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December 2011 In a global market, efficiency and speed are not enough. The economic downturn of 2008 signaled the beginning of a dramatic period of global economic realignment in the future of architecture practice. Not only has China become the most vibrant market for architecture, but the demands placed on practitioners in various developing markets have also fundamentally begun to change the way architecture is designed and delivered at home and abroad. Images by Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong Above: DavidClovers' solid-surface wall and window prototype was exhibited in Los Angeles in 2010. Top: Andrew Bromberg of Aedas is designing the

Edited by Karla Britton, Yale University Press, 2011, 248 pages, $50 This inter-faith overview of contemporary religious architecture, distilled from a 2007 Yale University School of Architecture symposium, showcases 20 essays by architects, historians, and theologians. And the architects steal the show. Outstanding insights from the likes of Stanley Tigerman, Richard Meier, Steven Holl. Zaha Hadid, and Peter Eisenman make half of this book illuminating, alas, the latter half. Britton’s rambling but informative prologue traces the roots of 21st century religious architecture to Le Corbusier (from whom the book takes its title) and Louis Kahn, who introduced a sense of

Edited by Robert Twombly, W.W. Norton, 2010, 344 pages, $25. Generally speaking, the writings of designers are not as important to understanding their intentions as their actual work. Frederick Law Olmsted’s copious writings are an exception, for two reasons. He was a man of letters before he was a landscape architect. He wrote The Cotton Kingdom, an influential chronicle of his travels as a newspaper correspondent in the ante-bellum South, edited Putnam’s Magazine, an important literary journal, and co-founded The Nation. Moreover, because he was not formally trained in an art or design school, Olmsterd approached park and landscape design

By Anthony Vidler. The Monacelli Press, 2011, 368 pages, $50 Some first impressions about this new collection of old essays by Anthony Vidler are misleading. The title, for instance, The Scenes of the Street, and the city plan on the cover indicate a broad coverage of topics regarding the city. In fact, two thirds of the book is dedicated to Paris and most of that to Paris before the turn of the 20th century. Those essays that do not deal with Paris directly are mostly concerned with theories created by 19th century French male architects, authors, and humanists. Vidler’s texts

October 2011 A critical comparison of up-and-coming online design and decorating magazines. At the time when home ownership seemed as if it could only be a blessing, interior design magazines also grew fat and happy. Then the housing crisis shrunk shelter magazines and, abruptly, big fancy houses seemed there just to taunt us. Long-established print titles disappeared, replaced sometimes in name, or in content, by a bewildering variety of blogs. Today you can have a blog without a print magazine, but not a magazine without a blog'people like both, and advertisers do, too. So a new hybrid has stepped into

September 2011 GROUND ZERO is a buzzing hive of activity ' cranes and construction everywhere, crowds of tourists and vendors. Projects are shaping up, too. David Childs's One World Trade Center (WTC) ' the erstwhile 'Freedom Tower' ' has passed 78 stories en route to 104, the Fumihiko Maki tower at the southeast corner of the site is more than 30 and heading for 72, and the National September 11 Memorial opens this month. Although Santiago Calatrava’s bony train station — morphed by budget cuts, according to wags, from bird to stegosaurus — has yet to emerge from the ground,

Under Mayor Bloomberg, New York City planners launched an aggressive initiative to compete in the global economy.

August 2011 At two recent architectural events — one academic, the other professional — sustainability met with both skepticism and criticism in ways I hadn’t anticipated. It suggests we have reached a point where sustainable architecture needs to be addressed more rigorously. Photography: © Prakash Patel The Philip Merrill Environmental Center in Annapolis, Maryland, by SmithGroup (2000) is the subject of a lawsuit. The academic event was a conference at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in April that focused on the place of history in architecture school curricula. Most explicit was Ellen Grimes, a

On a cool April night in 2007, I found myself in a dangerous crush of bodies trying to cross a narrow pedestrian bridge near Via Tortona in Milan.

Director Robert Lepage orchestrates an architectural feat for a new Metropolitan Opera production of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Photo © Ken Howard During the fall performances of Das Rheingold (repeating in March), acrobats stand in for singers to traverse the planks that are raised up above the stage and rotated by computer into fanlike steps. Stage design is typically an ephemeral art. Environments appear substantial, but they are often masterful imitations of the real thing made with lightweight, durable materials capable of continual setups and breakdowns. Enter Canadian director Robert Lepage, whose new production of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle for New