Editorial

RSS

October 2010 With its infrastructure nearly complete, Ground Zero is rising. After nine years, Ground Zero is coming to life. If, in the intervening years, we have repressed our memories and ignored actual progress on the benighted 16-acres in Lower Manhattan, we can refamiliarize ourselves with its transformation, for the seemingly impossible is happening. Photo © André Souroujon Of course, they said it couldn’t be done. Conventional wisdom, tongue-waggers, critics of all stripes, and political naysayers have been prognosticating that we would never see the completion of the structures intended for the former World Trade Center site during this decade.

September 2010 St. Louis holds a design competition that points the way for well-run ideas competitions. American architects frequently complain that we lack effective design competitions in this country. We frequently point to Europe, where the widespread use of competitions by public and private clients apparently yields positive results, encouraging creative ideas and leveling the playing field for younger practitioners. Although these events are sometimes fraught with their own issues, such as fairness or adequate compensation or politicizing, we are constantly seeking new ways to open up the process. Photo © André Souroujon A competition recently took place in St.

August 2010 China confounds our Western guilt with its ambitious Expo 2010. How could any building be higher? How could any development be larger? Have we gone as far as we can go? We seem to have reached a limit this year with the completion of the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, U.A.E. — featured in this issue — which scrapes the heavens at 828 meters (2,717 feet). While beautifully realized, it calls into question the basic programmatic decisions of the forces that conceived it. The Burj culminates an era of financial expansion worldwide, yet opened, ironically, in the aftermath of

July 2010 David Dillon exemplified why good criticism is local. David Dillon, architecture critic for The Dallas Morning News for 25 years and longtime contributing editor of this publication, died unexpectedly on June 3. His passing marked a sea change for many of us in architectural journalism, forcing us to reflect on the current state of the craft and how it has inalterably shifted with the rise of the blogosphere. Dillon — who graduated from Boston College and held a master’s in literature and a Ph.D. in art history from Harvard — forged a deep relationship with his adopted subject,

June 2010 The National Building Museum speaks for the building arts. As Jim Pate, the executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, took center stage to accept an award, he articulated a serious dilemma his city had faced. New Orleans’s musical heritage, an ineffable, irreplaceable treasure he described as the city’s soul, resided in the hands of a few people — the long-time musicians who had lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In a city besieged with so many problems following the storm, a group of contemporary musicians and friends devised a plan: Providing safe, affordable

May 2010 Infrastructure propels development worldwide. Despite the news of a rising stock market, or the fact that the Dow Jones average has topped 11,000, your own architectural practice may be struggling. Where is the recovery, you might ask? Why hasn’t the stimulus package hit the marketplace yet, or affected your revenues? You must wonder if the whole world feels as you do, if the economy has gotten back to normal anywhere, and is it possible there are places that are actually prospering. Photo © André Souroujon McGraw-Hill Construction convened a gathering of construction leaders to address some of those

April 2010 Architecture goes back to nature BIOPHILIA, BIOMIMICRY, BIONIC ARCHITECTURE: In searching for a meaningful theory, a conceptual framework on which to construct our architecture, three little letters have sprouted like fresh spring grass — all hail, the prefix bio. Today, in the age of biodiversity, it seems that every other architect has clipped a portion of the Greek root word for life, bios, and attached it, like a philosophical lifeline, to projects. Call the current fascination biomania. Photo © André Souroujon Fashionable “isms,” in this case using nature as referent, sometimes suffer from the self-absorption and arrogance of

March 2010 Shattering the Myths of Sustainability It might be counterintuitive to most Americans, but cities offer the most viable models of sustainability. That assertion runs counter to our cultural history. Since the Romantic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, we have vilified urban life and been enamored, like Henry David Thoreau, of living close to nature. The results of our hunger sprawl around us. Today, rather than finding ourselves freed to commune with the out-of-doors, we have become shackled to the automobile, a situation in which it takes an SUV to get from Walden Pond to

February 2010 What can we learn from Haiti? Tragedy has struck Haiti again. On Tuesday, January 12, at 4:53 p.m., a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck 10 miles from the heart of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, along the fault line that stretches from the Dominican Republic to Jamaica, rendering entire quadrants of the hilly, coastal city in ruins. As of this writing, approximately 3.5 million persons out of a total population of approximately 9 million have been affected in a country roughly the size of the state of Maryland. The dead number at least 50,000, with some estimates as high as 200,000.

January 2010 Government’s ambitious building plans In 2010, the tables have turned. In a challenged economy, government looks more attractive to architects than the private sector. With the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, government was tapped by the current administration to help stimulate the nation, with building and rebuilding as cornerstones of economic recovery. Architects took note. Photo © André Souroujon The recent infusion of capital may obscure the fact that federal agencies, and the General Services Administration (GSA) in particular, have been at the forefront of developing and promulgating contemporary design and building practices,