Photo © Amelia Stein John Tuomey and Sheila O'Donnell of O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects. The premiere architecture award in the UK—trumping even the annual Stirling Prize for best building—is the Royal Gold Medal, the annual award for individual long-term excellence that has existed since 1848. It is presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) with the approval of the monarch, and counts everyone from Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn to Richard Rogers and Archigram among its recipients. Each year a new name is chiseled into the stone-lined foyer of RIBA’s London headquarters—as will be, in early 2015, the names

Adam Reed Tucker, a Chicago-based architect, conceived the concept for Lego Architecture, an elegant series of building sets celebrated in Lego Architecture: The Visual Guide, published last month. The relationship between Lego and architecture began in 1962 with the company’s Scale Model Series. It only lasted until 1965, but its impact was massive thanks to the introduction of the Lego plate. One-third the size of a traditional Lego brick, the plate added an element of stability that opened up a world of building possibility for kids and adults alike. But few took to the potential quite like architects. Moshe Safdie,

Photo © Celina Lavotha Orsini filming at E-1027 in Cap Marten, France. On October 15, a film will debut at the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York (Architectural Record is a media sponsor) as well as open a new chapter for a largely forgotten designer. The documentary, Gray Matters, was produced, written, and directed by Marco Orsini and explores the life and works of Eileen Gray (1878-1976). Photo © Mathew Thompson Eileen Gray's Non-Conformist Chair. Gray is known to many in the art and architecture world for her early lacquer handiwork and extensive furniture designs, the originals of

Ali Malkawi has very good timing. In 2013 he moved from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had taught architecture and computational simulation—a sophisticated means of predicting building performance—for more than a decade, to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he is a professor of Architectural Technology. A few months later, Malkawi wrote a proposal for what would be called the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, to be funded with a gift from the Evergrande Group, a Chinese company with $75 billion in assets. (Evergrande’s gift was large enough to also fund centers in mathematics and immunology.)

In November, the organization will hold its biggest meeting yet, in Barcelona. The Van Schijndel House, designed by the late Mart van Schijndel, inspired his wife Natascha Drabbe to form an organization dedicated to the preservation of important 20th century houses. In 1992, the modernist architect Mart van Schijndel designed a house in Utrecht with a number of distinctive features. When he died in 1999, his widow, Natascha Drabbe, an architectural historian and public relations executive, was determined to open the house to visitors. But she also needed to continue to live in the 1,885-square-foot building. For advice, she began

In July, Autodesk acquired the experimental New York design firm The Living, led by architect David Benjamin, in order to enhance its research capabilities. This union is just one effort by the software leader to engage in wide-reaching discussions about the future of design. Last year it opened Autodesk Workshop at San Francisco’s Pier 9, a 27,000-square-foot playground for employees and partners to explore advanced manufacturing resources. And, more recently, a summer-residency program charged participants with writing science fiction. “We have an extraordinary talent base that can make stuff,” says Jeff Kowalski (left), “but we also need those folks who

Abraham Thomas became the director of the Soane Museum last December.