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And the Winners Are: AIA Chicago Design Excellence Awards

http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature80.htm - October 17, 2002

Today’s News - Tuesday, June 8, 2010

•   Weinstein gives (mostly) thumbs-up to new Ando tome that richly illustrates the "poet of light and concrete."
•   There's a new metric in town: the Vitality Index, meant "to improve cities through a rethinking of creativity and its relationship to economic development and public policy."
•   An extreme makeover in the works for Cairo's Downtown to make it greener and more pedestrian friendly to highlight its architectural identity.
•   Architects lend their voices to what to do about the not yet completed Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) East-West Highway: what to do with what has already been built, and how to deal with remaining urban architecture problems.
•   Perhaps both cities should take advantage of ASLA's new Sustainability Toolkit: Economic Models.
•   U.S. firms making a mark in Brazil (some up's, some down's).
•   Hawthorne cites sources who say Broad favors DS+R over OMA for new L.A. museum - but he could still change his mind.
•   Open atrium design lands Adamson Associates/Rogers Stirk Harbour Toronto's St. Lawrence Market north building project.
•   Russell minces no words about what NYU is doing to NYC's Greenwich Village, which "has struggled to survive the university's strikingly tin ear for history and architecture."
•   It's been a long time coming, but plans for a number of projects for Brooklyn Arts District finally move ahead.
•   Campbell says the innovative interior of a new concert hall in Rockport, MA, hits all the right notes (too bad the street façade "is forgettable to say the least" - but it's not the architects' fault).
•   Hume tries to find a few good things to say about Corbu's Berlin apartment building: "Its significance demands we pay attention, but can't lift it above the banality not just of its architecture but of the assumptions on which it was based."
•   More on Moscow's Strelka Institute - and Rem wrapped in a fleece blanket "making him look like the superhero that the crowd already believed him to be."
•   ASLA puts itself forward to lend a hand in helping the Commission on the BP oil spill to develop a remediation and mitigation strategy for the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico (our hearts break every time we turn on the news).
•   "Now + When: Australian Urbanism" at the Venice Architecture Biennale will include some sci-fi inspiration using the same technology that create Hollywood blockbusters (without the Hollywood budgets).
•   Glancey celebrates Ian Nairn, the "voice of outrage" and the "scourge of 'subtopia'."
•   Pearman on Sudjic's Foster biography: the problem is that the subject is "both very private and a total control freak...a biographer's nightmare."
•   A good reason to head to Boston next week: the 10-day Common Boston Festival will celebrate architecture and design (and everything is free!).
•   We couldn't resist: RMJM's Abu Dhabi tower makes Guinness World Records list as World's Furthest Leaning Manmade Tower (lots of paperwork involved).

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_06_08.htm - Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Today’s News - Friday, May 7, 2010

•   A note from Denise Scott Brown alerted us to the National Park Service's proposed alterations to Philly's Franklin Court (Venturi and Rauch, 1976), her letter objecting to some of them - and request for public comment so "lovers of this project can weigh in on the proposed changes - there is little time."
•   Hume on Deutsche Bank HQ's LEED Platinum makeover in Frankfurt: the "complex has nothing to recommend it architecturally, but as an example of corporate enlightenment, it stands tall."
•   Just how did FXFowle win SAP Americas HQ LEED Silver expansion? They asked "What about going for Platinum?"
•   Hosey's 10 green building trends for the next decade (#10: "Death to starchitecture").
•   A proposed EPA fly-ash ban could stunt use of green materials.
•   Better news: silent, fully enclosed, bladeless wind turbines are on the way (good news for birds - and the rest of us).
•   Kamin on two of Chicago's urban plazas: one "merits a big thumbs up," the other "a Bronx cheer."
•   Sanders' oh-so thoughtful essay on John Lindsay's "gift for bringing a spirit of joy and 'fun' to New York" (sometimes successful, sometimes not) - movies and art, parks and pedestrians included.
•   Oklahoma City digs out its massive 1964 Pei Plan model - and why it "was despised by the city's locals and outdated in the end."
•   Berlin's new Topography of Terror documentation center's "modest metallic gray building is deliberately sparse and functional" (great slide show).
•   More on SOM's 5th Ave. campus center for The New School - this time with lots of pix.
•   Despite the bad economy, SF Jazz is "making waves with a bold proposal for a historic expansion" in San Francisco.
•   Rose on Maggie's Centres: "uplifting buildings benefit both body and soul. But are they just an architectural placebo?" (terrific slide show).
•   2nd Annual Architect 50: who leads the pack in terms of profitability, design, and commitment to green (metrics make for some surprises).
•   Call for entries: 7th Annual International A/L Light & Architecture Awards (deadline looms!).
•   Weekend diversions:
•   Iovine tours the Richard Meier Model Museum (it reopens for the season today) with the man himself: "You can see what a lousy model maker I was back then."
•   UB architecture students go over the top with "The Living Wall" (great video).
•   Jencks and Heathcote's "The Architecture of Hope" shows off Maggie's Centres' starchitecture, but "most interestingly, however, it shows how much architecture can influence the way people feel."
•   Bayley's "Liverpool: Shaping the City" charts the city's up's and down's through its buildings.
•   "Havana Revisited: An Architectural Heritage" is "marvelous."
•   "Velo: Bicycle Culture and Design" celebrates bicycles as a way of life and icon of modern design.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_05_07.htm - Friday, May 7, 2010

