puts another great building near us, and fills a void between Bay Village and Chinatown in a rundown area.”

Conversely, the Globe quoted Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association, who said in response to the proposal, “It sounds like the same old kind of thing we’ve been seeing a lot of in Chinatown. I don’t see it adding to the community’s priorities.” This is similar to Chinatown’s response to another 29-story residential tower on the other side of Chinatown back in 2007.

What do you think? Do you like the look of the new tower? Do you hate it? Do you think a luxury apartment building is what Stuart Street needs?

The New England Telephone Building and 225 Franklin Street, Friday, March 11.

One trait that I see over and over again in designers is that they’re always looking for ways to improve things. Whether it’s Le Corbusier with the density of Paris, or Michael Graves with a teapot, designers look at the world differently than the rest of us.

That belief holds true for Brookline-based architects Jin Choi and Thomas Shine of Choi + Shine Architects, who saw beyond the simple function of electrical pylons and designed giant, 150-foot figures with arms raised to carry electricity across the countryside.

Making only minor alterations to well established steel-framed tower design, we have created a series of towers that are powerful, solemn and variable. These iconic pylon-figures will become monuments in the landscape. Seeing the pylon-figures will become an unforgettable experience, elevating the towers to something more than merely a functional design of necessity.

Originally designed for a 2008 contest in Iceland to redesign powerlines (how they lost, I have no idea), Choi and Shine entered the pylon design into the Boston Society of Architects‘ Unbuilt Architecture competition this past spring. That, they won.

Despite the large number of possible forms, each pylon-figure is made from the same major assembled parts (torso, fore arm, upper leg, hand etc.) and uses a library of pre-assembled joints between these parts to create the pylon-figures’ appearance. This design allows for many variations in form and height while the pylon-figures’ cost is kept low through identical production, simple assembly and construction.

The idea of these towers running across the bare, Icelandic terrain is pretty epic, but I wonder how they’d look running along I-95, bringing power from Connecticut to New York City. Or just a few walking away from the power plant in Everett, across the Mystic from Charlestown.

Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.

(via Boston Phoenix)

As the saying goes, a company is only as good as its employees. CBT Architects underscored that philosophy when they named new Senior Associates and Associates.

Recognizing the leadership value these individuals bring to the firm, CBT Architects, Boston’s second largest architecture and urban design company, has named 5 new Senior Associates, and 12 new Associates. With experience on  a variety of the firm’s award-winning commissions — including office and mixed-use, multi- and single-family residential, hospitality and retail, academic, historic preservation, and interior design projects, as well as on operational support — these new Senior Associates and Associates have an opportunity to have a voice in the strategic and future direction of the firm. This is especially important as the Boston architecture industry continues to pull itself out of the recession of the last few years.

The new Senior Associates, listed in alphabetical order:

Joe Bettencourt

Eileen Casciari, RA

Adrian LeBuffe, LEED AP

Sharon Steinberg, RA LEED AP

Andrew Wang, RA LEED AP

The new Associates:
• John Bedell, RA LEEP AP
• Mark Bourassa, RA LEED AP
• Henry Celli, RA LEED AP
• Matt Francke, RA LEED AP
• Monte French
• Virendra Kallianpur, LEED AP
• Jennifer Miller, NCIDQ LEED AP
• Michael Moore, RA LEED AP
• Chad Morig, RA LEED AP
• Elizabeth Peterson, SPHR
• Jeremy Schwartz
• Kristi Sprinkel

“CBT’s greatest strength is the skill and talent of its staff,” said Richard J. Bertman, FAIA, LEED AP, a founding principal of CBT. “These promotions recognize key individuals who have made significant contributions to the growth and success of the firm and will act as leaders for its future.”

Congratulations to all of the new Associates and Senior Associates, and to CBT!

Know of any other firms that are growing, shinking, or otherwise changing? Be sure to let us know!

Earlier this week, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) concluded their Greenway District Planning Study, setting building height limits along the 1-1/2 mile long Rose Kennedy Greenway.

To ensure that no one building or collection of buildings dominates the Greenway in terms of its scale, orientation, or architecture, the team examined potential massing studies from the perspective of the park user. Heights were also carefully analyzed for their potential to cast large or lengthy new shadows on the park parcels. Final height recommendations range from buildings between 175-200 feet along the waterfront to buildings ranging as tall as 400-600 feet on the city side of the Greenway.

The objective of the study was to create a set of guidelines specifically for the parcels adjoining the Greenway, with the following goals:

• preserve the newly created open spaces (environmentally, aesthetically, and economically) by identifying densities, height, and other building massing criteria compatible with the recreational activities and horticultural life that are being encouraged to grow there;
• Activate the broader public realm in and surrounding the parks by identifying and strategically locating desired uses, particularly at the ground plane, that will contribute positively to the Greenway;
• Ensure the long-term value of the public’s investment in creating the Greenway by shaping development to maximize the quality of the parks and extend their impact beyond its edges to the Downtown neighborhoods;
• Balance the development pressures within the Greenway District and with other growth areas and development opportunities in the City as a whole.

