Category Archives: Architecture

Architeaser: April 1

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IMG_4668The Architeaser feature returns.  It starts with a recent Culture Vulture discovery along Main Street.  On the eastern side of the 500 block of Main, there is a building with six of these classical figures looking out. They are on the second floor level, partially obscured from the street level by an architectural awning.

The building was built in 1925 and sits at what was once 505 and 507 South Main.  Technically that is still the address, but in 1986 this building became part of a block long redevelopment.  The facade of this building and another from the 1920s were retained. But the interiors were gutted and combined with the new buildings which were built on the rest of the block.

Today much of the building is occupied by state offices.  The building is in the midst Mayor Mark Stodola’s Creative Corridor initiative.  Though the building itself is not in the plans, the plans for landscaping the block would enhance the building and perhaps draw more attention to these wonderful treasures.

Mysteries of the Old State House today at 3pm

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3goddessesThree goddesses once sat atop the Old State House. Sculptures representing Law, Justice, and Mercy were brought to Little Rock from the Arkansas exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 and later installed on the State House roof.

In 1928, the Little Rock Garden Club had the statues removed. What happened to the three goddesses?

Find out, and hear other Old State House mysteries tomorrow at 3 p.m. This is one of the free programs offered at the Old State House Museum each Saturday.

The Old State House Museum hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

The Old State House is the oldest surviving state capitol building west of the Mississippi River.  In 1947 it was designated as a museum by the Arkansas General Assembly and continues to serve in that capacity.

The Old State House Museum is a museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage and shares the goal of all seven Department of Arkansas Heritage agencies, that of preserving and enhancing the heritage of the state of Arkansas. The agencies are Arkansas Arts Council, Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Historic Arkansas Museum, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, and the Old State House Museum.

HEART/HAND: an architectural lecture by Billie Tsien

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TseinThis month, the Architecture and Design Network features Billie Tsien, AIA, NCAARB, FAAR of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects of New York City.

Ms. Tsien’s lecture will take place tonight in the Arkansas Arts Center lecture hall.  Her remarks will begin at 6pm following a reception at 5:30.

Born in Ithaca New York, Billie Tsien received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale and her Master in Architecture from UCLA. Currently, in addition to practicing, teaching and lecturing, she serves on the advisory council for the Yale School of Architecture. In 2007 Tsien was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tsien and her husband Tod Williams have been working together since 1977. Their firm, which operates out of a small, unpretentious studio on Central Park South in New York City, has earned wide acclaim for its work. This past December, the American Institute of Architects awarded the firm its prestigious 2013 Architecture Firm Award in recognition of work that “reveals a contemporary sensibility and intelligence.” Given annually, the award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on a firm. It recognizes a practice that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least ten years.

Their recently completed, 93,000 square foot museum in Philadelphia, designed for the Barnes Foundation, has drawn critical acclaim from many sources. In January, the AIA gave it a 2013 Institute Honor Award for Architecture. The new facility replaces the original one in Merion, Pennsylvania, established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922. A challenge to its designers was to replicate the original 12,000 square foot main gallery, replete with art as arranged by the late Dr. Barnes himself. And they did.

Supporters of the Architecture and Design Network, a non-profit organization, include the Arkansas Arts Center, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Arkansas Arts Center features Wendy Maruyama’s Executive Order 9066

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Watchtower

Wendy Maruyama
Watchtower, 2008

Exhibits look at Japanese-American internment camps during WWII

This exhibition combines two projects of Wendy Maruyama, a studio furniture maker and head of the studio furniture program at San Diego State University. These projects, the Tag Project and Executive Order 9066, together tell the story of the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

In the Tag Project, Maruyama replicated 120,000 individual identification tags worn by the internees in the ten relocation camps, including two in Arkansas. Maruyama assembled the re-created paper tags in ten groups, each group representing all the internees at a specific camp. Each of these groupings hangs from the gallery ceiling and is about 11 feet tall. Maruyama has folded the Tag Project into a parallel project of hers titled Executive Order 9066 to show them together in this exhibition.

Executive Order 9066 was the directive signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordering the incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry then resident in the United States. For the parallel project, Maruyama created work that explores ethnicity and identity through suitcases, footlockers and steamer trunks, artifacts from their owners’ forced relocation journey in 1942.

The exhibits were organized by The Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston.

