If there’s been a dominant storyline in the world of architecture practice this year, surely it’s been the rising level of mergers and acquisitions. Marking another chapter in the story, Atlanta-based Perkins + Will announced this week that it acquired the New York City firm Guenther 5 Architects. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Related Links: Perkins + Will Buys Rozeboom Miller What's Fueling the M&A trend? Growth. Top 150 Architecture Firms Robin Guenther, FAIA, founded the firm that eventually became Guenther 5 in 1991. Over the years it has grown into an 18-person office practice specializing in health

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download U2 sang “take me higher” in its 1991 song “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” and now life is imitating art—a 591-foot-tall skyscraper designed by Foster & Partners was selected for the U2 Tower at Britain Quay in Dublin. The Foster plan beat out a proposal by Zaha Hadid, but both schemes were sought as alternatives to an original tower, designed by Burdon

Chicago’s Wrigley Field, which for a century has brushed up against apartments, used to be the exception among major-league ballparks, which tend to sit enveloped by asphalt on a city’s fringe. Not anymore. As stadiums move downtown, developers are constructing high-rise residences that offer box-seat-worthy views of games. Image Courtesy St. Louis Cardinals Condos will overlook Busch Stadium. In 2004, Antoine Predock Architects’ PetCo Park debuted in San Diego’s East Village, a district once dominated by car-repair shops. Guided by San Diego’s economic development group, Centre City Development Corporation, the neighborhood has since welcomed 3,040 condominium units and apartments, with

The McMansion phenomenon is likely to survive both the residential property slump and the popularity of green design, but communities are increasingly opting to regulate house size. Even Los Angeles, often blamed for spawning the culture of sprawl, is evaluating a measure that would limit the size of single-family infill housing—some 300,000 properties. Although there is no single set of nationwide data on such ordinances, the National Trust for Historic Preservation tracks the issue through its anti-teardown initiative. In a May 2006 study it found that more than 300 communities in 33 states have taken steps to combat teardowns and

The Minnesota Department of Transportation yesterday awarded a $243-million contract for rebuilding the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis to a team including Flatiron Constructors, based in Longmont, Colorado, in joint venture with Seattle-based Manson Construction. Also on the team is Orlando-based Johnson Bros., in a support role, and Figg Bridge Engineers, of Tallahassee, Florida, as lead designer. The new highway span will replace one that collapsed on August 1, killing 13 people and injuring 100. Image: Courtesy Minneapolis Department of Transportation Community participants in a one-day design charette workshop scheduled for later this month will choose between two options for a

  Herbert Muschamp   Photo: © Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times/Redux When Herbert Muschamp died on October 2, at the age of 59, it was as though a planet dropped out of our architectural constellation. From his first book in 1974, File Under Architecture, he was a fixture in our sky of thought—and then, suddenly, after a surprisingly short bout with lung cancer, he was no longer there. Whether you loved or hated his musings, you never put his articles in a pile for tomorrow. The pieces were like Herbert himself: penetrating, maddening, insightful, delightful, capricious—sometimes in the same

Betting shops in Great Britain got it nearly correct when they laid odds on the winner of this year’s Stirling Prize, an honor bestowed by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for the building deemed the year’s greatest contribution to British architecture. David Chipperfield Architects’ Museum of Modern Literature, in Marbach am Neckar, Germany, received the prize at a gala televised live on Saturday night. The architect had two buildings among the six semi-finalists, but its America’s Cup Building, in Valencia, Spain, was favored to win at 3-1 by the oddsmaker William Hill. Odds for the Museum of Modern

The Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) officially opens its new building to the public today. Although it is the Michigan institution’s third home in its 83-year history, the wHY Architecture-designed building is the first intended specifically as an art museum. Photos: Courtesy Grand Rapids Art Museum The Grand Rapids Art Museum opens its new building, designed by wHY Architecture, to the public today. Due in part to its use of daylight, the building is aiming for LEED Gold or Platinum certification. GRAM is best known for its collection of 19th and 20th century American and European paintings and sculpture. Its

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic for The New York Times from 1992 to 2004, died of lung cancer this week at the age of 59. Love or hate his writing, and plenty of people did both, the controversial Muschamp still has people talking. Elaine Woo, writing for the Los Angeles Times on October 4, noted that Muschamp’s exuberant 1997 review of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim

In counterpoint to last February’s three-venue series of Robert Moses retrospectives, New York City’s design mavens are now revisiting Jane Jacobs, whose writings about urban life came to symbolize the opposite of Moses’ own approach to planning cities. Manhattan’s Municipal Art Society (MAS) is using the late community organizer and theorist as the touchstone for an inquiry into New York City’s current character. Jacobs made her name in the early 1960s by helping organize a grassroots campaign to protect historic buildings and neighborhoods from destruction—most notably Greenwich Village, which lay in the path of an expressway Moses sought to build.