Interior design living room in 2011 2012 featured some elements of fusion, modern living room design for 2011 2012 looks to keep with the trend of combining the elements of earth friendly or green, with a practical design. In designing this trend started with a good floor, using environmentally friendly materials such as using materials parquet / bamboo flooring is warm. Besides using the carpet was also approved to always look classy. Furthermore, seen from a chair or sofa can be used with the added type of elegant beautiful cover and tiny pillows of fragrant and clean.

Adds a classy furniture or have a technology such as TV, DVD player and sound system are also needed in designing the modern living space in the year 2011 2012. When it comes to the walls and lighting, things really get earthy toned for a modern living room in 2011. The new trend shades of purple and gray. Even in the gray looks to be the new up and comers when it comes to neutral. Popular shades include purple eggplants, colored a deep burgundy and a new blend of lavender shade of gray and black. Lighting is also moving toward more mobile pieces and easily accessible. Lamp and reading lamp made ??from recycled wood and plastic in a very good step. For wall art, think organic. The scene of the statement of plants, trees and flowers work very well in a contemporary living room.

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This Classic Home Architecture situated nearer Washington Dallas Lake.This Classic Home Architecture right for household with kids living, should you appear for at architecture and creating of the home silently quiet and refreshing scenario to achieve greater happiness.A large space within this home architecture use as household gathering incorporated enjoyment and media player accessible. Furnishings in this home also additional with classical materials this kind of as wood.within this house garage was produced by an proprietor with large the one that can stuffed by 3 automobiles with one another.

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Isi Metzstein, who has died aged 83, was jointly responsible for some of the most remarkable and distinguished modern architecture in postwar Britain. Under the umbrella of the Glasgow practice of Gillespie Kidd & Coia (GKC), for whom he worked throughout his career, he and his colleague Andrew MacMillan designed a series of striking churches in and around Glasgow, as well as school and university buildings further afield, including Robinson College, Cambridge. They were also the architects of St Peter's Seminary at Cardross, Argyll and Bute, once widely regarded as the finest modern building in Scotland but now a derelict ruin.

Metzstein was born in Berlin, the son of two Polish Jews, Efraim (who died in 1933) and Rachel. He escaped Germany in 1939 under the Kindertransport scheme. The boy, his siblings and their mother were scattered all over Britain until the family was eventually reunited. The young Isi had been taken in initially by a family in Hardgate, Clydebank, and he remained in Glasgow for the rest of his life.

In 1945, having left school, he decided he wanted to become an architect, and a chance connection led to an apprenticeship with Jack Coia, the sole surviving partner of Gillespie Kidd & Coia, the firm he had taken on in the late 1920s. At the same time, Metzstein enrolled for evening classes in architecture at the Glasgow School of Art, where he met MacMillan, whom he brought into the firm in 1954. Together, they were to transform the practice and, as "Andy and Isi", became a celebrated double-act, as designers, teachers and talkers.

Coia, the son of Italian immigrants, had reopened the office after the second world war and resumed his association with the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Glasgow, having built a number of churches in the 1930s. The archdiocese was about to embark on a programme of churchbuilding. At first, Coia's archi tecture continued in the manner of his prewar work, but soon the influence of his two and open-minded assistants became evident, familiar as they were with avant-garde buildings in continental Europe, in particular the work of the Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier.

The turning point was the church at Glenrothes, a new town in Fife, which was completed in 1957. With its tapering, open plan, austere aesthetic and white exterior, this was clearly the creation of different hands. Henceforth, Coia's task was to secure the commissions, while the work was carried out by his young and expanding office. Although GKC were responsible for schools and some housing during the late 1950s and 60s, what stood out was the series of bold and inventive churches. It is ironic that, while the Roman Catholic hierarchy believed the architect to be the almost mythical Coia, the designing was in fact carried out by a Jewish refugee from Berlin and a Glaswegian of Highland Presbyterian ancestry.

Metzstein, who described himself as a "lapsed atheist", had a strong sense of the numinous, achieved in his churches by the dramatic handling of light in dark interiors. Some of the churches were in the tradition of tall and powerful brick boxes, such as those at East Kilbride (1962) and Kilsyth (1964). Others – St Benedict's, Drumchapel (1970), Our Lady of Good Counsel, Dennistoun (1965) – had highly inventive plans and unconventional internal spaces.

However, their masterpiece was undoubtedly St Peter's (1966), where neo-Corbusian ranges with a brilliant stepped-section were disposed around an existing Victorian mansion.

