Tag Archives: Institutional

Menil Cafe

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Interloop-Architecture was commissioned by the Menil Foundation to develop a concept design for a new full-service cafe to accommodate visitors to the museum as well as a broader public within the city. The cafe proposal was to adapt and re-use an existing 1923 wood-framed bungalow on the campus, directly across from the Menil Collection museum entrance.

The Menil Collection building externalizes structure as an aesthetic means to mediate the scale of the museum building relative to the surrounding bungalows. The new Menil Cafe internalizes structure as an aesthetic means to expand the scale of the bungalow volume.

Nasher Sculpture Center

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Nasher Sculpture Center is a 60,000 SF structure and a 1.9 acre Garden designed to showcase the sculpture collection of Ray and Patsy Nasher. The Center is located in Downtown Dallas across from the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. Renzo Piano Building Workshop is the lead design consultant, Peter Walker and Partners is the Landscape Architect and Ove Arup & Partners is lead engineers. Interloop Architecture was hired by Renzo Piano’s office to administer the design of the building and garden. Interloop Architecture was also hired to coordinate between the owner and the other consultants all matters relating to the execution of the design, as well as produce Construction Documents for portions of the construction including Finish Millwork, Ornamental Gates, Stone details, a 2,500 SF Auditorium, and various other finish details associated with the project.

Photographer: Tim Hursley ©2003

Tending, (blue)

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Interloop Architecture was commissioned by The Nasher Foundation to design a building to house Tending, (blue), an artwork by James Turrell. Tending, (blue) is sited in a planted berm at the west end of the Nasher Sculpture garden, opposite the main museum building. Tending, (blue) contains two artworks – an entry piece and a skyspace.

Photographer: Tim Hursley ©2003

 

Two-Seater

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Two-Seater is a folding bench armature that was engineered and fabricated by Interloop Architecture for Tending,(Blue). This bench is a critical element to experiencing the Skyspace artwork by James Turrell. Texas Accessibility Standards (TAS) requires that the bench accommodate wheelchair access for two individuals seated side by side. Instead of creating a void for these seats, we developed a retractable armature that would support the required portion of the bench, (over four-hundred pounds of stone cladding), enabling it to fold into the wall. Actuators allow an individual to operate the bench with very little effort using a concealed handle to slide the bench into position or to fold it back into the wall.

E-X-I-T

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EXIT is a custom exit light produced for The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas. Interloop Architecture designed and fabricated the exit lights, working with engineers, fabricators, UL technicians, and the graphic design firm 2×4. In keeping with city, state, and federal safety standards, every emergency light fixture must undergo extensive testing by the Underwriter Laboratories Testing Center to meet a wide range of design criteria. These stringent technical requirements typically thwart innovation by limited new design, requiring the exclusive use of existing UL approved components.

On November 7, 2007, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, inducted E-X-I-T into the permanent collection. A design like E-X-I-T marks a departure in MoMA’s collecting policy, and as such, provides an early precedent in the acquisition of architectural signage.

Perth Amboy High School

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The following proposal is for the design of a new high school – approximately 489,000 square feet, on a 15.3 acre site – for the city of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The City of Perth Amboy, the Perth Amboy Board of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts, in conjunction with the New Jersey School Construction Corporation and New Jersey Department of Education, held a national design competition in 2003 for a new high school, to be constructed with state funds as part of New Jersey’s $12 billion school construction program. The facility is to contain five semi-autonomous specialized academies, or schools-within-a-school.

Urban Parks

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This project represents the major renovation of an existing public plaza in downtown Houston, constructed over an underground parking garage. The city’s opera house and symphony hall, a major theater, the federal courthouse and several large offi ce buildings bound the full block plaza. Jones Plaza is frequently used for large planned public events, and therefore requires standing room and restrooms for a crowd for 2,000 people, a level area for tents, a permanent concession stand, and a stage with an adjacent green room. The four elevated corners of the plaza, accessed by various stairs, are landscaped with trees, wild grasses, and flowers. Five canopied steel pergolas separate these landscaped areas for a slightly sunken hexagonal paved plaza at the center of the block. Several of the canopies shelter small, freestanding pavilions clad in glass mosaic tiles, which house concessions, restrooms, and other services. The colored tiles create a pattern that abstracts a landscape painting by the French Impressionist Claude Monet. On the northeast side of the site another pergola covers the open air stage. A broad walkway on the east side of the plaza aligns with the main entrance of the symphony hall across the street.

1ab: First Architecture Biennale

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First Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (1ab) is an international urban event organizing a series of lectures, competitions, and exhibitions throughout the city. Eight international architects and designers were invited to design a “stim” – a site specific interactive installation, as described by architect and critic Lars Lerup – an object, image, or space that brings together various forms of technology in order to create a moment of connectivity and intense engagement.

Interloop’s three Stim proposals utilize simple technologies to create a spatial dynamic where fixed material elements become balanced with the real-time circumstances of pedestrian intrigue and engagement.

Symonds Teaching Labs

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Gardiner Symonds Teaching Labs 1 and 2 are interactive, multi-media learning facilities located on the Rice University campus. Flexibility in the Symonds Labs is built into the spatial dynamic where fixed material elements become balanced with the real-time circumstances of use. The space is poised, where flexibility is embedded into the architecture but latent – induced by the conditions of use, and facilitated by the visual lines of connection between users, computer monitors, large format screens, audience cameras, and the simultaneous electronic and human modes of communication that are consistent with each of these lines of connection. Audible lines of communication remain unobstructed, and at times relied upon significantly, suggesting to us that libraries and workspaces of the future will be both noisy and active places if they are used correctly.