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Civic Architecture Comes Down to Earth

March 16, 2015

Exemplary, if modest, design in the public realm is directly engaging communities What is civic architecture today? Some of the best examples are surprisingly modest. The sense of majesty once expressed by public buildings'a grand, domed courthouse overlooking a town square; a temple-front city hall dominating an urban core'is part of the distant past. Public architecture has come down off its podium to engage cities and citizens. Photo © Michel Arnaud In looking at new civic architecture for this issue, RECORD'S editors came across a remarkable number of innovative libraries. Not so long ago, the public library was a passive

Cathleen McGuigan

February 15, 2015

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How to honor the layers of history and express the culture of today. This spring marks the 50th anniversary of the law that created New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission. It is not the oldest such law in the country'cities like Charleston, Baltimore, and New Orleans had protections against the destruction of historic property much earlier'but New York's is considered a national model because it is so comprehensive, according to Andrew Dolkart, professor of preservation at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The statute is broad'it can be applied to single buildings, interiors, or entire neighborhoods. And

Cathleen McGuigan

January 16, 2015

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A modernist icon that married architecture and pedagogy remains influential today. When the Crow Island Elementary School in Winnetka, Illinois opened in 1940, it launched a revolution in the architecture of schools. Designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen, and the Chicago firm then known as Perkins, Wheeler & Will, the welcoming, low-slung, one-story brick building, with a slender, beacon-like clock tower, was hugely influential in the postwar rush to construct new schools for the incoming tide of baby boomers. The earlier 20th-century model of stately, historicist multistory school buildings, that spoke more to the aspirations of town fathers than to

When More Is Less

As arts institutions evolve, building bigger is not always better.

Cathleen McGuigan

December 16, 2014

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With this issue of RECORD, we celebrate the 15th edition of Design Vanguard, our annual selection of 10 of the most promising architecture firms emerging on the global stage.

Big Ideas on Campus

Architecture education must change to keep up with the evolving profession.

Cathleen McGuigan

November 15, 2014

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As sure as the Harvard–Yale football game (or just The Game to its passionate alumni) is played every November, so does RECORD bring you our annual Top 10 architecture school lists.

Cathleen McGuigan

October 16, 2014

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Two museums by Frank Gehry redefine their settings, and RECORD looks at challenges of success for popular urban centers. Photo © Michael Arnaud Related Links: Gehry's New Museums Fondation Louis Vuitton Biomuseo Don't be confused if the issue of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD you're reading doesn't look like everyone else's. We created two covers this month—half of our readers are receiving one, and half the other—because two very different museums, both designed by Frank Gehry, are opening in October, and each has a compelling story about its design and construction. Maybe you're looking at the magazine with the highly anticipated Fondation Louis

Honors for Women

Celebrating design leadership in a culture of collaboration.

Cathleen McGuigan

September 16, 2014

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Celebrating design leadership in a culture of collaboration. Recently we've seen, in print and online, a reprise of old debates about starchitects. The critic Witold Rybczynski complained that big-name architects don't design their best work in cities that are foreign to them, because they don't understand the context. He proposed turning to local architects, whom he called “locatects.” Not long afterward, the architect and Yale professor Peggy Deamer wrote to The New York Times, arguing that several high-profile architects, through news coverage of various controversies, were giving architecture a bad name.

But Is It Art?

Reaching across the divide of disciplines, architects and artists find that their concerns can coincide.

Cathleen McGuigan

August 16, 2014

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This past spring, the sculptor Richard Serra was honored with the President's Medal from the venerable Architectural League of New York, which cited his evolution as an artist from the “concerns of matter and materiality to more spatial preoccupations.”

Modernism in the Rearview Mirror

This Venice Biennale just looks back, without an eye to the future.

Cathleen McGuigan

July 16, 2014

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This Venice Biennale just looks back, without an eye to the future. Venice is a city that resists the contemporary. New architecture tends to be discreetly inserted behind the facades of historic structures, as in recent interventions designed by Tadao Ando or Annabelle Selldorf. So the contrast between the historic city and the contemporary architecture that typically fills the Venice Architecture Biennale is particularly acute. Photo © Michael Arnaud Related Links Critique: Rem’s Rules Venice Dispatch: Highlights from the National Pavilions Venice Dispatch: Golden Lions for Phyllis Lambert and Korean Pavilion Venice Dispatch: U.S. Architecture as American Export—The Story Expertly

Cathleen McGuigan

June 16, 2014

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How many ways can architects engage with the communities and wider world around them? Here are some randomly selected news stories from the last month: • Rising temperatures and climate change are already here, contributing to the current extremes of droughts, wildfires, heat waves, and floods that are devastating regions of our country. • A botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma caused obvious suffering to the inmate, who then died of a heart attack. • French economist Thomas Piketty's runaway bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century—which posits that global economic inequality will widen with disastrous results, unless governments intervene

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 ICC CEU

Examine advanced fire detection strategies that support uptime and enhance safety in data centers and other mission-critical facilities.

Credits: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIBD P-CE; 0.1 ICC CEU

Explore modern façade and glazing systems that enhance daylighting, fire safety, and thermal performance while expanding architectural design possibilities.