The work of GKC stood out from that of their equally modern-minded contemporaries in England. As Metzstein explained: "We got the unique opportunity to design modern buildings that were not modern programmes – churches, convents, seminaries … We were relatively young and more excitable, maybe … We were designing churches, which are one-off buildings with an emotional and religious context."

By good fortune, the firm never jumped aboard the high-rise, system-building juggernaut. Metzstein and MacMillan were also unusual in having a serious interest in history, appreciating the character of Glasgow's urban fabric of stone tenements and extolling the merits of the work of the city's great architects of the past, Alexander "Greek" Thomson and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, at a time when it was either ignored or under threat.

In 1969, when Coia was awarded the Royal gold medal for architecture, he asked that his two partners be associated with the honour. But by then things were beginning to go wrong. The patronage of the archdiocese was coming to an end (although new jobs appeared in England) and problems were emerging with the firm's experimental buildings. As with Frank Lloyd Wright, stories abound about leaking roofs and structural problems. The campanile at the East Kilbride church was taken down and in 1991 the wonderfully dramatic church at Drumchapel was summarily demolished a few days before it was due to be listed. As for St Peter's, which was superbly constructed (unlike some of the churches), it was rendered almost obsolete as soon as it was finished by the new policy, after the Second Vatican Council, of training priests in urban settings. It was abandoned by the archdiocese in 1980 and fell prey to vandals. Despite its grade A listing by Historic Scotland and its inclusion on the World Monuments Fund's list of sites most at risk, the structure remains a ruin.

Metzstein later announced the foundation of the Macallan club (named after his favourite whisky), whose members are the architects of buildings "demolished or mutilated without the involvement of its designer" and who, "the victims of brutal, premature 'scrap-heaping', are witnesses to the fragility of permanence which characterises [the] century". This may have been a joke, but it all hurt – deeply.

The firm's last building was Robinson College, an complex and inventive redbrick response to the growing reaction against the Modern movement, which was completed in 1980. Metzstein then devoted himself to teaching and lecturing, at the Mackintosh School of Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art (of which MacMillan was head), at the University of Edinburgh (where he was professor) and elsewhere.

He was held in great affection and respect by architects all over Britain, and was both revered and feared for his incisive and often devastating criticism of student work. It was annoying that recognition – and a growing admiration for the work of GKC – came so late. When Metzstein and MacMillan were presented with an award by the Royal Institute of British Architects for their teaching in 2008, Metzstein noted that "it would have been even better to receive this while we were still alive".

He remained until the end the conscience of a rational modernity, and was "allergic to 'starchitects' whose work fills the magazines". He much disliked the posturing arbitrariness of such buildings as Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, "which I can't take, both as an architect and as a Jew born in Berlin".

Behind Metzstein's acerbic wit, uttered in his guttural accent – a distinctive combination of German and Glaswegian – was a warm and generous personality. For an architect, he was unusually well-informed, intellectually curious and cosmopolitan in outlook.He lived with his wife, Dany, also of central European Jewish origin, and his family, in Hillhead. At home he created an ideal city made of metal tourist souvenir models of buildings which his many friends would send him from all over the world. He is survived by Dany, his children, Mark, Saul and Ruth, and his brother and twin sister.

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Proposals by five teams of architects and designers have been named finalists in a competition to build a temporary pavilion on the grounds of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

A selection review committee of museum staffers chose the finalists from 15 entries. A jury headed by museum director and CEO Julián Zugazagoitia, and including the Bloch Building’s design architect Steven Holl, will consider the five proposals in the coming week and announce a winner in early February.

The winning pavilion would be built to coincide with the opening of the Nelson’s major exhibit, “Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851-1939,” which is scheduled to open April 14.

“The proposals were amazing, creative, innovative,” said Catherine Futter, curator of the world’s fair exhibit and also a member of the jury. “They included all different kinds of sustainability, innovation, new materials, recycling, things made out of recycled materials — fabulous things.”

The project’s request for proposals asked for competitors to “design a dynamic public space, constructed with the most innovative materials and methods.” The public space, which could be programmed with events related to the exhibit, would contain a minimum of 500 square feet. The Nelson’s budget limit was $20,000, but the museum encouraged teams to seek partnerships for materials and other project costs beyond that.

The pavilion project belongs to a long and notable lineage within design history.

As the call for proposals put it, “From the Eiffel Tower to the Barcelona Pavilion of 1929 to Thomas Heatherwick’s recent Seed Pavilion in Shanghai 2010, the architecture of world’s fairs has played an important role in presenting innovation, design and advancements in modern living.”

