Cathy Crane Frankel / Photo courtesy Cathy Crane Frankel United States Institute of Peace / Courtesy Wikipedia Carousel at Glen Echo Park / Courtesy Chris B via Wikipedia Embassy of Denmark / Courtesy Wikipedia Corcoran Gallery of Art / Courtesy Wikipedia Palena Restaurant / Courtesy Cuisivity Cathy Crane Frankel is the vice president of exhibitions and collections at the National Building Museum, which received its institutional charter in 1980. The museum is “devoted to the history and impact of the built environment” and “tells the stories of architecture, engineering, and design.” Best New Architecture Institute of Peace It’s nice to
John Chapman / Photo courtesy John Chapman Arena Stage at Mead Center / Courtesy Wikipedia Organization of American States / Courtesy John Collier via Wikipedia Dumbarton Oaks / Courtesy Wikipedia Komi Restaurant / Courtesy Stephanie Hua John Chapman is a founding partner of nearly 30-year-old firm Karn Charhaus Chapman & Twohey Architecture Planning and Interiors (KCCT). Though the firm has completed more than 400 projects in over 140 cities around the world, it calls D.C. home. Best New Architecture Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater The new arena stage by Bing Thom Architects is a very, very
Ken Anderson / Photo courtesy Ken Anderson Pope-Leighey House / Courtesy Wikipedia National Gallery East Wing / Courtesy Matthew Bisanz via Wikipedia The Source / Courtesy Wolfgang Puck Ken Anderson is a senior associate in the Washington, D.C. office of RNL, a multi-disciplinary design firm that specializes in sustainable construction and integrated design. He holds a degree in architectural history from the University of Virginia and a M.Arch. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Best Historic Architecture Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House It’s about 25 minutes outside of DC, but the The Pope-Leighey House’s story (from its origins to its preservation is
But inside, maple wood pews and treelike, steel structural supports (that give the chapel its name) lend an industrial quality to the airy, ceremonial space.
Edited and with an essay by Susan Morgan. East of Borneo Books, 2012, 392 pages, $35. Affection isn’t a word often used to describe architecture criticism, but that’s the ruling emotion of Piecing Together Los Angeles, the first collection of the writings of California historian and critic Esther McCoy (1904-89). There’s McCoy’s affection for Los Angeles superstars like Charles Eames, Pierre Koenig and John Lautner when they were young and needed books like McCoy’s Five California Architects (1960) to give their work a backstory—and when they were old, and the world needed a reminder of their talents. (On Lautner: “Instead
Rem Koolhaas’s most recent publication (with Hans Ulrich Obrist) tells the story of Metabolism, a technocratic movement of the 1960s based on ideas of organic growth.
Edited by Harry den Hartog. 010 Publishers: 2010, 416 pages, $44. Related Links: The Vertical Village and How the City Moved to Mr. Sun This densely packed book presents a broad range of research on the remarkable growth of the greater Shanghai metropolitan area in recent decades. With more than 300,000 people moving to Shanghai each year, the city government is busy building satellite towns, some of which are themed on ersatz visions of foreign places. So today, you can live in or visit Holland Village or Thames Town. Other new towns, such as Qingpu and Jiading, employ more sophisticated
By Victoria Newhouse. The Monacelli Press, 2012, 272 pages. $50. You can’t count off four beats of a twelve-bar blues, let alone flip through an opera score, without being aware that time is one of music’s essential ingredients. Another is space, though notation reveals nothing about it. Harmony, rhythm, melody, and instruments are all negotiable, and shaped by the place where it’s imagined, performed, and heard. Slave songs were pitched to carry across an open field. Beethoven composed his Eroica symphony to rattle the walls of the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Medieval polyphony depended on the reverberations of
Where there’s an architect, there are probably a few more—from the same gene pool. Architects beget architects, so it seems. Eliel Saarinen had Eero Saarinen. Two of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sons, Lloyd and John, became architects. Walter Gropius’s father was an architect. And if not begotten, then nearly so: Maya Lin’s architect aunt, Lin Huiyin, helped conduct the first comprehensive study of architecture in China. Charles Eames was the nephew of architect William Eames. Henry Smith-Miller, of Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, could (and perhaps should) write a book about his family of architects, which stretches back, with baroque twists and
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