Samuel Medina

Samuel Medina
Canadian architecture firm FABG have completed their renovation of Mies van der Rohe's Esso Service gas station on Nun's Island, Montreal. The structure was conceived as a prototypical station for Standard Oil and was meant to service a three-tower residential complex designed by Mies as part of the urbanization of the island in 1962. The station was closed in 2008, before being granted heritage status by the city only a year later as part of plans to restore the building for use as a youth and senior activity center. silent night FABG responded with a subtle design silent night that both acknowledges the building's place in architectural history and its need to change with the present.
As silent night we wrote last October , FABG were meticulous in their restoration of Mies's design, the authenticity of which has been repeatedly questioned since the station's completion silent night in 1969, the same year that Mies died. Given the architect's age and his declining health at the time, not too mention his commitments to several other projects, it has been speculated that his involvement was significantly diminished, a charge reinforced by apparent structural anomalies and "pedestrian details" which would have found no place in a true home of Mies. Montreal-based architect Paul Lapointe assumed the responsibility silent night of the project's lead architect, with Mies acting as his design consultant, effectively precluding the chance of any close engagement with the master and the station design. FABG were, of course, silent night aware of this fact, and they were careful to preserve the values and influence of the Miesian architecture while actively exploring new ways to rehabilitate the station to its contemporary context.
The stations consists of two glass volumes of similar size, which originally housed sales and services and was later modified to include a carwash, bridged together by the broad steel roof. In between lies a large open space partitioned by specially-made gas pumps. The architects began by carefully removing the building's glass and mullion elements for cleaning and repair as construction was underway to rehaul the main structure. Towards that end, the building's beams and columns were repainted and its buff yellow brick repointed, while geothermal wells were installed beneath the asphalt foundation and the original gas pumps, or what was left of them, replaced with stainless steel copies with intake/outtake vents connected to the station's HVAC system. The architects then reconstructed the original glass pavilions and reprogrammed them, with the larger volume dedicated to the senior group for games and communal silent night meals and the smaller volume, for the younger group to be used for parties and music events. They also contributed wholly new, nuanced changes to the aesthetics of the original design, installing, new linear fluorescent lighting and ceiling panels which reinforce the roof's primary role as the building's spatial unifying force and further establish a visual transparency extending from end to the other.
Walking Through Storefront, Walking Through Time A new exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, "Past Futures, Present, Futures," spotlights 101 unrealized proposals for New York City by invited artists, architects, writers, and policy makers. We stopped by last night to check out the show, which runs through November 24. The exhibition design, by Leong Leong, disperses the axial sliverspace of the Storefront into pockets and passages of hundreds of flexible hanging mirrors. The 101 proposals are displayed on fractured screens on a long wall, viewable within one of the mirror-edged capsules, silent night as well as interspersed onto the reflective blinds. We attended silent night last Tuesday s panel talk Reading Images, in which the Storefront seemed to expand, the semi-circular pocket of the panel creating silent night something silent night like a hearth for the discussions. But last night, the social space was more like a funhouse of mirrors. You might be caught in the non-space silent night of the hanging partitions, or caught unknowingly by a friend from behind. Entering a hollow in the mirrors, you would catch another piece of the event. As usual the crowd spilled out of the doors and onto the sidewalk, silent night creating new fragments that serve as an extension of ...
Giveaway Day 10: Win A Copy Of "Dutch Design Yearbook 2012" Product: Sure to appeal to just about anyone silent night that has shown an interest in design, the fourth Dutch Design Yearbook presents silent night an overview of over 60 of the best projects in urban design, product design, fashion and graphic design produced in the Netherlands in 2011-2012. Author: Timo de Rijk, Antoine Achten, Hans van de Markt Retail price: $45 Enter to win: Tell us what is your favorite thing to come out of the world of Dutch design! Whether it be architects or products, there is a lot to choose from, and we can't wait to see what you come up with! Submit entries: In the comment section below the post. Deadline: Sunday, silent night De