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Developers and officials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are enlisting renowned museums, including the Louvre and the Guggenheim, as well as top architects such as Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, to build cultural facilities in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. But citing what it describes as the UAE’s poor record on preventing abusive labor conditions, the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has made several appeals for these cultural institutions to assure fair worker treatment. So far, it hasn’t received any pledges. “We’ve had some vague responses, but they’ve been noncommittal and don’t address the basic issues of labor

Nader Khalili, an Earth Architect and teacher known for his innovative work with adobe, died on March 5 of congestive heart failure.

Tel Aviv’s “White City,” an unparalleled collection of 4,000 International Style buildings recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, now has a Bauhaus Museum to display Bauhaus-designed furnishings and related objects. The first exhibition, opening April 25, includes original furniture, graphics, lamps, and glass and ceramic ware, by Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Christian Bell, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, and others. Photos © Esther Hecht Tel Aviv’s new Bauhaus Museum is located in the White City, a collection of 1930s-era International Style buildings designated a UNESCO World Heritage site (top).  The museum’s first show features furniture and other objects designed by

Reports that the operators of Paris’s Eiffel Tower were planning a dramatic, temporary addition to the structure proved to be tall tales. The UK’s Guardian newspaper, Architect magazine, The New York Times, and others wrote in March that a design by the French firm Serero Architects had won a competition to redesign the 905-foot-tall structure’s uppermost public viewing platform in time for its 120th anniversary in 2009. Serero unveiled renderings of a clover-shaped cantilevered platform that could be “bolted onto the tower using a web of Kevlar” temporarily, the Guardian wrote. But according to an April 15 New York Times

In Palm Springs, California, it’s 1956 again: Real estate developer Maxx Livingstone is replicating the decades-old residential designs of William Krisel, AIA. During the 1950s, the architect and his former partner Dan Palmer worked with Alexander Construction to build 2,500 post-and-beam tract houses. That collaboration doubled the city’s size and produced weekend-getaway residences that helped define its accessible, Modernist identity. Robert Parker, director of Prudential Palm Springs’s architectural division, says that a growing number of purchasers are restoring these so-called “Alexander homes” to their original look—and that authentic examples are withstanding downward-facing sales trends. “The real estate market obviously has

Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the recipients of the sixth annual Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture, plan to take their $200,000 honorarium and invest it—not in stocks or bonds, but in the future of urbanism and the environment. At their acceptance speeches made during the awards ceremony in Chicago on March 29, 2008, the husband and wife team pledged to donate their winnings to a nonprofit research center for the publication of books related to New Urbanism and classical architecture. Richard Driehaus, the Chicago-based investor and philanthropist who sponsors the prize, said he would match their gift, for

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York City through May 12, 2008. The birth of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, revolutionized design in the 20th century. For the first time in human history, things could be created as if from nothing, rather than carved from wood or stone, or fashioned from metal. Within two decades of its 1907 advent, plastic was being used in radios, cars, and telephones; by the century’s end it was in the fabric of the city (in buildings), in the human body (pacemakers), and in outer space (satellites). When Mr. McGuire advised Ben in

Beacon of Affordable Housing Shines on Danish Waterfront Containers and cranes are being shipped out to make way for residents and workers in the Light*house district, a $361 million waterfront redevelopment in Århus, Denmark. The Dutch practice UNStudio and the Danish firm 3XN have designed a 15-acre, bicycle-friendly neighborhood that is transforming industrial port land into apartments, single-family residences, offices, and shops. Image courtesy UNStudio The development is based on a 1990s master plan for the site, which encompasses Århus’s Pier 4 in Container Terminal North, by the Danish architect Knud Fladeland. The design team also includes the Jan Gehl,