Temporary pavilion projects have multiplied in recent years, showing off the work of world-class architects in varied public settings. Best known is probably the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion series in Kensington Park, London, which for the last dozen years has presented eye-popping temporary works by the likes of Zaha Hadid, Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and most recently Peter Zumthor.

Contending for the Nelson-Atkins project are four local teams and one from elsewhere. The finalists:

• “Ex3,” by Hufft Projects, a Kansas City architectural firm; with furniture maker Edwin Blue; Derek Porter Studio (lighting consultant); and artist Lea Griggs.

• “Sun Pavilion,” by Generator Studio of Kansas City, a firm headed by architect Tom Proebstle, with artist Tim Gratkowski, Brightergy Solar Solutions and engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti.

• “Praxino-Scape,” by the Kansas City office of the global firm AECOM; with the video-production firm T2, builder Centric Projects, metal fabricator A. Zahner Co. and Brightergy Solar Solutions.

• “Nimbus,” by Echomaterico, a small global firm with principals in New York, Italy, England and Mexico.

• Untitled pavilion, by El Dorado Inc., of Kansas City with fabricators Design +Make Studio, Derek Porter Studio and the engineering firm of Burns & McDonnell.

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Standing by the circular central staircase that is the architectural signature of the super-modern Ørestad high school in Copenhagen, principal Allan Kjær makes a sweeping gesture. He indicates the strikingly open layout of the school, Denmark's most iconic example of a modern teaching space.

This year, "Next year," he says, referring to 2012, "there will be no books. It will be the first year that students will not see a single book."

In Denmark, education laws introduced in the past two decades have dictated that schools innovate teaching methods in order to address a wider variety of learning styles. Instead of traditional classroom learning, in which a teacher stands at a blackboard and lectures the students, new curriculums emphasize teamwork and choice—so the student who likes to draw alone can retreat to a quiet corner, while more rambunctious youngsters can choose to, say, learn the alphabet by jumping up and down as they recite it. While no studies have yet been conducted to prove or refute the theory, educationalists believe more choices will make it easier for students with diverse strengths and weaknesses to learn. Working together is seen as increasingly important preparation for the modern world.

With these progressiveideas in mind, a new generation of schools are being built, or renovated. And, in order to shape a different kind of learning, they are leaving traditional spaces—like classrooms—behind. "What they do, when they build, is try to materialize ideas about learning," says Malou Juelskjær, an associate professor with the Danish School of Education at the University of Aarhus. "The question is, how to shape the future pupil, and the future citizen?"

The Ørestad high-school building answered this question with lots and lots of open space. The five-story building is essentially one large room, with just a handful of separate, glass-walled classrooms. The few other enclosed areas include the gym, which doubles as a performance space.

"We were working with a regular school building budget, and corridors are a waste of space," says architect Kim Herforth Nielsen of the Danish firm 3XN. "Then, instead of going room by room, we made a lot of open space." The idea, he says, was to facilitate a more communal education: "They can learn about working together, that two heads are better than one. They come out prepared to work in teams."

It seems to work. Because most of the school's 1,150 students are having class at any hour of the day in one large room, it would simply be too noisy to hold regular lecture-style classes. Instead, the building forces teachers to come up with a variety of teaching styles, with small-group and one-on-one work. The students, says the principal, also quickly learn to keep their voices down, out of respect for their peers.

Technology has taken on a crucial role, thanks to the building's architecture. "We didn't know when we started that computers would become so important for us," says Mr. Kjær, the principal. The school wanted to emphasize computer-based learning in any case, he says, "but after five years in this building, we see that we couldn't have our school in this building without it."

The school's staff refer to the virtual world as the "fifth room," and nearly everything that happens at the school—from lesson plans and teaching materials to "textbooks" and homework assignments—is online.

Students and teachers say they are happy. "This building invites you to change your teaching," says math and English teacher Mette Yde Toftdahl. "In a normal school, you have a classroom, and you don't even think about mixing it up." During class, she can give students an essay assignment to work on and monitor each pupil's progress from her computer. "Then, if I see something, I can send a chat message, and ask, 'Why don't you elaborate on this?' or, 'Why haven't you written anything in 10 minutes?' "

The emphasis on technology has led to other innovations. Teachers say some kids are more engaged in math if they can approach it creatively. So, instead of turning in a geometry proof, for example, the students can submit a podcast in which they film themselves solving the math problem. Because the space lends itself to combining classes, teachers often team up, offering students a choice of, say, working on foreign-language conversation in a group or working alone, then sending the teacher sound files.

