October 2007 The phrase “skin deep” applies to many architectural award programs in this country. One program, however, stands resolutely outside these compromises. For 30 years, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture has looked at architecture in a more holistic way. Since the program’s founding in 1977, process, rather than building-as-object, has dominated the awards program. Limited in scope to a three-year cycle, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture examines submissions from a worldwide network of nominators (including the editor in chief of Architectural Record), narrows the field to a manageable number, then sends out professionals to visit the projects,
June 2007 “History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew.” E.L. Doctorow According to E.L. Doctorow, architectural history becomes what we make of it: Interpretation and perspective shape our view. Today, the history of architecture, that most seemingly benign of subjects, has burst out of the classroom, far beyond Banister Fletcher, to generate energetic, lively debate among a generation revisiting accepted ideas and reexamining structures that rarely retain their original purpose. Contemporary concerns fashion new value systems for older buildings, sometimes resulting in an unforeseen sense of chic, such as when adaptation and preservation reinforce sustainability: What
April 2007 We have talked at you for 116 years. Every month, the members of the Architectural Record audience receive our curatorial choices—the architectural projects, the types of buildings and plans, the interiors, the houses, the lighting, the technical questions, and the cultural happenings, that we, the editorial staff, choose for you. Consistently, in correspondence and at live events, we listen as best we can, then attempt simultaneously to stimulate and inform. Each month, we try to bring you the latest, the best, the most provocative, as well as the highest examples of architectural work, domestically and around the world.
We have talked at you for 116 years. Every month, the members of the Architectural Record audience receive our curatorial choices—the architectural projects, the types of buildings and plans, the interiors, the houses, the lighting, the technical questions, and the cultural happenings, that we, the editorial staff, choose for you.
March 2007 The awards celebration that accompanied the annual Accent on Architecture gala, sponsored by the American Architectural Foundation, brought a powerful trifecta of AIA awards this February: Vince Scully delivered a panegyric honoring the Vietnam Veterans Memorial—Homeric in its linguistic economy, unflinching, moving overall. Edward Larrabee Barnes, who received the Gold Medal posthumously, came vividly to life in the words of Harry Cobb and Toshiko Mori, who described both his wide-ranging contributions to design and to the built environment (think of the Crown Center in Kansas City or the Dallas Museum of Art, in addition to the Haystack Mountain
The awards celebration that accompanied the annual Accent on Architecture gala, sponsored by the American Architectural Foundation, brought a powerful trifecta of AIA awards this February.