The Arts Center has collaborated with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and the Arkansas Center for History and Culture to organize Relics of Rohwer: Gaman and the Art of Perseverance, a related exhibition documenting the experiences and artwork of Japanese Americans at Rohwer, one of two internment camps located in Arkansas.The artwork is on loan from the Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel/Rosalie Santine Gould Collection, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System.

Reed Kroloff: CHANGING THE WORLD: ONE INSTALLATION AT A TIME

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kroloffTonight at 6pm, architect Reed Kroloff will give a presentation entitled “Changing the World: One Installation at a Time.” This is part of the ongoing lecture series by the Architecture and Design Network.

Since 2007, architect Reed Kroloff has been the director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Museum, a graduate school of arts and design which prides itself on being a community. Cranbrook has been home to such luminaries as Eero Saarinen, Charles Eames, Daniel Libeskind. Florence Knoll, Tod Williams and Toshiko Takiezu – to name a few.

This past year Kroloff served as a member and chair of the jury that selected the prize winners of the 2012 design competition sponsored by the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects

Supporters of the lecture series include the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, The Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Arkansas Arts Center.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information e-mail Projects4pi@mac.com.
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013
Time: 6 p.m., preceded by a reception at 5:30 p.m.
Place: Arkansas Arts Center lecture hall

There is still time to ENVISION Little Rock

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envisinolrIn honor of the 100 year anniversary of John Nolan’s 1913 document Report on a Park System for Little Rock, THE 2013 ENVISION Competition seeks to challenge design professionals and the public to generate imaginative ideas about a new gateway into the City.

“I’m so excited about this project, I’ve been dreaming about it for 25 years,” said Keep Little Rock Beautiful Commissioner Bob Callans. “The partnership we’ve formed with the City of Little Rock and studio MAIN is making this historically significant event possible.”

The competition site lies at the eastern terminus and intersection of Capitol Avenue and I-30 in Ward 1.  Nolan’s plan envisioned Capitol Avenue as a ceremonial boulevard and this site as an iconic gateway to the City with the capitol building forming the western terminus.

“Right now Capitol Avenue ends on I-30 and it just kind of falls apart in terms of any design significance,” said studio MAIN spokesman James Meyer. “The inherent question is how do we build a structure that forms a gateway that makes it important for Little Rock residents and all the people who drive through the City on I-30.”

A jury panel will award a $1500.00 prize to the winners in the Professional, Public and Student categories.  Also, the public will vote for Best Iconic Design, Best Thorough Plan and an anything goes category called Wildcard. These winners will each receive $250.00 in prize money. ENVISION ideas competition is open to all students, design professionals, artists and anyone with a strong affinity for the future of Little Rock’s urban agenda.

“I’m excited to see what’s going to happen with the ideas and having been a part of an exercise of this with the Broadway Bridge, I’m particularly pleased to see these partners coming up with some competition and money that people can win by virtue of being selected,” said Mayor Mark Stodola. “This is a great opportunity to stimulate a lot of different ideas. Participants will have a nice window of time to think about this and look at what can be created.”

Participants can go to http://envisioinlittlerock2013.tumblr.com to register.

Sandwiching in History at Capital Hotel today

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Capital Hotel frontThe Arkansas Historic Preservation Program’s “Sandwiching in History” program pays a visit this month to a location which is accustomed to receiving visitors — The Capital Hotel.

Built in 1872-1873 by businessman William P. Denckla, the Denckla Block, as it was then called, housed various shops on the first floor with offices and gentlemen’s apartments on the upper floors. The building featured a distinctive cast-iron façade with a projecting cornice, arched window openings, and engaged columns with Corinthian capitals. In 1877 the Denckla Block was converted into an hotel and quickly became the center of political and social activity in Little Rock. Over the years the building has been expanded upward and southward.

By the late 1960s, it fell into disrepair.  But through two extensive renovations, the Capital Hotel has been restored to its original beauty and continues to provide luxury accommodations in the capital city.

The “Sandwiching In History” program is a series of tours that seeks to familiarize people who live and work in central Arkansas with the historic structures and sites around us. The tours take place on Fridays at noon, last less than an hour, and participants are encouraged to bring their lunches so that they can eat while listening to a brief lecture about the property and its history before proceeding on a short tour.

The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program is an agency of the Department of Arkansas Heritage.