Community

RSS

March 2009 If, unlike the Congress or the President, we offer no silver bullet for the recession, we can all search for silver linings. While architects love a new construction site, strategically, preservation is sounding better and better—whether the historic variety or the act of saving or revitalizing ordinary structures. In a down economy, it makes good sense to make the most of what you already have. Photo © André Souroujon The arguments for historic or plain preservation are growing, and to expand the analogy, compounding, at a time that stock markets have contracted. Inertia, shrinking budgets, and sheer neglect

February 2009 Parachute into Dubai, the glittering chimera, for an architectural smorgasbord. Since the 1970s, the little city on the waterfront of the Persian Gulf has boomed into a unique, tower-inflected phenomenon, corresponding to the vision of its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Photo © André Souroujon What does it add up to? For an architect, Dubai has become a required stop on the 21st-century version of the grand tour—a place to balance the firm’s portfolio of domestic work, to compete for a job, or to gawk. Imagine a totally new city (though a small trading center existed

January 2009 Inklings of promise from the new administration are shining out from the torrent of dire economic news. If you feel overwhelmed, listen up: “I still really admire architects, and I love looking at buildings.” Although proverbial music to our ears, that direct quote might seem innocuous, even simplistic, if it were not for the speaker—the future President of the United States. Barack Obama, responding in an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC television, declared his admiration for the built environment and his concern for energy usage, positions that have been amplified not only in words but actions. Photo

Deans of architecture schools and department chairs set agendas. Strategically, strong heads can aim an educational community, including faculty, students, and alumni, in an intended direction.

November 2008 The volatility of our financial markets blazed into view in October, as if someone had struck a match. While the immediate reaction of architects has been as hot-faced witnesses to a conflagration (we do not control the hedge funds or the investment banks), we recognize the effects of the fire sale, particularly for our clients. It goes without saying that getting the job remains the defining business challenge we all face. Photo © André Souroujon In case you find yourself in meltdown, realize this: Clients need architects now more than ever. At a critical time, good design and

October 2008 Reality television may compel you to run away shrieking, but as an architect, you owe it to yourself to tune into Architecture School. Conceived by two individuals with experience both in film and architecture (Michael Selditch—a director trained as an architect—together with architecture professor Stan Bertheaud, currently teaching at Woodbury University in Southern California), the series highlights the acute, nail-biting joy and anguish of the architectural studio. For any architect who has been through school years before, the six-part series induces a frisson and a welcome peek at our shared past. Photo © André Souroujon At the same

September 2008 Ah, Nature. As much as we architects love the natural world and find it a constant source of revelation, we prefer to view it from a human-made perch or platform. Call it a professional bias toward the constructed landscape. When rambling through the unfettered woodland depths, our feet inevitably find the pathways, the Appalachian trails of the world, where we stop to surmise: How could this walkway be improved? Pathetic? Comedic? Ironic? We cannot escape our fate, so inescapable is the design impulse. Photo © André Souroujon In New York, the admixture of human will and nature collides

August 2008 Omit the “pre” from prefab: There’s nothing preliminary about the term. If you have any doubt that prefab’s moment has arrived, ask the educated general audience that reads Dwell and other shelter magazines or watches HGTV—many have become passionate devotees of the idea. Hundreds, no thousands, of true believers poured through the doors of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on July 15, drawn to the opening of a major show devoted to the subject, entitled, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Five actual structures, illustrative of the most provocative ideas in house making today,

At 14:28 on May 12, 2008, an earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale pounded southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

June 2008 You asked for it. Architectural Record meets the needs of its readers; GreenSource gives real data to the sustainability community; ENR unites the construction universe. In e-mails and conversations, you’ve asked us to give you a publication for your clients that demonstrates the value of design. We agreed. The question, as in all new ventures, was how, and for whom. Photo © André Souroujon The second part of the puzzle answered itself. The target audience needed to be the leaders of the business community, the select few individuals at the top of the corporate and institutional heap who