School of American Ballet by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

At first blush, it seems that the architect and the dancer have little in common. Deal­ing with structures and edifices, architects strive for permanence of form; dancers work with gestures and movements, resulting in fleeting moments of beauty. But when architect Elizabeth Diller began redesigning the School of American Ballet (SAB), in collaboration with its artistic director, Peter Martins, she was struck by the affinities between the two disciplines. “We kind of do the same thing,” she says. “We’re interested in bodies and space, and we’re interested in overcoming laws of gravity.”


A couple of years ago, Martins decided he wanted to halve one of SAB’s more spacious studios. Hav­ing another one running would mean more classes, more students, and more flexibility for his pupils, most of whom study dance part-time in addition to taking a full load of academic classes. The fifth-floor space of the Samuel B. and David Rose Building at Lincoln Center was double-height, so Martins hoped to divide it horizontally, stacking the volumes “like pancakes.”


Before Diller took on the job, the architecture firm Davis Brody Bond suggested dividing the space with a conventional floor. Unfortunately that would have blocked the natural light from the windows, leaving the upper studio dark and cramped. Hoping for a more creative solution, Martins and his colleague Marjorie Van Der­cook, executive director of SAB, approached Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which was already overseeing an ambitious $700 million renovation of Lincoln Center. About five minutes after Dil­ler saw the space, she told Martins that it was certainly possible to stack a studio on top of another in a way that allowed for plenty of room and light. “You could suspend it,” she told him. “It would float.” Martins and Van Dercook were so enthusiastic that they asked Diller to draw up plans for a similar space next door. Eight months and $7.2 million later, there were two split-level studios separated by a lounge where donors and parents can observe classes.

From Metropolis Magazine 'Bodies and Spaces' by By Belinda Lanks

God’s Loftstory / LKSVDD

© Vincent van den Hoven

© Vincent van den Hoven

The  former  Dutch  Reformed  Evangelism  Building  in  Haarlo  has  been  transformed  into  a  unique  loft. The starting point for the design were the retained  (mostly with a need for restoration)  qualities of the 1928 dating monument,  the façade,  the bell tower with clock,  the volume,  the iconic location on the outskirts of the village  and nice details like  the wooden roof construction,  the old panel doors  and arch windows  with stained glass.

It was a conscious choice, not to fill the volume of 1100 m3 completely with as many rooms as possible, but to minimize the demands, in order to retain the spaciousness of the building. The only architectural additions are the mezzanine for the relaxation room  ( couch, bed and bath )  and the multifunctional “Stairway to have fun” ( stairs,  room divider,  closet,  build-in-kitchen,  acoustic element and exhibition wall ).

from archdaily.

Tokyo-Berlin_Berlin-Tokyo by Florian Busch Architects

Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo was an exhibition showing the 150-year-long history of mutual exchange in painting, architecture, graphic, photography, film, video, and performance. The exhibition comprised over 530 works showing how movements of influencing each other shifted between these two cities and culminated in the upper hall of the New National Gallery with the works of living artists from Tokyo and Berlin.

Finished in 1968, the New National Gallery is Mies van der Rohe’s last and arguably most modernist work. Rather than building walls following or working against this grid,  Florian Busch Architects proposed an exhibition design which would not be a top-down implant but translate Mies’s Cartesian grid into an undulating layer, gradually evolving in response to negotiations between the artists, the curators, and the designers.

more at archdaily.

Garden Museum: Dow Jones Architects

from archdaily:

In October 2007, Dow Jones Architects won an architectural competition to redesign the museum. The competition brief asked for a new gallery space where temporary exhibitions could be housed in secure and environmentally-controlled conditions.

The designers say:

"It appeared to us that creating a dedicated place for the museum’s permanent collection was equally important, as the exhibits were frequently moved to make space for events. We developed a strategy which addressed both issues.

Our idea was to create a belvedere within the existing building. This houses the new galleries and provides a raised ground from which a new perspective of the existing building is attained.

The belvedere structure enables us to place the temporary gallery at ground floor level and move the permanent collection, from its former location in the nave, up to the new first floor level."

This museum is about a five minute walk from Beaconsfield.