The Archbishopric Museum at the Hedmark Museum in Hamar, Norway, was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn (1924-2009). Photo: Lars Måhlum Extra Large Image

Gwangju · 2009.0309
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Kyu Sung Woo Architects has revealed its design for the Asian Culture Complex in downtown Gwangju, South Korea. The facility will include spaces for visual and performing arts, and exhibits about democracy movements in Asia. The below-grade construction will carve an innovative architectural core in a 1.4 million-square-foot (130,000-square-meter) public landscape.

Woo's design exploits natural light with glass-cube skylights, light tubes, clerestories, light shelves, and transparent scrims. The complex is designed to receive the highest rating by South Korea's Green Building Council, with such sustainable systems as slab-embedded hydronic radiant heating and cooling, and a 100-percent outdoor air low-pressure displacement ventilation system. Completion is scheduled for 2012.

Washington, D.C. · 2009.0306
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced the appointment of Scot Horst, LEED AP, to the new position of senior vice president of LEED, effective April 2009. A leader in the sustainable design movement, he is a partner at 7group, a green building consulting firm, and president of the Athena Institute International, where he has been involved with a broad range of work related to life-cycle assessment.

During his LEED Steering Committee chairmanship for the last three years, Horst has overseen the development of LEED 2009, LEED for Homes, LEED for Schools, and several other LEED ratings systems. He has worked on over 70 LEED projects, and has also chaired the PVC Task Force of the Technical Science and Advisory Committee.

Los Angeles · 2009.0306
The Evo condominium tower in downtown Los Angeles, California, has officially opened. The 24-story, LEED Silver-targeted tower was designed by a joint venture of design architect TVA Architects, Inc. and executive architect GBD Architects, both of Portland, Oregon. The building is a glass-shrouded, post-tension concrete residential tower housing 311 condominium units, with five two-story townhouses at ground level.

The exterior envelope includes a high-efficiency glass curtain wall, with recycled aluminum window mullions and metal panels. The design articulates large elevations of clear glazing with a composition of projecting and recessed metal-paneled elements, resulting in a mix of reflection and sheen. Amenities include a ground-level courtyard, sixth-floor terrace, and 24th-floor club room. In addition to 500,000 square feet (46,000 square meters) above grade, the tower includes a three-level underground parking garage.

Located in the L.A. Live Entertainment District, the project joins the Elleven and Luma towers as part of an ongoing development by the South Group, a collaboration of Portland-based developers Williams & Dame and Gerding Edlen.

Atlanta · 2009.0302
Construction continues on a new science building at George State University in Atlanta. The Atlanta office of HDR CUH2A designed the 350,000-square-foot (33,000-square-meter) laboratory and classroom facility. St. Louis, Missouri-based McCarthy Building Companies is the general contractor. Completion is scheduled for April 2010.

Oslo · 2009.0227
Prominent Norwegian architect and Pritzker Prize laureate Sverre Fehn died on February 23, 2009, in Oslo. Fehn was born in Kongsberg, Norway, in 1924.

He graduated from the Oslo School of Architecture in 1948, then cofounded the Norwegian branch of the International Congress of Modern Architects (CIAM), called Progressive Architects Group Oslo Norway (PAGON). In the early 1950s, Fehn was influenced by the vernacular architecture in Morocco, and by working with Jean Prouvé and studying Le Corbusier in Paris. Fehn began his own practice in Norway in 1954, and later taught at his alma mater from 1971 to 1995.

For the 1997 Pritzker Prize, the jury wrote of Fehn, "The architecture of Norwegian Sverre Fehn is a fascinating and exciting combination of modern forms tempered by the Scandinavian tradition and culture from which it springs. He gives great primacy in his designs to the relationship between the built and the natural environment... Eschewing the clever, the novel and the sensational, Fehn has pursued his version of twentieth century modernism steadily and patiently for the past fifty years."

Fehn's design for the Norwegian Pavilion at the 1958 World Exposition in Brussels, Belgium, first earned him international attention. Other works include the Nordic Pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale, and, in Norway, the Archbishopric Museum at the Hedmark Museum in Hamar (1967-1973, pictured above), Villa Busk in Bamble (1990), and the Glacier Museum at Fjærland Fjord (1991). His most recent projects include the Gyldendal Headquarters (2007) and the Norwegian Museum of Architecture (2008), both in Oslo.

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