"The advantage as a teacher is that you can prepare lessons and teach in ways that make each student take advantage of his or her strengths," says language teacher Trine Prang Nielsen. "You also get inspired by your colleagues."

"Of course," adds Ms. Toftdahl, "the students have to learn basic grammar. It's not just podcasts."

Architect Dorte Mandrup-Poulsen, of Dorte Mandrup Architects, has also worked with designing school buildings according to the Danish education system's new requirements. "There's the idea, if you change the physical surroundings, you would change ways of learning," she says. "As architects, we interpret those agendas."

In her experience, changing the spaces children spend time in has an impact on development. When she built the Skanderborggade day-care center in 2005, she solved the problem of how to include enough outdoor space by creating a hill that the one- and two-year olds crawl or climb up from the ground floor in order to reach the rooftop play area. Beanbags dot the incline, so every tumble ends softly. "The school's director said they were developing [motor skills] much more quickly than in a regular school," she says.

In 2006, her firm began renovating the Munkegaard School, built by internationally renowned architect Arne Jacobsen in 1949. A protected building, the school is considered one of Jacobsen's great architectural works. But in addition to needing basic repairs and updates, the individual classrooms no longer meshed with the open, flexible floor plan considered best in Denmark today. "They needed more open space," says Ms. Mandrup-Poulsen, "to facilitate things like bringing two classes together to do a project."

To solve the problem, she built a new, underground area with lots of wide-open, multiuse space. "The idea is that you should work more according to children's ways of learning," she says. "Children have to be very resourceful, to decide, 'How would I like to learn?' "

Ms. Juelskjær of Danish School of Education says this is the point. "These ideas are trying to create a pupil who is able to do more things on their own, to ask themselves, do I need help? Can I do this on my own, or would it be better in a group? There's a larger responsibility on the child to get the job done."

Ultimately, these schools are also trying to benefit society at large. For the Faroe Islands Education Center, architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm, BIG, have designed a building—due to begin construction in April—that integrates the academic high school, the business school and the technical school in order to bring together segments of society that tend not to overlap.

And wider society appears to be catching on: 3XN's Mr. Nielsen says he brings all kinds of clients to see the Ørestad high-school building. That structure has already been used as a model for a town hall in the Netherlands and a bank building in Copenhagen. "Clients are inspired by the school," he says. In fact, he says, he believes in the open space set-up so much that he implements it in his own firm. "I don't even have my own office," he says. "Everyone can follow what I'm doing."

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Research carried out by the property portal found that Victorian architecture was the most popular (25.6%) among respondents who were asked to vote for their favourite from a list of homes from different eras.

This was closely followed by modern (24.6%) and Georgian (16.5%). Houses from the 1930s, however, which make up a significant proportion of the UK’s suburban housing stock, were the least preferred with only 3.3% of the votes. Tudor architecture was chosen by just 4.7% and 50s homes were selected by 5.4%.

This compares to a similar survey in 2006 which found that modern architectural styles came a lowly fourth place, some way behind traditional period styles such as Victorian and Georgian.

The growth in popularity of contemporary architecture could be attributed to the increasing investment that developers are putting into the design of their homes, with growing numbers employing external architects to come up with original and attractive designs which will appeal to today’s buyer, as well as offering an internal layout which suits their lifestyle. The change in public preference could also be attributed to the increasing importance of a property’s energy performance, with four in every five (81.8%) revealing they look for energy efficient features when buying a home, particularly at a time when energy bills are so high.

Steven Lees, Director at SmartNewHomes, comments:

“A property’s kerb appeal is extremely important to homeowners and it would seem that many more are being drawn to contemporary homes which have been designed for the modern day lifestyle, with garages, eat in kitchens and landscaped gardens.  Victorian and Georgian homes will always remain popular with British homebuyers, typically offering spacious rooms, generous proportions and a bright and airy feel. But housebuilders are able to draw on the best features from these much loved architectural periods and incorporate them into modern designs which are better suited to today’s homebuyer and considerably cheaper to run.”

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Looking at the architectural anatomy of this house, one immediately feels its incredible strength ... This house possesses dignity. Oak and chestnut timbers provide all the physical security ... These sticks have soul.

