At Sparano + Mooney Architecture, we care deeply about our unique clients and strive to deliver thoughtful, innovative design solutions for each client’s vision for their architecture and interiors. Our clients are our inspiration, our bread and butter and our driving force. We love what we do and do what we love, and are eternally grateful to be able to work with people and companies that help us cultivate the culture of excellence that defines our firm! Which is why we are so excited to write about Big Cartel, a company that not only shares our core values, but a fantastic architectural client – we are designing their company headquarters in Utah - and an incredibly cool webstore business provider dedicated to assisting creatives in reaching their potential.
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That’s right – Salt Lake Design Week is officially underway, and we are beyond excited to be a part of this city-wide cultural extravaganza! As Salt Lake City architects deeply committed to producing and inspiring great design, we can’t wait to sample the artistic cornucopia that this creative-minded city has to offer this week. So get ready to sharpen your creative edge and join us for what is shaping up to be a stellar event…
Read MoreAt Sparano + Mooney, we are mad about architecture. For us, great design is at the heart of our Los Angeles, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah, based practice and our architects are wholeheartedly focused on delivering thoughtful, innovative, sustainable and contemporary design solutions to each and every client. We explore hyper-specific cultural cues and strive to construct a meaningful relationship between modern architecture and the experience of its inhabitants. Which is why we were so excited to visit the mothership of international architecture – the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016. We were eager to explore visionary architectural creations from architects from around the globe and to be inspired by the plethora of architectural delights on offer. Do other firms share our core values? Does an architect in Ireland approach design in a similar manner to an architect in the American West? How can we continue to progress the cause of research-based conceptual design and architecture to solve the real problems we confront each day? What can we learn from our peers around the globe? Below is a snapshot of the incredible installations and exhibitions we discovered during our trip.
Read MoreEvery two years, the international architecture community comes together for a truly inspirational presentation: the Venice Architecture Biennale. Held in Venice, Italy, the 2016 edition runs from May 28th until November 27th, and includes 88 participants from 37 countries, as well as 62 national participants and a curated selection of associated events. The Biennale is truly THE place to engage with cutting-edge, thought-provoking architecture – which is why, when Anne Mooney and John Sparano recently visited Venice, they understandably made the Biennale the focus of their stay. Here, we present a blog series about their architectural discoveries…
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Sparano + Mooney Architecture is delighted to announce that our Pulsar House Project has been recognized with a 2016 DesignArts Utah Award! The Utah Division of Arts & Museums DesignArts Program is dedicated to the promotion of excellence in the diverse fields of architecture, graphic and industrial design in Utah. They strive to help the citizens of Utah see, experience, use and value the art of design that surrounds us daily – we are honored that our architects were chosen as a recipient of this year’s award!
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Sparano + Mooney Architecture is honored to announce that it has been awarded the American Institute of Architects Western Mountain Region Architectural Firm of the Year for 2016!
Each year, the AIA Western Mountain Region recognizes substantial achievements by an architectural practice in the western United States who embodies the cause of creating an excellent built environment. The prestigious Firm of the Year Award identifies the continuing collaboration among individuals in a firm who have produced distinguished architecture over a period of at least 10 years, have made significant contributions to the AIA, the profession and their community, and have transcended their regional boundaries in making these contributions. Significantly, this year’s award is the first ever to recognize a Utah architect for the Firm of the Year in the 37-year history of the AIA Western Mountain Region Honor Awards. Based in Washington, D.C., the American Institute of Architects has been the leading professional membership association for licensed architects, emerging architectural professionals, and allied partners since 1857. With nearly 300 state and local chapters, the AIA serves as a voice of the architecture profession and the resource for architects and its members in service to society.
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If you are looking for a pleasant way to pass time indoors as the seasons change, look no further than the Summer 2016 issue of Utah Style & Design - a Park City modern home designed by Sparano + Mooney Architecture has been featured on the cover!
The corresponding article, “Opening Act”, written by Natalie Taylor and photographed by Scot Zimmerman, showcases the “strikingly beautiful” contemporary residence, which “combines dynamic architecture with high-style livability and sustainability”. The clients were clear about choosing the right Park City architect and about their must-haves: “We wanted a relatively quiet house with no duplicate spaces. It was critical that the house feels like it belongs on the land and that it fits peacefully into its environment without feeling forced”.
