People are treating the atmosphere like “an open sewer,” former vice president Al Gore contends, and the best way to stop them is with a pollution tax. Gore laid out just such a penalty system, as well as financial incentives for not polluting, during his keynote address at the AIA’s 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition in San Antonio on Saturday. It was a speech tailored to his audience, using little of the same content from “An Inconvenient Truth”—his Academy Award-winning documentary—and with good reason. “Architects have by far the greatest opportunity to affect how our society deals with the

By accident or design, Creative Time has helped catalyze the transformation of New York City’s built environment. This nonprofit group has sponsored and commissioned public art to energize buildings and streetscapes since 1974. Now it is looking outside the Big Apple. It recently sponsored a video installation along four blocks of the Strip in Las Vegas, and this spring will announce plans for an ambitious project in New Orleans—a city in transition that, like New York in the 1970s, could use a big dose of transformative art. Photo: Courtesy Creative Time “Real estate is an important part of the history

In China, the business practice of bootlegging is not just confined to DVDs and Louis Vuitton handbags. Foreign architects have discovered that their designs, even their company names, are also attracting copycats. But some are beginning to fight back. In one of the first cases in which the government is allowing a foreign firm to sue a Chinese business, Woodhead International, Australia’s second-largest design firm, filed a lawsuit in Shanghai earlier this year against its former local partner on the basis of “unfair competition.” Very few of these cases ever made it to a Chinese court in the past because

An estimated 25,000 architects descended on San Antonio, May 3, for  the American Institute of Architects’ 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition. In keeping with this year’s theme, “Growing Beyond Green,” president RK Stewart, FAIA, said at Thursday’s opening general session that the AIA is purchasing clean, green power to offset carbon emissions generated during the three-day event at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. (More details about this transaction will follow on the web.) Click the play button to begin | Click here to download “Steady growth forever is the creed of cancer cells and the economists,” said ecologist

    Michael A. Fitts, FAIA Photo: Courtesy the State of Tennessee Michael A. Fitts, FAIA, didn’t think he would receive the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture when he helped launch the prize in 1991. Back then, the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on Public Architecture had a threefold objective: to recognize advocacy and achievement in public architecture; to raise the stature of public architects; and to promote architecture in the mainstream and in the profession. But fittingly, after 36 years pursuing exactly these goals as the state architect of Tennessee, Fitts is being lauded with one of two

Recognizing the role that architects can play in lessening the impact of climate change on the built environment, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has awarded the 2007 Latrobe Prize to a team of architects and engineers who are researching waterfront development and the ramifications of severe urban flooding. Guy Nordenson, founder of Guy Nordenson Associates and a Princeton University structural engineering professor, leads the seven-member group. Also on the team are Stan Allen, AIA, dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture; Catherine Seavitt, AIA, and James Smith, of Princeton University; Michael Tantala, of Tantala Associates; and Adam Yarinsky,

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is about to start walking the talk. Already garrulous on matters of sustainability, its leadership is evaluating a range of options for greening its headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We want to make our headquarters a demonstration project,” says RK Stewart, FAIA, the AIA’s president. “We have the opportunity to provide a great place for people to work and for our members to visit, and an opportunity to reach out and show the public what’s possible.” Photos: courtesy the AIA Designed by The Architects’ Collaborative, the Walter Gropius—led design firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the

It’s hard to imagine a battle raging where mariachi bands now play and tourists sip margaritas. Yet in 1836, the 187 defenders of the Alamo, including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, fought and died near the spot where later generations would build the San Antonio Riverwalk. Holes from bullets and cannon blasts remain in the old fort’s walls as a reminder of the Mexican forces’ siege. Photo: courtesy the Alamo It’s not these battle scars that have preservationists worried—they’re part of the building’s history—but they are concerned about the effect of 2.5 million visitors a year. Although asked not to

  Photo: courtesy KPF Colleagues of Kohn Pedersen Fox managing partner Gregory Clement III, FAIA, were hit hard when they learned of his death on April 11. “Toward the last year he was traveling a lot,” says senior associate principal Nick Dunn, AIA, “so not to see him for a while wasn’t out of the ordinary.” But in addition to snagging new business or navigating a bureaucratic minefield, Clement, a naturally charismatic 56-year-old, was fighting a two-year battle against melanoma. Clement joined KPF from I.M. Pei & Partners in 1984, and Dunn recalls that the two immediately clicked as a

Kisho Kurokawa can’t seem to catch a break these days. Just days after the Japanese architect lost his bid for the governorship of Tokyo, the Nakagin Capsule Tower, his best known building and one of the few built examples of the Metabolist movement, was given a date with the wrecking ball.