—From the diary of Robert Strada,

AUGUST 15, 2006
More than a month ago, Robert Strada, an architect and historic preservationist, his wife, Michelle Murphy Strada, and a crew of workers set out to take the 266-year-old home at 444 Little Plains Road in Southampton Village down—piece by piece. They took it apart to save it. The home sat on a piece of property purchased by a new owner who wanted to build a new house there. So the 18th century Colonial was headed for destruction. But village officials worked with the new owner, area preservationists and Mr. Strada to broker a deal that was amenable to everyone. In the end, the effort kept the Little Plains home from becoming a tinder box.

During the three-week disassembly, Mr. Strada kept a journal of the work, the progress and the sometimes surprising finds revealed as layers of wood were peeled and pried back.

4 AUGUST 2006, SOUTHAMPTON
The first day of this preservation project begins uneventfully, waiting for the Dumpster and storage container. The crew starts tomorrow, after the insurance certificate is received by the buyer’s attorney. I complete the CAD drawing of the three floors as a woman pulls into the driveway with her granddaughter. She claims to have been a friend of the Dixons (the home’s previous owners). Now, simply a friend of preservation.

The house was built in Connecticut around 1740 and sometime in the late 19th century was moved by boat to Sag Harbor, where it remained for a few decades until spotted by a member of Dixon family and moved again, this time to the family’s property in Southampton Village. It came to rest at 444 Little Plains Road in 1930.

The Little Plains property is not in the village’s Historic District, so the village’s Board of Architectural Review and Historic

Preservation had no jurisdiction over the home. And since the Colonial’s origins lie far outside the village line, it didn’t qualify for landmark status protection. Still, the age of the home, its excellent condition, and the fact that its classic design is reminiscent of the some of America’s earliest architecture prompted historic preservationists, includ-7 August 2006

I decided to remove the original corner cupboard from the property for safekeeping. Zach Studenroth and Roger Blaugh visited this morning. I value their input ... The mason who worked on the chimney revealed himself to us: W. Darby, who dated the work

JAN. 11, 1944. THANK YOU, MR. DARBY.
Roger Blaugh, chairman of Southampton Village’s Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation, was integral in hammering out the deal among the Little Plains property owner Richard Byrne, village officials and Mr. Strada to preserve the home, Mr. Strada said. The main sticking point was an $80,000 tax bill Mr. Byrne was going to have to pay if the home was still standing when he closed on the purchase of the property. But by allowing the fire department to conduct two firefighting drills in non-historic portions of the house, the village was able to give Mr. Byrne a rebate on the property’s fire protection tax bill to offset the taxes.

“It takes a village—it really does,” Ms. Murphy Strada said last week. “So many people came together to help save this beautiful old house. It was really an amazing thing to see the cooperation and caring.”

The Stradas were equally thankful the fire crews practicing in the home were as careful as they were not to damage any of the historic elements. “Truly, in the end, everyone in this village that could help make this work, did,” Mr. Strada said.

And once the disassembly began Mr. Blaugh and Mr. Studenroth, director of the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, visited the site often, helping the Stradas identify parts and marvel at the construction.

11 AUGUST 2006
Eureka! The numbering system has revealed itself in the form of Roman numerals on each section of the roof rafters. As I follow the rafters down to the plate, it becomes obvious that corresponding numerals exist at the peg opening of the adjacent spacing rafter. The spacing of the rafters starts out randomly, then suddenly becomes consistent ... Another odd characteristic is that the first seven rafters (identified with Roman numerals I-VII) starting on the north side are thinner than the next eight. In fact, the middle rafter is not a part of any numbering system. ... Zach Studenroth arrives to clarify the puzzle: We are looking at two 18th century structures joined together. Thus the two numbering systems and the random spacing.

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Michael Graves is better known for appropriating traditional forms in his monumental Postmodern compositions than for being a strict classicist, so it may seem surprising that in December he was named the winner of the 2012 Driehaus Prize, which celebrates architects who advance classicism in their work. Graves, the founding principal of the New York- and New Jersey-based firm Michael Graves & Associates, joins previous winners Léon Krier, Allan Greenberg, Quinlan Terry, and last year’s recipient Robert A.M. Stern.

Although initially considered a modernist and one of the “New York Five,” Graves’ two years in Italy as a 1960 Rome Prize recipient and the “timeless grammar” of its architecture influenced his evolving style. In his 39 years as a professor at Princeton (now Emeritus), “Graves re-introduced the principles of traditional and classical composition and also brought a dedication to urbanism to a modernist curriculum,” says the award announcement from the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, which established the $200,000 annual prize in 2003. Graves’ taste for classical forms and geometries is evident in his buildings—including the Portland (Oregon) Public Services Building, with references to capital-topped columns embedded on its façade, and the loggia-fronted Humana Corporation headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, among many other projects.