Today’s News - Tuesday, February 16, 2010

•   Rose talks to the architects who are transforming disaster zones around the world about what's in store for Haiti.
•   Grumpy Vancouverites should be happy with their post-Olympics city.
•   Gulf countries are taking lessons from Dubai to heart, "cherry-picking the best of Dubai while avoiding the worst" - practically ensuring continued growth.
•   Architecture is of "critical importance" in the "changing social and cultural transitions now going on in the Middle East."
•   Kamin tackles suburban sprawl vs. suburban tall: the emergence of infill developments "has turned out to be anything but peaceful."
•   Hawthorne laments that L.A Live's new 54-story hotel and condo tower is "a rather deflating sign that the innovation and experimentation" L.A. residential design is know for is having "trouble making the leap to the high-rise."
•   Saffron is much more optimistic about plans to refashion an "old working-class, beer-making neighborhood in Philly "into a hipster enclave" (lots of parking, but out of sight).
•   A decade of building "a glittering web of arts institutions" designed by starchitects was supposed to transform the U.K.'s cultural landscape - so why are so many of them flops?
•   It looks like Ground Zero might be getting a Gehry after all (should we hold our breath?).
•   Rawsthorn on H&deM's "elegant, intelligent and gently humorous" color laboratory on Vitra's Weil am Rhein campus.
•   King continues to have hope for San Francisco working out the debate about the proper ratio of sunlight to shade in San Francisco's public parks: "the urban design equivalent of trying to count the number of angels on the head of a pin."
•   Montreal's Quartier des Spectacles is about to light up, proving lighting is "the latest frontier in urban planning."
•   Modernists maul a plan to park cars in front of the Albert Frey-designed Palm Springs City Hall: "Do not trade great architecture for a used car lot."
•   A call for Melbourne to stop "gutting the soul and heart" out of the interiors of historic buildings.
•   A Japanese team beats out some heavy hitters to win Zurich Airport mixed-use scheme.
•   Q&A with Libeskind re: his modern remodeling of the German military museum in Dresden and why architects need to be optimists..."It is a very challenging task to deal with tragedies that cannot be unmade."
•   Q&A with Meier re: how he came to build Douglas House in Michigan (great pix!).
•   A fascinating treatise re: 1970s film "Death Wish," architecture, and Robert Moses: it "sheds a light on architecture's peculiar connections to violence...as bad guys drop, Paul's buildings grow more vigorous."
•   Calls for entries: IDEO/DESIGN21 Living Climate Change Video Challenge; Suburbia Transformed, One Garden at a Time; and a nifty round-up of bunches more.
•   Alas, Barbie's new career won't be as an architect: "Computer Engineer (good) and News Anchor (blech)."

