Autodesk announced on August 31 that it has released AutoCAD 2011 for Macintosh, along with AutoCAD WS, a mobile app that will allow users to share their AutoCAD designs in the field using iPhones, iPads, and iTouches. Image courtesy Autodesk “What this does,” says Autodesk spokesman Noah Cole, “is give anyone with an iOS device or a modern Web browser the ability to view, edit, and collaborate on an AutoCAD DWG file. We imagine that people on the construction site can carry around an iPad as opposed to carrying around a roll of blueprints.” AutoCAD WS joins two other Autodesk
Photo courtesy rmjm.com David Pringle One of the world's largest architectural firms, the Scotland-based RMJM, is losing three key executives, in addition to losing two others within the past 10 months. Most significantly, David Pringle, the company’s CEO, Asia and Middle East, will leave at the end of this year. Gordon Affleck, design director for the firm’s Middle East office, and Colin Moses, international principal based in Europe, will also leave at that time. Hugh Mullan, managing director in the Middle East, left in May. It is unknown what they plan to do next. Moreover, Adrian Boot, another international principal
Photo courtesy Anshen + Allen Roger Swanson, CEO of Anshen + Allen Stantec, Canada’s largest architectural firm, announced on Aug. 26 that it has signed a letter of intent to purchase Anshen + Allen, a firm of roughly 200 employees with offices in San Francisco, Columbus, Boston, and London. Weeks earlier, Stantec announced it plans to acquire California-based ECO:LOGIC Engineering. If both sales go through, they will be Stantec’s seventh and eighth acquisitions in 2010, adding to the 70-plus companies it has purchased since 1997. The recent bids verify that Stantec is homing in on its goal, announced in 1998,
This October, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute’s Museum of Art in Utica, New York, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Philip Johnson-designed home with an exhibition commemorating the work of the illustrious Modernist and Postmodernist architect.
Virginia Tech architecture student Christopher Morgan has won an international competition to design the Yéle Music Studio in the Cité Soleil area of Port-au-Prince. Launched last December, prior to the deadly January 12 earthquake, the competition invited students from around the globe to create a music facility that empowered a Haitian community. The Royal Institute of British Architects, along with architecture firm John McAslan + Partners and developer Allied London, sponsored the competition on behalf of Yéle Haiti, a nonprofit organization founded in 2005 by Haiti-born musician Wyclef Jean. The winner was announced in May. Click on the slide show
The Trenton Bath House, just restored by Farewell Mills Gatsch, respects Louis Kahn’s original design, even if his full vision remains unrealized. To many architects, Louis Kahn’s 1955 Trenton Bath House in Ewing, New Jersey, just restored by Farewell Mills Gatsch Architects (FMG), exudes everything that worked in 20th-century architecture. This concise design for the Jewish Community Center in a Trenton suburb engages in a thoughtful dialogue with history using modest materials. But the Bath House also is a disappointment. It began crumbling soon after completion, and Kahn’s larger civic vision for the site proved too idealized for the clients
A little-known building in Aspen, Colorado, designed by the late Chicago architect Harry Weese—whose most celebrated work is the Washington, D.C., Metro system—is threatened with demolition. Built in 1972, Weese’s Given Institute is a small concrete-block conference center owned by the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The 12,000-square-foot structure sits on a 2.25-acre lot in Aspen’s pricey West End residential neighborhood. For years, the medical school has used the institute for summer conferences and retreats, but faced with ongoing budget cuts, it now plans to close the Given and sell the property. School officials are negotiating with a potential
In 1947, a visionary named Eero Saarinen won an architectural competition to design what would become his best-known structure, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Image courtesy Jefferson National Expansion Memorial A landmark project will breathe new life into the riverfront park 630 ft below the top of the St. Louis Arch. In September, the winner of a similar competition will be revealed. This time, the landmark project will breathe new life into the riverfront park 630 ft below the top of Saarinen’s famous stainless steel, inverted catenary arch. Five international teams have made it to the finals of the
Image courtesy Edward M. Kennedy Institute Gehry is designing a $60 million new home for the Signature Theatre Company. The theater will be located inside a new glass tower by Arquitectonica and Ismael Leyva Architects. New York City’s Signature Theatre Company has added some star power to its line-up: Frank Gehry. The Los Angeles-based architect is designing a $60 million permanent home for the 19-year-old, off-Broadway theater company inside a glass tower now rising at West 42nd Street and 10th Avenue, one block east of Signature’s current location. The theater company originally had planned to move to a freestanding venue
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