Architecture

The tragic loss of Zaha Hadid last week has left the architecture world suddenly bereft of her inspiring talent. As many obituaries over the last few days have noted, perhaps one of the biggest tragedies is that Hadid, who passed away at the top of her profession at the age of 65, had years of creating new buildings in front of her. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never see a new Hadid design take shape.

“We don’t go into the future from zero, we drag the whole past in with us.” Many of us have predictions or pictures in our heads of what the future might look like. Syd Mead, a noted illustrator, concept artists and visual futurist, is one of the rare few whom are asked to put those images onto paper and out into the world. For decades, his groundbreaking designs and artwork for a variety of corporations, creative firms and cinematic projects have become synonymous with looking forward. His film work alone, which includes Blade Runner, Aliens and TRON, gave a generation a glimpse into what technology and design may have in store.

Right now, a team of digital scanning whizzes is back in their Florida lab, making a digital 3D model of the TWA Flight Center. Last week, while the staff and their equipment were hard at work recording every curve, bend, window, and facade of Eero Saarinen’s 1962 terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, photographer Max Touhey was granted access. That much free time inside the historic, beloved landmark is hard to come by—especially with a camera in hand—given that it has been off limits to the public since 2001 and is set to undergo redevelopment into a boutique hotel.

Almost 14 years after Sept. 11, the world finally knows what the last major tower of the massive, complex, fraught World Trade Center site will look like. This morning, via a long story in Wired, Danish architectural wunderkind Bjarke Ingels unveiled his firm’s elaborate vision for 2 World Trade Center.

Architect Chris Downey is standing next to a pile of Sheetrock, balancing a white cane in the air like a tightrope walker’s pole. The week before, construction had begun on a new office for the Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco, or ILRC, a nonprofit community center for people with disabilities. Downey holds the cane up to approximate for the center’s executive director, Jessie Lorenz, how the reception desk will jut out at an angle from a concrete column. Lorenz takes a step, and a pile of pipes on the floor clatters. “I don’t know what’s over there,” says Downey. Lorenz giggles. “I hope I didn’t break anything,” she says. Lorenz regains her footing and touches the cane. “That makes sense,” she says. “It’s almost like we’re funneling people into this part.”