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_02_16.htm - Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Today’s News - Monday, January 18, 2010

•   ArcSpace brings us the Musée Louvre-Lens, and an Austrian steelworks' new HQ struts its stuff.
•   Architecture for Humanity issues a call for the profession to respond to the Haiti earthquake.
•   Gehry's withdrawal from Museum of Tolerance project "due to planning and financial disagreements," not politics.
•   Developer invests $7 million to "invite" Pei to design a museum in China.
•   Rochon minces no words about what she thinks of Canada choosing "Cirque du Soleil's one-stop showmanship over a landmark Canadian architectural moment" for Shanghai Expo 2010 ("You dumb cluck.")
•   Lewis looks forward to the new decade: "building efficiency will replace grandiosity" with a focus on retrofitting and repurposing existing building stock (but will media and the public be interested?).
•   Saffron looks back: it might be "bleak out there at the moment," but the last decade will be seen as a time when some cities "tipped from dying to dynamic."
•   And she looks forward with a profile of the Philadelphia Four: "rather than attempting to make our system greener, these architects are bent on overthrowing it."
•   10 practices picked to spruce up 12 of the Perth's "urban design failures."
•   Detroit has some big plans to transform 44 acres of power plants and chemical factories into a wildlife refuge, juxtaposing "the hyper-urban with resilient nature" (it's happening elsewhere, too).
•   A German professor devises a CO2 catcher: it "may be bulkier and less attractive than real trees, but they are thousands of times more efficient."
•   Portland's federal building will soon be sprouting 250-foot-tall trellises.
•   Q&A with "Green Metropolis" author Owen re: just about everything from density, downtowns, and driving, to why Thoreau sets a bad example.
•   Hawthorne on how Gang's Aqua "brings a feminine touch to Chicago's muscled skyline" with "a fresh approach to skyscraper design...that suggests a changing of the guard in architecture that has as much to do with generation as gender."
•   Crosbie cheers Roche's restoration and expansion of Saarinen's Ingalls Rink at Yale that proves sometimes the "quiet design is the best answer."
•   Heathcote cheers Brit Insurance Design Awards shortlist: it's "as if design has finally been allowed to grow up...with ideas of real weight."
•   Brussat hands out his roses & raspberries for 2009 (trying to be as upbeat as possible).
•   RMJM hires "Fred the Shred," the "disgraced former Royal Bank of Scotland boss" + one incensed voice wonders: what were they thinking? "It's like saying your ambition is to be regarded as the world's worst architects."
•   Kennicott reviews "Benjamin Latrobe: America's First Architect" (premiering tonight on PBS stations): historians "wonder what Washington might have looked like if it had found better accommodation with its first architectural visionary."

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2010_01_18.htm - Monday, January 18, 2010

Today’s News - Friday, April 24, 2009

•   On green jobs and economics: touching a nerve.
•   In Seattle, a call for civic visionaries who think about costs and needs of regional commerce instead of the views from downtown condos.
•   Becker on Chicago's plan to demolish Bauhaus Modernism at Michael Reese: it's "about as far from sound and sustainable as you can get" (great history and pix, too).
•   Rosenbaum rues the sorry sight she finds at University of Iowa's flooded museum and Holl's Art Building (with pix to prove it).
•   Hawthorne and Lubell give (mostly) thumbs-up to L.A.'s newest city park.
•   Economic realities bite: AIA takes "preemptive" measures to control costs (but remains optimistic); and Glasgow architecture students told "not to come back" after summer break ("teach surfing in Australia instead" - do architecture students even know how to surf?).
•   Glancey uses Gehry's spat with Miami planners to look back at some famous architectural spats of the past.
•   Chelsea Barracks brouhaha keeps bubbling: Baillieu warns big hitters behind Rogers' scheme not to be naïve and "seriously misjudge the mood of the public, which thinks the prince is right and that architects are wrong."
•   Is Rogers' plan for Chelsea Barracks good urbanism? Yes, says CABE's MJ Long; no, says architect Alan Baxter.
•   An eyeful of some of Prince Charles's most well-known design spats and triumphs.
•   If you think times are tough now, check out the "ghost buildings" of 1929 that would have changed the face of NYC, but simply vanished.
•   Call for entries - deadline extended: 3rd Annual R+D Awards.
•   Weekend diversions: In case you can't make it to Seoul this weekend, Koolhaas explains the concepts behind his Prada Transformer.
•   In NYC, "Work AC: 49 Cities" at Storefront for Art and Architecture is "stunning in the abstract" and "a chewy exhibit"; and "Vertical Gardens" does an excellent job of demonstrating where green space can exist in cities suffocated by high rises.
•   In D.C., "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age" is "captivating collection of paintings that is less like a window on cities of the past, and more like a lens, distorting and idealizing its subject in fascinating ways."
•   Page turners: An amusing "grand cornice-and-pediment tour" with the authors of the upcoming, updated edition of the "AIA Guide to New York City."
•   Gisolfi's "Finding the Place of Architecture in the Landscape" proves "constraints imposed by a project's setting are what make it great."
•   "Limited Edition: Prototypes, One-Offs and Design Art Furniture": at last design art has a first-rate primer devoted to it.
•   Documentary "The Greening of Southie": perspective of Boston's Macallen Building from the ground up instead of the drawing board.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2009_04_24.htm - Friday, April 24, 2009

