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In 2007 the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto launched an architectural competition for an addition. It had outgrown its 1995 home located alongside historic houses, churches, and academic buildings on the university's downtown campus. The winning submission, by Toronto-based KPMB Architects, represents the school's ideals of community and integrative thinking in physical form. The 150,000-square-foot, LEED Silver'certified vertical facility doubles the size of the school. It adds an event hall, classrooms, offices, and a library, as well as conference and hospitality areas, in a glazed four-story slab structure topped by a five-story tower. Architects

In Prague, global business is largely conducted in the central historic district of Nove Mesto, but a superblock in nearby Pankrác Plain has long promised to become its modern high-rise counterpart—the Czech equivalent of Pudong or Canary Wharf. Skanska's $10.8 million purchase of the City Green Court project from the real estate investor ECM in 2010 was a milestone in the Pankrác Plain transformation. As part of the sale, ECM included a schematic design and zoning permissions for the eight-story office building it had commissioned from Richard Meier & Partners (RMP). Yet Skanska's vision, which embraced sustainability, was in marked

With a build-it-and-they-will-come zeal, Millennial entrepreneurs Christopher Kelly and Ryan Simonetti developed a new kind of conference center in 2009—one based on a full-service hospitality model (think boutique hotel). The goal, says Kelly: to support the needs and aesthetics of both young start-ups and traditional businesses “from Google to Goldman.” Three years later, with three Manhattan locations—all retrofits of existing office space—the New York–based venture (at the time called Sentry Centers) reported a growth rate of 3,463 percent, with revenues exceeding $15 million in 2012. Poised to expand after securing $10 million in financing last year, the partners renamed the

The dallas Arts District—a 68-acre area in the city's downtown masterplanned by Sasaki Associates—is dense with architectural gems devoted to the visual and performing arts. Its anchor is Edward Larrabee Barnes's Dallas Museum of Art, completed in 1984. Over the next 20 years, up went I.M. Pei's Symphony Center (1989), Renzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center (2003), and Allied Works' expansion of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (2008), among other new buildings and renovations. A Foster + Partners performing arts center followed in 2009, as did the REX/OMA Wyly Theatre. James Burnett's Klyde Warren

Many plans for reviving the neglected centers of America's small and medium-size cities involve building new museums, restaurants, and hotels to bring life to deserted sidewalks, but the architects and hoteliers behind the 21c Museum Hotel group found a winning formula in combining all three in one venue.

Walking into a Camper shoe store, one never knows what to expect. The family-run manufacturer and retailer of casual footwear, based in Majorca, Spain, and now in its third generation, has commissioned more than 20 designers to realize a startling range of concepts for its 360-odd outlets worldwide. A furry canopy of shaggy red fringe arches over the ceiling of a store in São Paulo designed by Marko Brajovic. The walls of a New York shop by Nendo's Oki Sato are covered with a grid of projecting cast resin shoes, with a few real shoes on display among them. Konstantin

Most workers have a long commute to the job site and at the end of the day, are bused back to labor camps, where they often live in miserable conditions.

Rural Studio's legendary program celebrates 20 years of design-build in west Alabama. Photo © Timothy Hursley Fireworks marked the culmination of the annual pig roast and valediction ceremony, held at the Bodark Amphitheatre behind Newbern’s Main Street. The Greensboro Boys & Girls Club was one of a dozen projects presented over the course of the weekend. Clad in a brightly hued corrugated metal, it refers to the vernacular rural barn. On a recent blazing, blue-sky afternoon, a crowd of 300 assembled in Newbern, Alabama, at the former local savings bank, a 1903 brick edifice that Auburn University's Rural Studio is

Architects take center stage at the biggest furniture show of the year.