Read MoreSound and image bleed and fuse. The viewer sees, experiences and questions. Modern hyper-mobility and the relentlessness of human existence are served up in the guise of moving pictures. Such is the entropic landscape of the art works by Doug Aitken, which will be exhibited in a mid-career retrospective at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The show will be the first North American museum survey of Aitken’s work and will include seven large-scale video installations, a recent live sound piece and several cross-disciplinary, multimedia artworks that, in typical Aitken fashion, defy acute categorization.
Read MorePicture your perfect Saturday night: Does it include a musical performance at Abravanel Hall, followed by a stroll through downtown and a meal at one of the award-winning downtown restaurants, brewpubs or bistros? Or, perhaps it involves a ballet at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theater, stargazing at the Clark Planetarium, and an exhibition at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art? A Utah Jazz basketball game? An outdoor film in Pioneer Park? There’s no question about it – Salt Lake City is a vibrant community, with a rich artistic, civic, cultural and religious heritage, and we are proud to be involved with making our downtown an even more dynamic and celebrated place to live, work and create!
Read MoreIn what light do you see yourself? What do you fear? How do you IDENTIFY? In a world that is increasingly dynamic, in which we sleep next to our mobile phones and swarm anonomously among an ever amassing population, our personal identities are more and more fluid, strained and undefinable. This condition is one that prolific New York-based artist Cindy Sherman is intimately familiar with, and seeks to address through her latest photographs, her first body of new work to be exhibited in five years.
In this series of portraits Sherman, true to her milieu, has appropriated the dress and appearance of fading starlets in an attempt to come to terms with her own ageing. Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo take the stage, as do several leading ladies from Hollywood’s Golden Age. “I relate so much to these women”, Sherman explains. “They look like they’ve been through a lot, and they’re survivors. And you can see some of the pain in there, but they’re looking forward and moving on.”
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No, you’re not seeing double and yes, our team member architects Anne Mooney, John Sparano and Seth Striefel are indeed larger than life! At least, in the Arts Council’s photomural public art project, where oversize photographs of the architects, along with 50 additional creatives and artisans who live and work in the community, have been affixed to the exterior of local businesses.
In planning the new Downtown, the City wanted to highlight the revitalized arts district and showcase the area’s unique talent. “We have been blown away by the creative talent and innovative thinkers already here”, said Arts Council Coordinator Lesly Allen. “Sparano + Mooney Architecture is a key element to what we want our downtown to be”. Lesly also noted this architectural firm’s ability to take gritty, industrial-feeling spaces and create welcoming environments in which you’d want to spend time.
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“Forget about the Boring World! Welcome to our Not Standard World!” So begins Jun Li’s presentation titled Not Standard, which she delivered recently to the next generation of architects visiting from an immersive summer design program. Jun, an architectural intern at Sparano + Mooney Architecture, asked the students to consider: How do we design for a diverse public experience in an increasingly standardized world? Though it may be tempting to conceive of and produce generic spaces, Jun posits that you can design for individuality and the creation of a unique product, perhaps paradoxically, through a standardized data-gathering process. First, we must take into account the variability of a client and the fluid environment in which they wish to live or work. But, by asking broadly applicable questions to distinguish differences such as gender, age and body type, and subjective preferences like whether one prefers to live alone or among others, Jun proposes an evolution of architecture that is intimate and better suited to clients’ personal needs.
Read MoreThe Studio City Recreation Center Gymnasium in Beeman Park, located in Studio City, California will be Los Angeles’s first Net-Zero Energy pilot project. Designed by Sparano + Mooney Architecture to LEED-certified specifications, the new 12,000 SF facility will be an immeasurable asset to the neighborhood and community, and will also demonstrate the feasibility of designing self-sustaining energy efficient municipal buildings. The project scope replaces an inefficient recreation building with the construction of new, state of the art modern architecture. The recreation center will include a full-size basketball court, multipurpose meeting rooms for the community, office and administration areas, a kitchen, restrooms and support facilities. The project scope also includes security lighting, a parking area, new landscaping and irrigation for the park. With a projected total construction cost of $7M, the gymnasium will be ready for public use and exceed of code requirements for Net-Zero Energy.
