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By Sara Hart

Ricciotti will test the architectural capabilities of Ductal again at the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, in Marseilles, which won’t be completed until 2009. In this project, he plans to weave solid strands of the material into a delicate concrete lattice (another oxymoron), forming a warp-and-woof pattern. The effect will be an abstract interpretation of Islamic decorative motifs, while the whole museum will emerge as what Ricciotti calls a “vertical casbah”—the modern version of a traditional North African citadel.

 

Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete The exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., presents recent or current projects that use concrete in new or unconventional ways. The 30 projects on view showcasing concrete’s strength, versatility, and potential are organized into three curatorial categories—structure, surface, and sculptural form—and are represented with photographs, drawings, models, and material samples. Featured works include Santiago Calatrava’s new Auditorio de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and the longitudinal house(s) by Vincent James Associates in which spaces are defined by an undulating ribbon of concrete that alternately serves as floor, wall, and ceiling. The show, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, with graphics by Pure+Applied, has been extended until April 17. The museum and Princeton Architectural Press are developing a book to be based on the exhibition and a related Princeton symposium. S.H.

Closer to home, creative use of concrete thrives, even if the circumstances are less paradoxical. Santa Monica–based Pugh + Scarpa Architects have designed a house in Silverlake, the architecturally affected neighborhood of Los Angeles. Innovation happens in straightforward problem-solving as often as it happens in formal experimentation, and Pugh + Scarpa have illustrated this with the design of the Vail-Grant Residence. The site is a steep hillside with the added problem of being adjacent to a Neutra house. The architects strove to preserve views of this iconic structure while meeting a complex set of zoning requirements.