spring/summer 2011
We are pleased to present our fourth issue of evolution, a seasonal journal. This issue focuses on the challenge of creating unique places in a rapidly globalizing world.
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posting: a clipboard of recent and forthcoming engagements of the firm and its individuals
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announcing Moore Ruble Yudell's monograph, The Future of Place, is now available. Published by Liaoning Science and Technology, the monograph is a graphic showcase of current and future projects, with introductory texts by internationally renowned architecture critic, Michael Crosbie, as well the firm's partners, John Ruble and Buzz Yudell. Please join us for the booksigning at Hennessey & Ingalls in Santa Monica on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 5pm. |
emerging
The Future of Place: Continuity and Transformation
Time and space appear to be shrinking under the influence of new technologies. Travel and electronic communication are transforming our lives—our relationships to one another and to place. The culture of architecture reflects this new globalization. Aspects of this are energizing: cross-cultural understanding, communities of collaboration, extraordinary technologies.
Yet there are ominous trends in this period of transition. The globalization of architecture can default into the branding of place, the erasure of cultural difference and the commodification of the environment. How can we work creatively in a manner which embraces the energy of global transformation while celebrating the differences of place and the continuities of culture?
Through an international practice in a wide range of project types, Moore Ruble Yudell has sought authentic responses to the multiple dimensions of place and culture. Even as we practice globally, our work is inseparable from its site, climate, and context. We understand built context as the expression of deeper principles—timeless lessons of regional character, climatic response, and cultural identity. In each project the transformational arc of the contemporary—new programs, new technologies, new forms of community—finds its greatest relevance in engaging the specificity of place. The resulting diversity of our practice represents a range of strategies, with each project as unique as the forces that shape it, united by a commitment to humanistic place-making.
Respecting Heritage and Renewing Place
In certain contexts where a highly sensitive historic language of architecture and landscape has evolved, we have explored ways of building with great respect for these traditions, reinterpreting their principles with both traditional and contemporary expression.
At the University of Virginia, our South Lawn project revives the historic axis to distant mountains, which Jefferson had begun, only to have it later obstructed. The experience of the new building and landscape connects to the historic campus through classically inspired proportions and planning, yet surprises with an unfolding choreography of contemporary, light-filled places.
: College of Arts and Sciences South Lawn Project, University of Virginia
Respecting Tradition and Transforming Place
Some historic settings have provided the opportunity to be both respectful and transformative. At UCLA, the new home for World Arts and Cultures comprises components of historic restoration, adaptively renewed spaces and flexible contemporary places such as the Kaufman Family Garden Theater. The contrasting elements interact like a jazz composition with shared rhythms and themes, but highly varied expressions. The ensemble reflects the richness of the academic program which embraces a range of art from vernacular to emerging contemporary exploration.
Glorya Kaufman Hall and Family Garden Theater, UCLA
New Places—New Paradigms
Working across many cultures and building types has allowed us to explore evolving paradigms in place-making.
At the University of Cincinnati, we collaborated with campus architects and colleagues (Morphosis, Gwathmey Siegel, Hargreaves Associates) to create a new 24/7 center of student life. The campus had recently completed a series of iconic buildings by distinguished architects (Eisenman, Gehry, Graves, Pei Cobb Freed) and felt that the next challenge was to build equally distinguished buildings but to plan them collaboratively so that the spaces between buildings and the places of community would be more important than the individual buildings. This collaborative process involved programming and masterplanning prior to building design. The result has been such a vibrant contemporary ensemble, that critics have considered it the most successful integrated piece of campus planning and design since Thomas Jefferson’s Lawn at the University of Virginia.
Joseph A. Steger Student Center, University of Cincinnati
New Places to Nurture Community
Each new project is a chance to shape places which in turn nurture community. The new town center of Camana Bay creates a vibrant pedestrian-oriented mixed-use core, based on an extrapolation from the environmental wisdom of traditional building types. Computer modeling and contemporary materials raise the performance and comfort of buildings. Outside spaces are shaped for community and environmentally tempered by the architecture and landscape, allowing a broad range of round-the-clock activity in a tropical climate.
Camana Bay
The diversity of our work is an expression of the diversity of place and culture, and of our on-going collaboration with clients and colleagues. Each work makes its contribution to existing places—respecting, enriching, and sometimes transforming—but always recognizing the defining qualities of context and setting.