Read More“It’s mainly tacos and stray dogs and really nice people”, observes Sojourner Truth Parsons, a painter who occupies a light-filled loft in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights district. Parsons is part of a new crop of achingly cool artists, designers, gallery owners, collectors and culture vultures who are moving to downtown Los Angeles and the Arts District – a cluster of forbidding, abandoned factories and warehouses, industrial spaces, parking lots, strip malls, concrete and barbed wire. The area is scrappy, desolate, and ripe for reinvention as the city’s prime arts and culture hotspot. It is also home to Sparano + Mooney Architecture where we have been based for almost 20 years.
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At Sparano + Mooney Architecture, we like to recognize the hard work our team members invest in advancing architecture and design. With this appreciation in mind, we extend a big congratulations to Anne Mooney, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, who has been recognized as the 2016 Professor of the Year in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah! Anne is a principal and the co-founder of Sparano + Mooney Architecture, and is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture where she teaches applied research design studios and courses in theory and professional practice.
Read MoreSparano + Mooney Architecture is pleased to help support the Topaz Museum and Education Center in its fundraising effort. In this season of summer travel, if you find yourself in the Bay Area we invite you to join virtuoso trumpeter Mark Inouye from the San Francisco Symphony and the Friends of Topaz for an evening of Mark Inouye & Friends in Concert. The event will be held on Sunday, July 10th, 2016 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
For several years, Mark has been on a journey – to discover all he could about his father, Takara Steve Inouye. This path led him to the Topaz Internment Camp outside of Delta, Utah, where his father was incarcerated during World War II with 11,000 others. His father’s only crime? Being Japanese American. Thanks to Mark’s generosity and commitment to raising awareness of this injustice, all proceeds from the benefit concert will be donated to help create new exhibits at the Topaz Museum.
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The Caine School of the Arts at Utah State University was first established in 2005. It became the Caine College of the Arts in 2010, with its own dean, Dr. Craig Jessop, and recognized degree programs for students in the design, theater, and music arts. Today the college is well known not only for its student body but also for the architecture that comprises the college campus. Sparano + Mooney Architecture is thrilled to be part of a campus-wide renovation project that will completely transform the Caine College of the Arts.
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Residential architecture in Salt Lake City is both intriguing and exciting at the same time. The city has a lot of great neighborhoods that, through the course of time and gentrification, have become a great place for us to live and work within. One example is the Central Ninth neighborhood close to the center of the city. We have had opportunities to work in this eclectic urban zone, including a recent project for which we designed a mixed-use housing project that combines the best in urban living with an inviting retail and public space.
We appreciate the opportunity to work on mixed-use projects such as this one because we know how important they are to metropolitan Salt Lake City. As a city with a strong and vibrant population of young professionals, Salt Lake City is one of the best places to live and work in the American West. Our urban zones that are being developed like the Central Ninth are a big part of that. Having an opportunity to contribute to urban zone developments has been an exciting challenge for Sparano + Mooney Architecture and one that we are happy to participate in as we create design solutions for these districts.
Read MoreSustainable design and Salt Lake City go together like coffee and donuts. Salt Lake City is a perfect environment for sustainable architecture because of our unique climate that is part semiarid and part continental, depending on whose scale you want to use. Our geography doesn't hurt either. We have all the right ingredients in Salt Lake City to test and develop sustainable technologies that will drive the architectural design of the future.
At the foundation of sustainable design are five basic principles as outlined by the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Needless to say that sustainable architecture is about more than just saving energy and improving insulation. It is about making the best use of our resources without needless waste or environmental damage.
Without further delay, here are the five foundational principles of sustainable architecture and design:
Read MoreIt's a dream come true: owning a beautiful vacation home that has direct access to the Park City Mountain Resort in northwest Utah. The Park City architects at Sparano + Mooney Architecture recently had the opportunity to make that dream a reality for a professional couple and their children. They hired us to design a modern vacation home that fits well in the mountain context, provided a comfortable and inspiring living environment, and met their goals of sustainability and environmental friendly architecture.
The design we came up with exceeded the expectations of everyone involved. From city planners in Park City to neighbors to the owners themselves, everyone our team had the opportunity to work with has contributed to the extraordinary result. Our client now has a beautifully crafted and highly functional vacation home where they can spend time in relaxing and enjoying all that Park City has to offer.
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