In Passing: Gregg Lutz

Gregg Vincent Lutz Architect AIBC passed away suddenly on Saturday, November 17 at the age of 69. Gregg grew up in the rural community of Valencia, Pennsylvania before attending the University of Cincinnati’s School of Architecture, graduating in 1968. It was there he met his wife Janet. In 1975, they settled in the Nass River Valley in Northern British Columbia. Gregg registered with the AIBC in 1976,  and in 1979 the couple moved to Terrace where they established Architecture North. In 1986, the family took up new residence in West Vancouver, renaming their firm Lutz Associates Architects. In 2008, the AIBC granted Gregg the honorary title of “Life Member of the AIBC”, recognizing 30 years of continuous membership. In addition to being a talented designer and craftsman, Gregg was an avid outdoorsman with a close connection to nature and the environment, having served as president of the Stanley Park Zoological Society from 1989 to 1991. Gregg is survived by his wife Janet Lutz Architect AIBC, and daughters Karen and Courtney. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society (www.bc.cancer.ca). A celebration of his life was held on Sunday, November 25, 1:00 p.m. at the West Vancouver United Church, 2062 Esquimalt Avenue.

Honours for CEI

Vancouver-based CEI Architecture has been recognized by the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, in its inaugural “Office Building of the Future” Design Competition. The NAIOP competition invited its 15,000 member architectural firms to share a vision for office building design and operations in the year 2020, utilization trends, sustainability and new building technologiesand including conceptual site plans and sketches, cost estimates and other broad design generalities. The competition jury considered such things as architectural philosophy, solving of design challenges and ability to “sell” the vision. The CEI concept, submitted in partnership with Reed Jones Christoffersen Consulting Engineers, Rocky Point Engineering, 2020 Engineering and SSA Quantity Surveyors Ltd., received an Honourable Mention, the only Canadian firm to be so recognized. It explored the idea of a 40-storey office building constructed from wood, including sustainability strategies to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Architecture for the Other 99 Per Cent

So Long, Frank Gehry. The Design World Turns on “Starchitecture” and its Excesses
by Alex Ulam, MacLean’s
November 21, 2012

Several days before the opening of the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, the most important architectural exhibition in the world, a middle-aged New York architect, Tod Williams, was shuffling around inside a rustic building adjacent to the Venice’s Arsenale, a massive brick complex several city blocks long where the Venetians formerly built their ships. It was a stifling hot day and Williams, bare-chested and dressed in a pair of baggy shorts, was arranging gray wood boxes contributed by several dozen leading figures from the architecture world. Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, winner of architecture world’s top award, the Pritzker Prize, had sent in a box topped with a series of small glass bottles filled with paint pigments. American architect Brad Cloepfil had filled his box with carved tree branches. Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam’s box has had a collage hanging from it that included doll limbs and black feathers that almost didn’t make it into the show because it was temporarily impounded by Italian customs. It was no accident that architectural models were not on display. “We said, ‘Do anything you wish,’” said Williams, “But fill it with something personal, something that is not architecture.” More … http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/21/building-for-the-other-99-per-cent/.

Vancouver Architect Duo Set to Deliver Whistler Museum

By Emily D’Alterio, DesignBuild Source
November 27, 2012

The highly anticipated new museum of philanthropist, developer and art collector Michael Audain, the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, is on track with the announcement of development’s newly-appointed architects. Vancouver-based architecture duo John and Patricia Patkau of Patkau Architects have been selected to design the site. Announced by museum board member Jim Moodie, both architects and development are expected to bring new life to the area. More … http://designbuildsource.ca/2012/11/architect-whistlers-museum/.