From Beaubourg to New Caledonia, the man and his Workshop have reimagined places for art, culture, people, and commerce. To understand Renzo Piano’s five-decade-long career, we need to examine his remarkably fluid journey from architectural rebel to cultural establishment go-to man. The bearded provocateur who experimented with movable structures in the 1960s and, with Richard Rogers, inserted a colorful Tinkertoy in the staid center of Paris in the 1970s has evolved into the trusted hand of museum boards and corporate clients. His work no longer challenges the way we view architecture or topples established notions of design, but it impresses
Leers Weinzapfel Associates takes the firm award, A first for women architects While it might be sexist to call attention to the fact that this year’s AIA Firm Award winner—Leers Weinzapfel Associates—will be the first woman-owned firm in history to win AIA’s top firm award, there’s no doubt it’s timely. A number of architecture magazines recently featured stories on the role of women in architecture [see “Not Only Zaha,” December 2006, record, page 58]. Clearly, honoring a partnership like the Leers Weinzapfel duo is cause for celebration in a profession that seeks to loosen the knot on the tie of
Although the esteemed Modernist architect died in 2004, his legacy survives —for the most part intact Edward Larrabee Barnes, FAIA, a seminal Modernist architect for nearly 50 years, died in 2004. But in 2007, Barnes is as big a presence as ever. In February, the AIA presented him with the 2007 Gold Medal, one of the few times the high honor has been bestowed posthumously. At its award ceremony, held in Washington, D.C., in February, Henry N. Cobb, FAIA, of Pei Cobb Freed, called him “arguably the most accomplished and influential” of a generation of architects trained by Gropius and
Once upon a time, Le Corbusier sat in his single-room office alone, pencil in hand, solemnly pondering an architectural problem, “face to face with himself, the wrestling of Jacob and the Angel within the human soul,” as he explained in volume eight of Oeuvres Complètes. About one project he wrote, “This took a long time to develop, the design worked upon and caressed in days of perfect calm.” His famous dictum was “creation is a patient search.” Each new edition of the Oeuvres Complètes was eagerly anticipated, and although it would come out only every few years with a limited
Today, it’s different for architects such as Gehry, whose late work has been compared to sculpture and who has been called the Michelangelo of his age. Such comparisons imply that he alone is the final arbiter of each curve and arc. His late work recalls James Stirling’s calling Ronchamp “a masterpiece of a unique and most personal order.” As opposed to Mies’s right-angled vocabulary of construction, which created a school of followers, Gehry’s work even now is untouchable in its hermetic formulas, however open and approachable it is for the public. After the enormous success of the Guggenheim in Bilbao,
For our eighth annual selection of the world’s top emerging designers, RECORD finds a diverse group of firms that are committed to making architecture count.
Good Design Is Good Business Architectural Record has been recognizing fruitful firm-client collaborations for 17 years with its annual Good Design is Good Business (GDGB) awards to demonstrate how embracing design can benefit an organization's bottom line. This year's 10 winners include not only such singular projects as the City of Dallas Performance Hall by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the New Orleans BioInnovation Center by Eskew+Dumez+Ripple but also a variety of client-driven relationships that aim to reap long-term dividends. Shoe manufacturer Camper, for instance, has commissioned more than 20 top designers in over 30 years to create its imaginative
Steve Hall / Photo ' Scott McDonald/Hedrich Blessing The Richard H. Driehaus Museum / Photo ' Steve Hall/Hedrich Blessing The main hall at the Driehaus Museum / Photo ' Alexander Vertikoff Lou Mitchell's Restaurant / Courtesy Teemu008 via Wikipedia The Old Town School of Folk Music / Courtesy Pete LaMotte via Flickr Farnsworth House / Courtesy tinyfroglet via Flickr Steve Hall is a photographer and partner at Hedrich Blessing Photographers, based in Chicago. His work is widely published in magazines such as Architectural Record, GreenSource, Interior Design, Architectural Digest, Azure, and others. Best Historic Architecture The Richard H. Driehaus Museum occupies
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