RECORD recently caught up with the architect to discuss the award and his relationship with classicism. He also spoke about his most recent projects, including a prototype house for disabled veterans—Graves himself has used a wheelchair since an infection left him partially paralyzed—and an automobile museum in the Netherlands.

Laura Raskin: Congratulations. Were you surprised to receive an award dedicated to classical architecture?

MG: I never thought I would win it because I’m not a classical architect in the purest sense. But I think classically. I think in terms of an architectural language that is continuous.

What is interesting about winning it is that it opens up the prize to other architects like myself, who aren’t strict classicists.

LR: Do you have anyone in mind?

MG: No, no one person in mind. In a curious way, even Léon Krier isn’t a strict classicist. He’s very inventive with the way he uses his language. And his urbanism is similar to mine. It was encouraging when Léon won. But I even take the award a step further in terms of its broadness—if that’s what they intend to do.

I teach at the University of Miami in the spring occasionally as a visiting critic. There are young faculty members down there doing marvelous work, but nobody knows about it. Magazines don’t publish it because it isn’t Zaha [Hadid] or a museum without anything on the walls yet.

At the Postmodernism conference in New York last fall, when the critics had their time at the roundtable, Robert Campbell discussed the ideas that architects work with: one is urbanism, two is a building’s rightful place, and three is the new. The problem we have is with all of this “new.” There are some things out there that nobody knows about, not just by younger architects, but by architects from the 19th century and 18th century as well. They aren’t just a curious shape—like Rem Koolhaas’s building in China, lying on its side—but the critical debate around them doesn’t exist.

In the days when I was published, I’m sure people felt the same thing about me: “Here’s another Graves building and haven’t we had enough?” Those buildings were new, but they were new-quote-old—and they had something to offer.

LR: What will you do with the $200,000?

MG: I remember when Jim Stirling won the Pritzker [in 1981], somebody asked, “What are you going to do with the money?” He said, “It will help me pay some bills.” Well, we all know that routine. We all have bills to pay. What I want to do, and I’ve already started making drawings, is to extend the library [in my home in Princeton, New Jersey]. My library is full. It’s got books on the floor. Two complete walls in my house are my library stacks. It’s a very pretty room. But I’m out of space. This will give me a chance to increase it. I say that because I hope some day my house will become a foundation and a place for people to study and use the library. It’s not just for me.

LR: You helped design the prototype for the Wounded Warrior home, which was recently completed in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. What’s the latest?

MG: The Wounded Warrior program is essentially for people who have been injured and are re-upping, even with their amputated bodies, or their half-blind bodies, and so on. They are allowed to stay in the army. It is not for people who simply need a place to live.

Our phone has been ringing a lot since people found out that somebody like me is doing health care. That’s so exciting.

LR: What else are you working on these days?

MG: We’re doing a resort community in Switzerland, in Geneva, and a multi-use building on the Nile in Cairo—hotel, office, housing. We’re doing several small elementary and middle schools in New Jersey and New York. That’s a change for us. We’ve never gotten to do those before. And we just finished a really wonderful car museum in the Hague (the Louwman Museum, the national automobile museum of the Netherlands). It’s a very sensitive site next to the Queen’s property.

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Museum memories can be of two kinds. You can either remember the visit in terms of the spectacular architecture, what you bought in the museum shop, ate in the café and what the city looked like from the rooftop, the welcome relief of sky, natural light and cityscape after working through floor after floor of art and spotless minimalism. (Fun, with a touch of eye-ache and weariness.) Or, you close your eyes and think about a museum, and what comes back to you is a work of art that has somehow made life different after you have looked at it. Only later do you think about how well it was housed and shown and lit, and how gently you were informed about it, and how lovely it felt afterwards to walk out into the city that had made such an experience possible.

The shift from the old Tate to the Tate Modern seems to me to epitomize this difference in my own memory, especially when I try to remember the Rothko Room. In the old Tate, I remember the Rothkos and in the new one I remember the room. It is only something very big by Louise Bourgeois or Anish Kapoor (the spider or Marsyas), or a mega-show of a great artist (Picasso/Matisse, Gerhard Richter), that could override the impact of the building. Art must wrestle with the angel of architecture.

