mj neal

AIA Homes Tour this Weekend. We’re in. Are you?

| mjneal

I know you’ve been dying to see the Wolfe Den and get a tour… well… this weekend is the AIA Homes tour and the Wolfe Den is one of the selected homes. MJ and many gorgeous, young, and talented docents will be available all weekend to answer your burning questions about this fabulous home that has already won all local and state awards. It has been published in Dwell and reviewed in the contemporist.

To find out all about it go to the AIA homes Tour site; this site, the brochure, poster and all other marketing materials have been designed this year by our incomparable friends at FODA studio.

From the www.aiahomestour.com site

photo by Jonathan H Jackson

Design Award 2009: The Wolfe Den

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The American Institute of Architects in Austin has awarded MJ Neal Architects a 2009 Design Award for the Wolfe Den. We started competing for these city design awards in 2003 and we’ve won every year except for 2006, when we didn’t enter.

You can see the winners for the last three years at the AIA site.

Please enjoy the new slide show below. It’s the selection that I’ve put together for the upcoming publication in Dwell and Dwell.com. There are shots that have already been posted here and there are brand new ones! Alex and Jamie look like movie stars:-)

Wolfe Den Slideshow

tsa pool69
Storage everywhere! 

 

 

more about “the slide show“, posted with vodpod

FIlm and Architecture anyone?

| mjneal

We, us, MJ Neal, AIA and Viviane Vives, taught a graduate advanced design studio at the University of Texas, Arlington.

This video explores how the use of film as a research tool in architecture informed the students’ projects and changed them. The students achieved a completely different relationship to the site by the use of documentary filmmaking.

Film was also used as a creative expression medium and a presentation element but the emphasis was on it’s use as a knowledge base tool. All self-consciousness was left at the door. We wanted truth, passion, we particularly fought any “architect’s preciousness.”  Focus was on obliterating mythologies and keeping it real, to open them up and to make them reach the bottom of the reality of the site and the people that inhabited it.

All students shared a pool of footage and learned from each other, sharing their findings and drawing their own conclusions.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “FIlm and Architecture anyone?“, posted with vodpod

Austin Architecture Timeline – We’re the Present?

| mjneal
click on picture to go to a bigger size, then, click on the Magnifying glass symbol to read.

This has been out for a while. I’m just not sure on how to blog about it… Basically the nice people at Austin Monthly Home created a timeline for Austin Architecture since well, the beginning, pre 1840, to present-day, choosing MJ Neal as an example of the present; in what what they call “neomodern.”

Alofsin, an architect and profesor at UT seems to have coined the “neomodern” moniker and although I disagree with his take of “it” not having a idelogical base, who am I to argue.

I’ll say this, one day, we need to put a book out. We’ll do it in collaboration with Thomas and Powei, we’ll dig into our archives and bring out the emails we wrote in dialogue with the neighborhood and amongst ourselves, eh boys?

We are definitely not the only ones that should be mentioned in the timeline, but I guess there wasn’t much space.

so… WOW, have we come a long way since the neighbors were calling the news on us complaining that we were building Texaco stations on their street. Let’s celebrate! I’m ready to party! Oh wait. There’s a WILD recession going on and, right, soon, maybe.

Thanks Austin Monthly! and thanks to my now most favorite person of all times, Rhonda Lashley, the writer.

Posted by Viviane

PS: Unfortunately and for reasons beyond our control, we don’t live in the Ramp House anymore, not since 2005… me miss you, house!