When the last monograph surveying Daniel Libeskind’s work was published—some eight years ago—the New York architect was riding a wave of praise for his Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Photo © Elfie Semotan “You can take possession of it by describing it,” says Wolf Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Central Los Angeles Area High School #9. “If I asked a student, ‘Can you describe your school? Where do you go to school?’ He’d say, ‘The school with the crazy tower and the round windows,’ not, ‘just a building downtown.’” Los Angeles floats its landmarks on a sea of faceless highway, like peanuts in peanut brittle. Downtown, the two-block stretch of Grand Avenue that straddles the 101 is a satisfying bite. In a single chomp, you get Frank Gehry’s Disney concert

Photo courtesy Page Southerland Page “Then there’s a little buffer of green space, which is very, very important because that makes them not feel like they’re on the sidewalk,” says Lawrence Speck of the Dunn Center’s outdoor space for Houston’s homeless residents. Lawrence Speck, FAIA, has worked with well-off clients on many residential projects, but he has also spent a lot of time talking about architecture with people living on the streets. A few years ago, the architect and professor at the architecture school at the University of Texas in Austin won the commission to design a $19.1 million expansion

Photo © Jonathan Becker “It’s sort of amazing that Rudolph’s building was never really acknowledged as well as it should have been. Now it’s rediscovered—the wonder of the world! And now our building is up for the critique,” says Charles Gwathmey. As he tells the story, when Charles Gwathmey, FAIA, first learned that Yale University had commissioned his firm to restore Paul Rudolph’s 1963 Art and Architecture Building and design an addition, he turned to associate partner Thomas Levering, AIA, and said, “This is going to kill us.” Gwathmey is no stranger to the challenges of a joint restoration and

Image courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture “The beauty of a competition that calls for ideas is that they remain ideas,” says Joseph Grima of the Storefront for Art and Architecture’s White House Redux competiton and exhibition. “It’s difficult to remain faithful to ideas in reality.” It was winter in New York, and Joseph Grima was thinking about change. Along with plans to renovate the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Vito Acconci/Steven Holl-designed sliver of a gallery Gima runs on Kenmare Street, he also announced a contest to redesign the White House. Storefront reopened on October 3, and its

Photo © Ben Benschneider “It’s an instrument that the curators play,” says Brad Cloepfil of his Museum of Arts and Design. When Brad Cloepfil, AIA, founder and principal at Allied Works Architecture, unveiled his design for the Museum of Art and Design in New York, he added fuel to a heated and unusual preservation debate. His plan to alter a 158-foot marble edifice on the south side of Columbus Circle prompted some preservationists to rally behind an exemplary, but widely disliked work of late Modernism. Two Columbus Circle was built in 1964 and designed by Edward Durrell Stone for the

Photo courtesy Predock_Frane Architects “It’s like zoning gone wild,” says Hadrian Predock of California’s Inland Empire region. Design runs in Hadrian Predock’s family. The Santa Monica, California, architect is the son of celebrated New Mexico architect Antoine Predock, FAIA. Not only did the younger Predock inherit an interest in the profession from his father; his family also passed down an approach to practice that combines traditional design work with other art forms. Antoine Predock trained as a painter before going into architecture, and Hadrian’s mother is a dancer. “When I was growing up in Albuquerque, they would collaborate on pieces

Photo courtesy SHoP Architects “We’re basically focusing on digital integration services, but we could go as far as construction management advisory services,” says Jonathan Mallie of SHoP Construction, a newly founded spin-off of SHoP Architects. New York-based SHoP Architects made what might seem like a counterintuitive move early this month. The 12-year-old firm—best known for the meditative Hangil Book Hall (2004) in Seoul, South Korea, several high-profile New York residential projects, and still-shaking-out plans for Manhattan’s East River Waterfront and South Street Seaport—has decided to put itself at the forefront of the profession-wide push for greater design-build project integration, not

Cambridge, Massachusetts, architect Kyu Sung Woo, FAIA, has had an eventful summer.