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Lenore Lucey, FAIA Image courtesy NCARB The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards will be under new executive leadership in 2011. Lenore Lucey, FAIA, has announced that she will leave her post as executive vice president of NCARB on July 1, 2011. NCARB represents the architectural registration boards of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories, with 105,000 registered architects. It oversees the Architect Registration Examination and the Intern Development Program, and certifies credentials. Lucey has most notably led the organization through a complex transformation from a paper-based system to a computer-based one. In recent years,

Gail Lindsey, FAIA Greg Franta, FAIA Image courtesy Mike Cox (top); Rocky Mountain Institute (above). Members of the green-building community are mourning the deaths of two influential and trailblazing architects. Gail Lindsey, FAIA, founder of the Wake Forest, North Carolina-environmental consulting firm Design Harmony, died February 2 of complications from liver cancer. She was 54. Greg Franta FAIA, principal architect and senior vice president of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Built Environment Team, based in Boulder, Colorado, died in a single-car accident on a highway south of Boulder. Franta, 58, had been missing since February 9. His car and body were

The organizations responsible for the world’s three leading environmental assessment systems for buildings have agreed to establish consistent methods for measuring and reporting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The U.K.-based Building Research Establishment (BRE) Trust, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and the Green Building Council of Australia, plan to "map and develop common metrics to measure emissions of CO2 equivalents from new homes and buildings.” Along with the UK Green Building Council, the three groups, which administer the BREEAM, LEED, and Green Star rating systems respectively, signed a memorandum of understanding at the Ecobuild conference held in London earlier this

Architects discuss strategies for staying alive. Layoffs. Each week the numbers of layoffs grow as architects frantically attempt to curtail the fallout from the current recession, when projects are killed, postponed, or don’t materialize. Few firms want to shed their trusted, well-trained architects, and few firms want to talk about it with the not-so-trusted members of the press. As Andrew Bartle, AIA, puts it (nicely), if the press sticks to its current role as harbingers of doom, won’t it only exacerbate the problem by keeping clients ultra-nervous? In spite of such suspicions, Bartle—whose firm, ABA Studio, is known for private

Architects discuss strategies for staying alive. John Lahey, AIA, chairman and principal in charge of design at Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), in Chicago, says that after having been through the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, he finds it better to lay off architects than offer a four-day work week. “People who are raring to go don’t like working four days a week,” he says. When SCB, known for its privately sponsored residential construction, was affected, “We reduced the staff, even though painful, ” says Lahey. Its head count now totals 130 after losing between 25 to 30 people to

Dana Byrne, manager of talent acquisition and professional development at RMJM, recently attended one of the Not Business As Usual workshops to offer suggestions on how to make cover letters and resumes shine.

Architects discuss the pros and cons of self-employment during an economic downturn. How does Ginseng Chicken, a young architecture studio, save money in the recession? “You’re sitting on it,” says Sang Hwa Lee, 31, pointing to a futon against the wall of a modest room on the 22nd floor of an apartment tower near Battery Park, at the tip of Manhattan. This is Ginseng Chicken’s office. To Lee’s business partner, Hosung Chun, it also is home. Photo courtesy Ginseng Chicken Sang Hwa Lee, Hosung Chun, and Jeeyong An, started their New York-based studio, Ginseng Chicken, last summer. Last summer, as

A quick guide to applying for unemployment benefits.

Volunteering can provide architects a chance to strengthen their skill set and expand their professional network while hunting for employment.

Sinking Real-Estate Market Forces Architects to Reconsider their Prospects In recent years, architects descended upon Dubai, eager to capitalize on its feverish building boom. But while the Persian Gulf city’s sprawling skyline is still dotted with cranes, the market here has fizzled. As of early February, more than half of Dubai’s real estate projects were on hold or canceled, from the 3,281-foot-tall Nakheel Tower designed by Woods Bagot to the Hydropolis, a 220-suite underwater hotel envisioned by designer Joachim Hauser. Analysts predict that Dubai property values, in total, will decline up to 60 percent in 2009 after years of record