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design awards
T S A stu d i o A w a r d s The review of Studio Award entries followed the jury’s finalizing its selections for Design Awards. From the 48 submittals, the jury kept 14 for a second round before deciding to award seven projects. Three of them in particular garnered praise from the jurors—Square of Circles by Jay Smith, AIA, of Dallas; Houston Skyscraper by Michael Kross, an architecture student at Rice University; and Design>Build>Texas by architecture students at UT Austin. Of Square of Circles, Machado said: “I think it’s a very ingenious building. It’s full of invention and has a very fresh idea. It’s playful and it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. I imagine that being inside and being close to that tree can be a very beautiful experience. I would like to underline its freshness, its novelty. As a little pavilion, or a gazebo, it’s a great idea.” Trahan described Houston Skyscraper this way: “If urbanism is about density and diversity, I think this does an exceptional job of taking that density and diversity into a high-rise structure skinned with a consistency that seems to beautifully respond to the variety in the program but unify that program. It’s also nice how the building at times acts as a shading device because it’s an introverted high-rise, but at other times you can imagine the sun beginning to illuminate the ground plane around it and so the freeing of the base of the program has resulted in a unique experience. I hope it’s built someday.” Design>Build>Texas, according to Schwartz, is “a very poetic, regional project. I applaud not only the work of the students but their professor in this design-build exercise to create an award-winning building in its own right. But in addition to the process of design-build used as a methodology for teaching students, I think this is another example of care and caring relationship to the landscape and of the role of educating young architects.” S t e p h e n
S h a r p e
CUBE RTKL Associates The concept is to create a single powerful iconic statement for the new focus of the Penn Plaza District. The idea is to make a singular architectural statement that has multiple identities, and multiple reads. This is accomplished by creating a relatively inexpensive building shell, and then wrapping the 7th Avenue facade with a hightech glass projection wall that will appear to float away from the core building. By projecting color, pattern, light, images, and text, each tenant (Target, Home Depot, and IKEA) will have the ability to promote brand and identity, retail imagery, and spectacular light shows along three 100 x 200-foot screens. The building is a sophisticated fusion of architecture and brand that brings focus and elegance to the district.
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