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Dear President Obama, I am extremely heartened that you are planning to address our miserable economic situation with a massive investment in infrastructure. This is not simply a logical and efficient way of translating dollars into jobs (although it’s always important to ask for whom), it is an investment in the long-term future of the country. Although I am writing this in December and don’t know precisely what the shape of your program will be, I appreciate that it will be of a magnitude commensurate with the problems at hand. You’ve already suggested that it will be the largest investment

6. Build schools. Speaking of research, let’s spend billions on building and repairing academic facilities. I may be prejudiced, but years of teaching have convinced me that good schools are the most important key to both prosperity and equity. Our underfunded and unequal school systems are both an embarrassment and an obstacle to real progress. While I will not offer my opinions on testing, vouchers, school choice, or any of the other educational policy controversies of the moment, I am certain of one thing: Beautiful, spacious, and well-equipped school and university buildings can make an enormous difference in the self-esteem

President-elect Obama, we’re informed, intends to create an Office of Urban Policy. Obama is a lawyer, and I’m sure he’s thinking more about social issues than about architecture or urban design. But at this writing (in early December), nobody knows who will occupy the new office, or what its brief will be. Maybe architects will begin to have some influence on public architecture? It doesn’t happen often. Architects aren’t known for their political skills. My friend Dick Swett, who used to be a United States Representative from New Hampshire, believes he was the only architect to serve in Congress in

The bigger picture There needs to be a caveat here, though. Density is a plus word today, and it’s often said that New York’s Manhattan is the greenest community in the U.S., because its high density leads to low per-capita consumption of energy for heating, cooling, and transit. But throw the frame a little wider, and you realize that a lot of the food for New York is coming in carbon-powered trucks and airplanes from California, or even Brazil or China. Maybe there’s a more optimal city size, one that would permit us to raise more food nearer home. Photo

Standing out in a gritty locale One thing that often surprises first-time visitors to downtown Los Angeles is the proximity of its gleaming clutch of skyscrapers and cultural facilities to the homeless encampments in the area known as Skid Row. From the front doors of Frank Gehry’s exuberant Walt Disney Concert Hall, it takes about 15 minutes to walk—or 2 or 3 minutes to drive—the mile or so downhill to a landscape full of quiet but marked desperation, a place where social-services agencies, single-room occupancy hotels, and liquor stores serve a stubbornly large homeless population. (From the steps of City

History haunts a (non)landmark When I was a kid (though not a mere child), I defended Edward Durell Stone’s much maligned Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle when it opened in 1964. It had that recherché white marble cladding with an arcade and loggia outside, and rich walnut and macassar ebony paneling within. Thick, jungle-red-carpeted stairs took you up to intimate galleries at half-levels, where a soigné and surreal art collection, including Gustave Moreau’s Salome Dancing Before Herod (1874–76), awaited. At the top of the museum was the Gauguin Room, with tapestries à la Gauguin, where you could

Interviewing celebrated architects can be like Dancing with the Stars. But no matter how big the name, it still takes two to tango. Unlike many of my fellow critics, I was neither trained as an architect nor ever had the slightest urge to become one. Apart from my notable lack of hand-eye coordination (which has made me as poor a draftsman as I am a ballplayer), I am particularly unsuited to the building art because I simply could not abide an inescapable part of the architect’s job: talking about one’s work before, during, and even long after the design and

Architects from Vitruvius onward have written about the building art with the same promotional goal in mind, and modern masters, led by Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, gave new impetus to the role of architect as self-publicist in print. But not every architect is a natural writer, and the interview can be a much more efficient method for putting one’s point of view across to the public in general, and potential clients in particular. Photo ' Jesse Frohman/Corbis (above left); Brooks Kraft/Sygma/Corbis (above right). Verbal heavyweights: Both Philip Johnson (above left) and Thom Mayne have been known to take