Today’s News - Wednesday, March 11, 2009

•   Heathcote's thoughtful take on whether the recession might be bad for architects but good for architecture (with caveats).
•   One reason for the sad state of architects in Iceland: years of unchecked development (everyone should have known better).
•   Hume cheers a new report: "design a city that works for the young is to design a city that works for everyone."
•   London mayor launches Great Spaces initiative that will transform some less well known streets, parks and riverside walks.
•   Hosey thinks architects need to get out more: "How can we embrace nature when we rarely encounter it?"
•   British Columbia is considering a radical new plan for housing the homeless - devised by a Vancouver architect 40 years ago.
•   Another Vancouver architect launches a factory for prefab homes.
•   An impressive shortlist for the new Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.
•   Alice Tully Hall revamp is a model for Philadelphia's Kimmel Center make-over: make it a building that says come in and stay awhile.
•   King cheers plans to turn San Francisco's Metreon complex inside out, taking a cue from Urbanism 101 and plugging the "metal crate" back into the neighborhood.
•   Chipperfield's Neues Museum may set new standards for reusing war-damaged buildings.
•   Kamin waxes poetic about a mattress company's new HQ that "makes visual poetry out of the prosaic stuff of everyday life" (and pix to prove it).
•   Hume gives three thumbs-up's to University of Waterloo Pharmacy Building: it's "an urban catalyst, an economic generator, and a civic icon."
•   An eyeful of R House, one of Syracuse U.'s From the Ground Up competition winners - the first in the U.S. to meet Passivhaus standards.
•   Rogers' Lloyd's of London building denied landmark listing - some say it's in danger, others disagree (great slide show, too).
•   Levete gets into details about working - and living - with Kaplicky: "My greatest regret is that I didn't make peace with him in life."

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2009_03_11.htm - Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Today’s News - Tuesday, January 27, 2009

•   Plans move ahead for Rawabi, the first planned community for 30,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories.
•   The largest housing development in Thames Gateway goes to planning.
•   Three green, affordable housing schemes (by 3 of our faves) are a big win for a Syracuse neighborhood.
•   Cheek on a new environmental education center: it's "an alternate universe" to the "grade-it, pave-it and supersize-it ethic that has shaped Bellevue."
•   A new version for LEED certification - for people and buildings - adds more red tape (and cost) to complicate going green (not very good timing, we say).
•   King on a shovel-ready San Francisco project that is a "poster child for stimulus package."
•   Goldberger cheers the rebirth of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall: "shows how much richness and complexity can be teased out of the modernist vocabulary in the right hands" (video walk-through, too).
•   Rochon rhapsodizes about Univ. of Waterloo's "flower-power tower": it's "groovy, irreverent, gutsy, and imperfect."
•   West Cork Arts Centre picks its architect.
•   Density requirements unintentionally threaten Portland, Oregon's historic districts.
•   Kamin gives (mostly thumbs-up to Preservation Chicago's "Chicago Seven" list, but "take it with a Sears Tower-size grain of salt."
•   A call to save Dublin's historic city center instead of giving it a "bland" makeover.
•   An evolving master plan for the Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo moves ahead.
•   Viladas offers an eyeful of Philip Johnson's other glass house in New Canaan that "has been hiding in plain sight."
•   Once considered tacky, the two-level boxy stucco-clad "Vancouver Special" is now on many must-have lists.
•   Glancey travels to Portugal for a face-to-face with Siza.
•   Piano visits Valletta, Malta, the "Manhattan of the 16th century."
•   Hume chats with Santa Monica-based Wes Jones: "Toronto is like New York without all the depressing parts."
•   Call for entries: 2009 Sustainable Leadership Awards.

