A delay in the start of construction on Foster & Partners’ Rossiya skyscraper in Moscow this month seems to have barely dented the firm’s far-reaching plans in the rest of Russia. Construction on another major project began moving forward and it has just signed on to design a skyscraper in the Siberian oil boomtown of Khanty Mansiysk. Foster + Partner’s 919-foot-tall Yugra tower will be the tallest thing in the surrounding city of Khanty Mansiysk, located in Russia’s Siberia region. Images Courtesy Foster + Partners The proposed skyscraper will contain a mix of retail, office, residential, and hotel space. STT

More than 350 board members and invited guests from industry organizations convened in Denver last week for the 88th annual meeting of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Representatives from nearly all 54 jurisdictions, except for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, attended the multi-day event. During his keynote address, Chris Luebkeman, director of Global Foresight and Innovation for Arup in London, urged attendees to make decisions that will “survive and thrive” well into the future. Trained as a geologist, structural engineer, and architect, Luebkeman described himself as a generalist “in the spaces between professions.” Using a classic

Rows of Victorian-era workers’ cottages line the streets in Richmond Hill, a residential neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia. While these humble dwellings do not appear intimidating, the surrounding historic district’s covenants make some architects cringe. Jon Clements, of Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, is among them. When given the opportunity to work there in 2001, afforded by his brother’s acquisition of a house, he faced a quandary of expressing originality within preservation’s restrictive prerogatives. Courtesy Jackson Clements Burrows Architects The house in question was a single-story weatherboard cottage in a significant state of decay. Clements’s brother hoped to build a new structure

  Photo by John Brooke, courtesy Irene Jenks Charismatic, daring, artistic. We don’t always associate these qualities with structural engineers, but the highly esteemed Bill LeMessurier, who passed away June 14 at the age of 81, embodied all of them. Trained as an architect at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, LeMessurier graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master’s degree in building engineering and construction in 1953—“then all his [Harvard] classmates hired him,” remembers his wife, Dorothy, who married him the same year. Indeed, since LeMessurier started his eponymous practice in 1961, he distinguished himself with a

Margaret Helfand, FAIA, died June 20 at the age of 59. Her death was due to colon cancer. Since she opened her office in 1981, Helfand had created a body of work distinguished for its clean, Modernist vocabulary and skillful use of natural materials, combined with a quiet and subtle inventiveness. Her commitment to the craft of construction, the exploration of materials of varying textures, as well as her attention to details, set Helfand apart from a number of her colleagues. Photo: Courtesy Helfand Architecture Margaret Helfand Except for a brief partnership, Helfand practiced on her own and gradually broke

It’s getting to be legacy time for President George W. Bush and, among other things, that means building a presidential library—which, after months of official denials and equivocations, is headed for Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, the alma mater of first lady Laura Bush. This location was confirmed in an RFQ issued on May 24 by 3D/I, a Houston-based firm hired by the Presidential Library Foundation to oversee the selection process. The document outlines a 145,000-square-foot library and 40,000-square-foot public policy institute on “property that SMU recently acquired.” The project must be compatible with “the distinct architectural character of

Five design teams presented competing visions for a park on Governors Island at a public forum in New York City last week. Although roughly 350 people attended, they were a subdued crowd and only 40 returned comment sheets, underlining one of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation’s (GIPEC) biggest challenges—how to make New Yorkers care about the relatively unknown, 172-acre landmass located a seven-minute ferry ride from the southern tip Manhattan. “A grand total of probably 50,000 people have ever been on the island who were not members of the military forces and their families,” Leslie Koch, GIPEC’s president,

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 New Orleans still faces a significant risk of flooding, according to an Army Corps of Engineers analysis released this week. While central neighborhoods have benefited from $1 billion in levee improvements since Hurricane Katrina, the study found that the Lower 9th Ward, Gentilly, St. Bernard Parish, and other areas would likely be flooded during a 100-year storm, according to an Associated Press story

Four times could be the charm for the Tampa Museum of Art, in Tampa Bay, Florida. The museum’s building committee voted unanimously in May to forge ahead with Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects’ design for a new facility to be located on the site of its existing home, which will be demolished. The committee chose the San Francisco-based architect last November. Trustees had nixed a design by Rafael Vinoly in 2004, citing concerns over that project’s estimated cost, as well as two other schemes. Renderings: Courtesy Stanley Saitowitz/Natoma Architects Saitowitz/Natoma’s 68,000-square-foot building, the first phase of a possible larger structure, takes the

The Architectural Resources Group (ARG) and Tom Eliot Fisch have resurrected a nearly lost piece of history by preserving the handwriting on the wall—literally—at the former Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco. Known as the West Coast version of Ellis Island, it was the entry point for close to 200,000 predominantly Chinese immigrants at the turn of the last century. Angel Island’s compound consists of barracks, a hospital, and a powerhouse. These structures are less well preserved than their eastern counterparts. Demolition was planned for the early 1970s, until hand-etched poetry was discovered on the dormitory walls. A listing