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Sir John Soane’s House Museum in London is in the midst of a much-needed expansion, renovation, and restoration. The legendary Sir John Soane’s Museum, at Number 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, has been undergoing an intensive expansion and restoration program that is expected to be completed in 2013. With the help of public and private funds, already one significant piece has been has been finished: In early 2008, the museum opened a restored and remodeled structure at Number 14, which Soane designed but never used — as he did Number 12, his first residence, and the more lavish Number

In December 2009, the Glasgow School of Art celebrated its centenary.

Like most other architecture critics, I’m often asked to write essays for monographs on living architects. However, unlike some of my colleagues — especially the king of introductions, whom I dub the Grand Old Laureate and Dispenser of Bland Encomiums, Ramblings, and Gallingly Equivocal Reviews — I always decline such requests, even from those whose work I admire and despite the temptingly high honorariums. My blanket excuse is that if I agree to one I’d have to say yes to all, and because the requisite positive introduction is tantamount to a wholesale endorsement, my objectivity would be suspect when assessing

Retro-American fantasies furnished by Ralph and Barbra. America — land of the free and home of self-actualization — remains unsurpassed for the license we grant to wholesale personal reinvention, a transformative process perhaps most tellingly revealed in people’s homes. Our ingrained national penchant for imagining whom you want to be and then becoming it grew to unprecedented proportions during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Photo courtesy Polo Ralph Lauren (top); courtesy Barbra Streisand from My Passion for Design (Viking) (above) The new Ralph Lauren store at 888 Madison in New York looks like a Parisian maison particulier (top). Barbra Streisand’s

Three desert structures, designed by Arata Isozaki, strip the house to its artful basics.

A film festival highlights the proliferation of design documentaries. For years, documentaries on architecture have ­appeared mainly on public broadcasting stations in the form of earnest presentations of buildings and their pioneering creators. Often they are too earnest. But a number of factors indicate vibrant growth and change. Perhaps the accessibility of video cameras allows more architecturally minded novices to turn from amateurs to auteurs. Add to that the proliferation of short trailers or film excerpts on YouTube and such online outlets, and architecture on film seems to be everywhere. Photo © John F. Turner (above) TOP: Nicknamed “The Blob,“

A Vision by Peter Greenaway at the Park Avenue Armory You had to be there. A hyperbolic production that fuses the hokey theatricality of “son et lumière” (sound and light) tourist attractions with the razzle-dazzle antics of Cirque du Soleil was on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City until January 6, 2011. Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway, a kitschy, multimedia spectacular (kitschtacular?), is basically a photographic reconstitution of da Vinci’s famous fresco, punched up by films, lighting, music, and voice-overs. Masterminded by Greenaway, the Welsh-born impresario, filmmaker, and artist (with a strong interest

If a client asks you to imitate yourself, is that the sincerest form of flattery? If you ever think that the architecture business has gotten too tough, you can always lay down your mouse, pick up a guitar, and go into pop music. Architects are problem solvers, right? The best make their livings predicting what people need and what will appeal to them. They produce materials lists and instruction sheets, then contractors follow them, a ribbon is cut, and euphoria ensues. illustration © Norman Hathaway So it shouldn’t be too hard for us to figure out which noises will inoculate

For architects on the edge, early success can be a sword that cuts both ways. Every aspiring architect dreams of a breakthrough project that will establish his or her name soon enough to buy time and offset the geological pace of a creative process often calculated in decades rather than years. Photo © Norman Mcgrath/Esto (top); Wayne Andrews/Esto (above) This house and studio on Long Island for his parents set Charles Gwathmey on the path to success (top). Condominium 1 at Sea Ranch was a highlight in Charles Moore’s career (above). But as the career tangents of even the most

For architects on the edge, early success can be a sword that cuts both ways. Early adulation can morph into a fearsome burden, the “how-do-I-top-myself?” syndrome that frequently shadows exceptional success. Sometimes external factors interject a negative answer to that question. Shifting trends in taste thwarted the prospects of several early-20th-century vanguard architects, including Louis Sullivan, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, C.F.A. Voysey, and the Greene brothers, all of whom were labeled old hat when a resurgent vogue for Beaux-Arts Classicism — which Sullivan foresaw at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair — reared its neo-Roman head. Photo courtesy Collection Nai, Rotterdam Public