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I've always been partial to architectural mountains—from the Mayans to Bruno Taut—so I was delighted to see the hilly design that Beijing-based MAD Architects has proposed for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago.

Christian de Portzamparc's massive, much-maligned Cidade das Artes is a grandiose emblem of Rio's ambitions. Photo © Hufton+Crow Sail-like sheets of structural concrete enclose theaters and support the elevated spaces. The raised floor plate of Christian de Portzamparc’s Cidade das Artes lifts its public spaces higher than a busy traffic interchange in Rio’s sprawling Barra district, affording views to the sea and moun­tains. On first impression, Rio de Janeiro's Cidade das Artes seems an act of architectural hubris and urban lunacy. Opened to the public last year after almost a decade of interrupted construction and cost overruns, it has been

Photos © Daici Ano (top); Roel Backaert (middle); Duccio Malagamba (bottom) Click here to view images. Robert Venturi’s iconic 1964 house for his mother in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, a departure from the “less is more” ideal of his architectural peers at the time, offered a strong but subtle statement. In his own words, its gabled form created “an almost symbolic image of a house.” These days, you can forget subtlety. A string of recent projects takes an in-your-face approach to revive the gable once again. In Tokyo, Sou Fujimoto stacks prototypical house shapes three stories high in a wood structure.

During any given week, I’m told, 100 or more design buffs take self-guided tours of the San Francisco Federal Building (SFFB) by Pritzker Prize'winning architect Thom Mayne.

July 2011 Reassessing the rise and fall of Postmodern architecture It is now nearly a quarter of a century since Postmodern architecture — which proposed to make historical references respectable once again — was declared officially dead by none other than its most capricious establishment advocate, Philip Johnson. His exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture (co-curated in 1988 with Mark Wigley) at New York’s Museum of Modern Art brought an abrupt end to a trend that had lasted just over two decades. Photography ' Rollin La France The house Robert Venturi designed for his mother Vanna in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania (1964). Image courtesy

In 1998, the British critic Martin Pawley rather dramatically announced what he called “the strange death of architectural criticism.” Pawley lamented the disappearance of an aggressive, “take-no-prisoners” approach to critical writing about architecture, which he felt was being replaced by “wall-to-wall testimonials of praise.” Illustration: © Ross MacDonald I wonder what Pawley, who served as architecture critic for both the Guardian and Observer newspapers and died in 2008, would say about the state of the field today, particularly in this country. If the praise, at least for certain celebrity architects, has grown even more over-the-top, the number of critics has

Judith Kinnard, FAIA, is an architect with a dual commitment to practice and teaching. She received her degree from Cornell University and has taught at Princeton University and Syracuse University.

Beyond its demure exterior, which is clad in the same gray stone that paves the adjacent square, the Markthal Rotterdam, like a ripe fruit sliced open, reveals its rich offerings inside.

Kindred spirits” is how the four partners at Studio Ma describe themselves, and their affinities can be broadly divided into two camps: their respect for and love of the American Southwest, where they are based, and the drive to produce good design on tight budgets.