Using the new guidelines, the BRA and study-partner Utile estimate that between 2-million and 3-million additional square feet of buildings can be constructed along the Greenway, offering housing, shopping, and work space for up to 9,000 additional people.

The new ruling, as expected, has created winners, like Government Center Garage developer Thomas O’Brien, and losers, such as Donald Chiofaro, who has proposed a 625-foot tower where the Harbor Garage currently stands.

I’m excited to see how the Greenway — and the spaces around it — continue to adjust to the best possible fit for the residents, workers and tourists that frequent the area.

The Boston Globe recently reported on a proposal by local developer Samuels and Associates for two new buildings in the Fenway.

A building at 132 Brookline Ave. would house 170 high-end apartments and include retail space on the first floor. A street over, on the corner of Boylston and Van Ness streets, another building would hold 150 luxury apartments, 200,000 square feet of retail space, and 225,000 square feet of office space. The company also plans to build 500 parking spaces underground.

The two 15-story mixed-use projects are part of the larger Fenway Triangle development by Samuels & Associates — including 1330 Boylston Street and Fenway Triangle Trilogy. If the rendering above is any indication, the new buildings will keep the design theme of the earlier two (which were designed by Elkus Manfredi), modern but uninspired.

Assuming these buildings are a success, further development could include two further buildings along Yawkey Way, between Boylston Street and Brookline Ave.

Back in 2006, I questioned whether the Fenway was the right neighborhood for these developments, and the increased popularity of the buildings — as well as the nearby Landmark Center — show that Samuels & Associates are onto something.

After an open call for entries and a “a review process conducted by a jury of prominent designers”, winners for this year’s Design Biennial Boston have been announced:

Dan Hisel of Dan Hisel Architect, Somerville

Carla Ceruzzi and Ryan Murphy of Ceruzzi & Murphy Projects, Somerville

William O’Brien, Jr. of William O’Brien Jr. LLC, Cambridge

Gretchen Schneider of Schneider Studio, East Boston

Theodore Touloukian of Touloukian Touloukian Inc., Boston

The five firms represent a wide range of emerging practice types, from those whose work is primarily produced digitally to others that have built extensively. “We were inspired to see so many innovative practices submit,” explained juror Amanda Reeser Lawrence, editor of the architectural journal Praxis and a professor of architecture at Northeastern University. “The people we selected represent a cross-section of the broad talent in our city. As practices, they each promote the kind of fresh contemporary design thinking that is so urgently needed for Boston’s future.” The five firms represent a wide range of emerging practice types, from those whose work is primarily produced digitally to others that have built extensively. “We were inspired to see so many innovative practices submit,” explained juror Amanda Reeser Lawrence, editor of the architectural journal Praxis and a professor of architecture at Northeastern University. “The people we selected represent a cross- section of the broad talent in our city. As practices, they each promote the kind of fresh contemporary design thinking that is so urgently needed for Boston’s future.”

This is the first of what will become an annual event in the city, further promoting Boston’s place as a top design captial.

The Design Biennial Boston aims to identify and promote emerging designers who have shown promise in developing an innovative body of independent work. “The new Biennial series provides us with ways to better fulfill the gallery’s mission of showcasing emerging design talent,” gallery co-director Chris Grimley stated. “This program lets us highlight Boston’s best designers across several professions.” The gallery will host two alternating programs, with even years dedicated to architecture and the built environment, and odd years dedicated to the design arts, including graphic and industrial design.

These five architects, and their works, will be featured at the Design Biennial Boston 2010 exhibition at pinkcomma gallery. The exhibition opening will take place next Friday, April 30, from 7:00 to 11:00.

pinkcomma gallery
81B Wareham Street
Boston, MA 02118

It took way too long, finding the processing limits of my MacBook, and solving an upload issue with my video hosting provider, but we have it: video of Steve Glenn’s recent talk at DWR.

On a drizzly Thursday night — nothing compared to what we’ve had for the last few days, mind you — over 35 architects, designers and design fans gathered amongst the modern furniture to hear what the LivingHomes founder and CEO had to say about starting his development firm.

For the sake of digestibility, I’ve broken the hour-plus video into six segments:

Steve started discussing development, his inspiration to get into the industry, and the importance of having a greater social good behind your business.

Next he talked about his buildings, the architects that have designed them (Ray Kappe and KieranTimberlake), the benefits of prefabrication — with cool videos of two LivingHomes houses being built in a matter of hours — and the importance of good design in environmentally-friendly home design.

Third, he discussed the importance of building the most environmentally-friendly building possible, and LivingHomes’ efforts to do so.

Beyond what the homes are made with and how they’re constructed, LivingHomes also helps homeowners be more responsible.

After that, Steve opened the talk up to questions, and boy did the architects in attendance have them!

In all, a very engaging conversation by a pioneer in the green home movement. I look forward to the day when a LEED-certified home is the standard, and not the exception. People like Steve Glenn are working to make that a reality.

Also, a big thanks to DWR for allowing me to set up front and center to film this!