CultureNOW | A Celebration of Culture & Community

Ann Beha from Ann Beha Architects talks about the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 

Ann Beha from Ann Beha Architects talks about the Gardner Museum. Built by Isabella Stewart Gardner and opened to the public in 1903 this Venetian inspired palace houses a large collection of art objects. Additionally there is a wonderful open courtyard that contains seasonal flowers. This museum is famous for a high-profile burglary in 1990, when thieves dressed as police officers stole 13 paintings including: Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), A Lady and Gentleman in Black (1633) and a Self-Portrait (1634); Vermeer's The Concert (1658-1660); Govaert Flinck's Landscape with an Obelisk (1638); five drawings by the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas; and Edouard Manet's Chez Tortoni (1878-1880). The works were never recovered, and the $5 million dollar reward remains unclaimed. 

Ann Beha talks about the architecture of the New England Conservatory, and her firm's additions to the area.  The New England Conservatory of Music is the oldest independent school of music in the United States. Located in Boston’s Fenway district, NEC’s campus occupies 2.5 acres and includes the internationally-known Jordan Hall. 

Ann Beha Architects has completed conceptual design for two new buildings, a Student Life / Performance Center and an Academic Center. The project accommodates 200,000 sf of program, including student housing, dining and social spaces, the NEC library, practice and performance facilities, an opera workshop, and extensive campus landscape upgrades. 

Ann Beha from Ann Beha Architects talks about Symphony Hall.  Boston's Symphony Hall, built in 1900, is rated one of the three great music halls in the world from the point of view of acoustics.

Jonathan Levi describes the project as a process of careful detailing that would rethink the ways residential housing is thought of and built. 

Jonathan Levi describes the project as a Z-shaped school that contains two parts with individual entrances that break the scale of the institution to a personalized learning environment. 

Jonathan Levi talks about the Charlestown Holocaust Memorial as an experiment of an urban void and sculpture that define a space of memory.

Jonathan Levi tells how his studio approached the design of a Harvard Graduate House where students and faculty would come to interact and socialize. 

David Fixler discusses the end of Modernism, which occurred around the late 1960s early 1970s. The energy crisis occurs, which puts a hiatus in construction. Fixler talks about how architects today still use Modernism as a model for contemporary construction.

David Fixler talks about Le Corbusier's Carpenter Center, which was designed under the umbrella of Jose Luis Sert's office in 1960. Being the only Le Corbusier building in the United States, the building offers a unique response to the context of Cambridge, in David Fixler's words, "a pavilion" that gestures out to different parts of the city, while clearly signing the project with his architectural language.