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2009_01_27.htm - Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Today’s News - Tuesday, September 9, 2008

•   GSA joins leading landlords in opposing some post-9/11 building codes.
•   Glancey says it's time to start re-thinking what and how we build on floodplains (if we should at all).
•   Poland using starchitect power "to bespeak the economic power of the investors" and boost the image of Polish cities both at home and abroad.
•   Two projects add sophistication to Jakarta's urbanity (by foreign architects, of course).
•   UNESCO may put Tower of London and other sites on endangered list - with great concern about developments in Edinburgh, where "Heritage has taken a back seat to Cool Britannia."
•   Edinburgh: "Welcome to the capital of urban self-harm" where Geddes' "holistic philosophy has now been turned on its head."
•   But where a Georgian building could be wrapped in glass instead of biting the dust.
•   Re: Yale's pick of Stern: "offers elegance over absurdity" (as in take that, Gehry).
•   Russell finds Cloepfil's new Museum of Art and Design in NYC "a work of subtlety and substance" and "quietly compelling power."
•   New life for a neglected Art Deco gem of a theater in Manhattan.
•   Saffron has high hopes for plans to turn Philly's Art Deco gem of theater into "a nightlife mecca." - And a call for nominations for other Philadelphia historic gems that might be under threat.
•   Rowan Moore on London's VeloPark: "simple, unfussy and, hopefully, practical...let's call it The Pringle." - You can decide: an eyeful (and fly-through) of the cycle park.
•   An amusing Q&A with Koolhaas on the 4th anniversary of Seattle's Central Library: architects are not really "bullfighters who somehow have to kill an animal."
•   Maeda's take on his new adventure: "RISD is MIT for the right brain...I've already been digital. I want to focus on being human."
•   It's a longgggg, impressive shortlist for BD's Architect of the Year Awards 2008.
•   ASLA 2008 Student Award winners take on global issues (having been a juror, I know).

http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2008_09_09.htm - Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Today's News - Monday, August 6, 2007

McGuigan on young independent Beijing architects "on the ramparts of the Chinese design revolution." -- Is the "Olympic-driven metamorphosis" of Beijing a thing of beauty or does it smack of "totalitarian-power architecture"? -- Russell isn't thrilled with Columbia University expansion plan. -- Kamin finds Chicago's McCormick Place expansion a "city-sensitive, user-friendly...gentle giant, not a new monster of the Midway." -- An "entertainment city" heading to the shores of Eliat: some Broadway here, some Disney there (don't forget the shopping and golf). -- High praise for a "small tribe of architects" creating a "new language in mall design" in India. -- Salt Lake City skyline has a lot to yawn about. -- A call to bring beauty back to architecture: "What a concept. We now pause as many of the architects in the room run screaming for the exits." -- A debate in the Philippines about who can use the title "architect" (watch out, those studying abroad). -- Dunlop finds ArtsPark in Hollywood, FL, "a remarkable work of architecture, landscape and urbanism." -- Housing slowdown perhaps not such a bad thing: "Downsizing should be the new upscaling." -- Dream homes made of mud as cob building making a comeback. -- Ouroussoff spends time with Siza: "his creative voice has never seemed more relevant than now." -- Hadid: outspoken as ever. -- Malaysian architect Lim on Corbu in India, humility, and the Asian obsession for Western architecture ("wholesale importation of ideas and icons from the West is too silly to be acceptable"). -- In "Future Wood," Boddy finds young designers freed from the box. -- Gould lauds the elegance and wit of Eschweiler on view in Milwaukee.
http://www.archnewsnow.com/news/news_2007_08_06.htm - Monday, August 6, 2007