I suppose this sort of thing began with the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and somehow it is only modern or contemporary art that must be subjected to this competition. You can feast your eyes all day on Las Meninas without having to notice how the Prado was built. But then, Velázquez’s imperial patrons put their own grand palaces around his paintings, even when he chose to paint the court dwarfs. So, it is important to think about the power of architecture, and the architecture of power, in relation to both early-modern and modern art. How does that power shift, and why, as monarchy gives way to democracy? In our own times, who mediates the relationship between the power of architecture and the value of art? How is this mediation related, in turn, to the power of the State, the power of private funds, and to the cultural, civic and economic life of a city?

With these questions floating about in my head ever since Calcutta, or Kolkata, started planning its own museum of modern art, it was reassuring to attend a recent “academic meet” that pondered, from different points of view, what kind of modern art might be put inside KMOMA, which, by all accounts, promises to be an architectural marvel. Everywhere in Venice, during the biennale last year, were immense posters of the opening of Zaha Hadid’s Stirling-Prize-winning MAXXI, Rome’s national museum of the 21st-century arts, after 11 years of planning and building. The splendid building — somewhere between a Piranesi prison and a futurist shopping-mall — dominated the poster, in which, on closer inspection, you would be able to see not a single work of art and scarcely any human beings. But the “academic wing” of KMOMA’s advisory board seemed well aware of the perils of such magnificence for the makers, viewers and keepers of art.

Two sets of questions emerged as primary during the discussion, both of which demand intellectually rigorous as well as specifically trained, practical thinking born out of solid experience.

First, the meaning and implications of each of the letters of the acronym: the K, the two Ms and the A. Is Kolkata simply a place, or does it define and determine something more than merely a location? Will this be a museum of the modern art of Kolkata, or a museum of modern Indian art that happens to be located in Kolkata, or a museum of modern art from the whole world located in Kolkata? How would, say, Baroda, Delhi or Chennai be part of the cultural geography of KMOMA? Then, what is modern? What is the difference between the modern and the contemporary? Would a museum have to do a different kind of historical thinking when it chooses to call itself a museum of modern, rather than contemporary, art? What would be the definition of art for a museum that is located in a fundamentally unequal society, where the ‘folk’ arts and crafts are part of living traditions of creativity and labour practised alongside, yet at a vast social distance from, the ‘art-world’? Thinking through each of these questions is crucial because that would determine what the museum collects, commissions and shows, how it shows what it shows, and to whom.

Second, when a museum is being planned and people sit around a table asking these necessary questions, what is the relationship between academic thinking and practical action — between, say, art history and museum-making? What is the relationship between conceptualizing a museum and realizing that concept in the actual world, between thinking, planning and doing? Do they not demand different and specific skills and kinds of education? They also demand — and this is more difficult to ensure — translating the language of one set of skills into the language of another, and acknowledging the limits, boundaries and distinct functions of each.

Artists, art historians, art theoreticians, curators, restorers, authenticators, collectors, museum directors, fundraisers, patrons, administrators, art critics, literary critics, anthropologists and art dealers. Each represents a different set of skills and methods, different kinds of vocabulary, experience and knowledge, and, crucially, different sorts of stake in being interested or disinterested in the making, viewing, buying, selling, showing, writing about and ‘museumizing’ of art. (There could be exciting, sinister or unfortunate overlaps among them, of course.) But when these different voices, vocations and interests think and speak together, the bridges between the different discourses have to be built with rigour and humility. And when the occasion for such a meet is specifically the planning of what to put in a museum, then every other profession or discipline (interdisciplinarity notwithstanding) will have to be subsumed under the highly specific discipline of running a museum.

Creating a museum on the scale of KMOMA is bound, therefore, to shake up and reorganize the relationships — the modes of communication and collaboration — among different kinds of learning and practice. When a museum rightly makes room for an academic wing, both in its advisory board and on its premises, it must do so with a realistic awareness of how specialized the training for running a museum is (and the training of the trainers), and how that training must not be conflated with other art-related skills and experiences — even when these are important for the sustenance of the larger art world outside the museum, of which the museum is, willy-nilly, a part.

An amusing, and significant, moment during this academic meet was a brief exchange across the table between a venerable professor of art history and an equally venerable museum director. The professor was explaining to us the post- modern problem of trying to judge the authenticity of a work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, à la Sherrie Levine, the American photographer and ‘appropriation artist’. And the museum director quipped, “But, sir, a fake is always a fake.”

