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The Council on Tall Buildings and the Urban Habitat has named the Shanghai World Financial Center the “Best Tall Building Overall” for 2008. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) and completed last year, the building was chosen from among four “Regional Tall Building” winners, including The New York Times Building by Renzo Piano Building Workshop with FXFOWLE, London’s 51 Lime Street by Foster and Partners, and the Bahrain World Trade Center by Atkins. Photo courtesy Kohn Pederson Fox The Council on Tall Buildings and the Urban Habitat has named the Shanghai World Financial Center (pictured at left) the 'Best Tall

J'rn Utzon, designer of the Sydney Opera House, died November 28 at age 90. Jørn Utzon died November 28 at age 90, after a long illness. He never saw his masterpiece, the Sydney Opera House, completed. Though it is among the 20th-century’s most widely admired and audacious works, it is the architect’s great failure. It jump-started a promising career and stunted what should have been a glorious maturity. Utzon married a great intuitive aesthetic to an almost heroic faith in the ability of technology to realize human aspiration. The son of a naval architect, Utzon was born in Copenhagen in

Buffeted by criticism of its modern look and trophy-like setting, Gap founder Donald Fisher has agreed to redesign and move a museum that he wants to build in San Francisco’s Presidio, a 1,491-acre national park. Image courtesy Gluckman Mayner Gluckman Mayner has designed an art museum for the Presidio, a national park and former army base in San Francisco. There’s no assurance the changes announced in December will placate the project’s opponents. And it’s a twist nobody would have predicted in December of 2007, when members of the city’s cultural establishment praised the unveiling of what Fisher calls the Contemporary

Graphs courtesy AIA The Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the lowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8 just one year prior. The inquiries score also hit a record low in November: 38.3, down from 51 in September. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) compiles the index based on surveys sent to mostly commercial architects. The index has fallen below 50 for 10 straight months (a number below 50 indicates a decrease in billings). The commercial sector has taken a steep dive, hitting 26.7 in November. Multi-family residential was also down, from

In recent, years, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has stepped up its advocacy efforts in Washington on behalf of the design profession. With Barack Obama taking office in January, the association is anticipating more legislative victories in the next four years, from an administration that appears to have architects’ best interests at heart, says Andrew Goldberg, the AIA’s chief lobbyist. Photo ' Happyme22/Wikipedia With Barack Obama taking office in January, the AIA is anticipating more legislative victories in the next four years, from an administration that appears to have architects' best interests at heart. Though details are lacking, the

On December 6, President-elect Barack Obama revealed key elements of his sweeping economic-recovery plan, part of which calls for building roads, greening federal offices, and making schools more high-tech, all of which should bode well for those in the design and construction industries. Photo ' Tannen Maury/EPA/Corbis Barack Obama's economic-recovery plan calls for building roads, greening federal offices, and making schools more high-tech, all of which could bode well for architects. “This has to be great news for architects,” says Robert Dunphy, who studies infrastructure issues for the Urban Land Institute, based in Washington, D.C. Advocates have made the case

This fall, Steven Holl Architects won an international competition to design The LM Project, a significant oceanfront development in Copenhagen, Denmark. Envisioned as a gateway for arriving ships, Holl’s scheme consists of two mixed-use towers on opposite sides of an entry to the city’s harbor. The towers are connected by a walkway that soars 213 feet above the water, providing clearance for boat traffic. Images courtesy Steven Holl Architects This fall, Steven Holl Architects won an international competition to design The LM Project in Copenhagen, Denmark. Project architect Noah Yaffe says each glass tower has a “distinct architectural expression.” The

Photo © Elfie Semotan “You can take possession of it by describing it,” says Wolf Prix of Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Central Los Angeles Area High School #9. “If I asked a student, ‘Can you describe your school? Where do you go to school?’ He’d say, ‘The school with the crazy tower and the round windows,’ not, ‘just a building downtown.’” Los Angeles floats its landmarks on a sea of faceless highway, like peanuts in peanut brittle. Downtown, the two-block stretch of Grand Avenue that straddles the 101 is a satisfying bite. In a single chomp, you get Frank Gehry’s Disney concert

Rising on a 358-acre monastery on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is an architectural feat rare in today’s world: a 3.2-million-pound stone structure built entirely by hand. Arguably the most elaborate Hindu temple in the United States, the $8 million white granite San Marga Iraivan Temple, designed by V. Ganapati Sthapati for the Saiva Siddhanta Church, is intended to last 1,000 years. Construction began in 2001 and is scheduled to be finished in 2012. Photos courtesy Hinduism Today Magazine The San Marga Iraivan Temple is being built on a 358-acre monastery on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Hundreds of temples