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When Shireesh Reddy and his wife Saritha purchased their home on Woodbine Avenue in 2010, there was no question that they were going to need to renovate the small bungalow to accommodate the needs of their family. While plenty of homeowners may feel like they have to move heaven and earth to get a sizeable home renovation project underway in an Oak Park historic district, for the Reddys that was no exaggeration.

The process of planning and getting the required permits for their home's renovation and addition took more than 20 months, and required the services of a house-moving company. Expanding an 800-square foot bungalow into a 3,500-square foot house is quite an undertaking.

The home was built somewhere between 1880 or 1890 and belongs to the Woodbine subdivision, a part of the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District. Strict historic district guidelines dictated that the exterior of the home be retained, but Shireesh Reddy notes that there was very little of the interior that could be salvaged.

"The house had only three owners before us, and the previous owner had begun gutting the home before he left," says Shireesh. "There were no working bathrooms, and the house was virtually uninhabitable. We had been looking in the area for a while and bought it from a court-ordered sale. Once we inspected it, we found out the house was held up by timbers that had gone through a termite infestation. It was not stable."

Reddy is the owner of local company, Digital Living, which creates smart homes through the design and installation of custom audio-visual home solutions. In his work, he makes homes' sound and video systems ultra-modern, and he plans to do the same to his home on Woodbine.

"I'm taking this home that's in really bad shape and changing the interior, while trying to preserve the historic aspects. Internally, this house will be incredibly modern. You will be able to press a button that says 'goodbye' to turn off all the systems when you leave. Everything will be automated."

In addition to the internal changes, the scope of the project required some unusual lot preparation. In order to pour a foundation adequate to support the house and addition, the original cottage had to temporarily be moved. Moving an historic home is not something that's done frequently in the village, but Reddy had no problem finding a company to do the job.

"To be honest, I googled 'house movers' and found Dillabaugh House and Building Movers based in Crown Point, Indiana," he says. "There's no house moving company based in Oak Park, but these guys moved the Ernest Hemingway home, so I found a company with a local connection."

Reddy credits architect Steve Jaskowiak of West Studio Architecture for developing the initial design of the project. "He did the first rendering and overall design, which included plans for moving the house to pour a new foundation. He got us to point A with the historic commission."

The Reddys had to satisfy the requirements of the Oak Park Historic Preservation Commission and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA), both of which have painstaking requirements for alterations of historic homes. Throughout the process, Shireesh says, the plans changed frequently, and he ended up turning to Oak Park architect Joseph Trojanowski to complete the project.

Working to satisfy two historic bodies created many challenges, including extending the time frame of the project. Shireesh acknowledges that the time-consuming process paid off in the end.

"If I had my way, I would have had a totally different house, and I don't think that would've been for the best," he admits. "We definitely came up with a house that keeps the best of the historic aspects and makes room for the new as well. At the end of the day, both Oak Park and Illinois were willing to work with us, and they had some great ideas."

Trojanowski agrees that the historic review can be daunting. "You imagine a landmark house being something very grandiose, but this is a very small house, not a grand estate home," he says. "We often call it a shack. Lots of the materials didn't match. Our guess was that perhaps this was a workman's cottage built with leftovers from other nearby construction [sites].

"The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency was very concerned that the addition was deferential to the existing house, not enveloping it or destroying its character. While pressing the point that an 800-square foot home is just not how people live today, we ended up with a design for the addition that really takes into account the original house."

Trojanowski kept the roofline lower than most of the houses on the block, limited basement windows and kept the lower level just two steps above grade to keep the addition consistent with the original house.

"Oak Park is mostly concerned with preserving the streetscape view of the home, but because we wanted to get IHPA approval in order to get some tax benefits, we had to also take into account the interior of the house," says the architect. "Some of the interior details were pretty much shot because the home had been essentially abandoned prior to the Reddys buying it. We had to make judgments about what was historical and what was not. We kept what we could of the original woodwork and floors, and replicated what we could."

Temporarily moving the house was unusual but necessary. "This is very rare in Oak Park, but it is the first step in redoing this house," added Trojanowski. "The house is now on temporary supports at the back of the lot while we wait for contractors to pour the first part of the foundation. Once weather permits that process to be complete, they will move the original house onto the new foundation and complete another part of the foundation for the addition."

Today, the original house has been moved and zone variances have been granted that allow the Reddys to increase the percentage of the lot their new house will cover. Although the construction work is just beginning, Shireesh Reddy feels like much of the heavy lifting is over.

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