This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
This Website Uses Cookies By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn MoreThis website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.
The Chicago Planning Commission unanimously approved the fourth, and perhaps final, iteration of Santiago Calatrava’s Chicago Spire yesterday afternoon. Designed for a 2.2-acre lakefront site—although its footprint will occupy barely half that amount—the seven-sided glass tower tapers and twists to point 2,000 feet above a public plaza below, making it the tallest building in North America.
Editor’s note: New this week, with the unveiling of the redesigned ArchRecord.com, you may read the news digest below—or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchRecord.com, as a podcast. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Is Frank Gehry’s Manhattan debut a “minor mood piece” or a “milky hulk”? Take your pick of these less-than-flattering phrases to describe his IAC office building in Chelsea, which Newsday critic Justin Davidson reviewed on April 15. “Instead of being a marvelous mirage, it’s only an office building wrapped in a gimmick,” he wrote of the white-glass-clad structure.
The Skyscraper Museum is making more than 500 images relating to the design and construction of the original World Trade Center in Manhattan available through its VIVA2 online archive.
In the absence of concerted federal leadership, cities and states have been taking the lead in addressing the issue of climate change. But now, with the help of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the federal government is stepping up to the plate. The day after his State of the Union speech in January, President Bush signed Executive Order 13423, which mandates green building targets for all executive branch agencies. Topping a long list of goals, it calls for a 3 percent annual reduction in energy intensity, defined as energy consumption per square foot of building space, and increased use
Ask David Childs, of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, what he thinks the most important project in New York City is right now and his reply might surprise you—not the Freedom Tower, as you might expect, but the relocation of Penn Station from its current site under Madison Square Garden into a McKim Mead & White post office across the street. Click above to watch a video of some of New York's most influential architects discussing the city's future. “It’s the centerpiece of New York, it’s the front door,” Childs says. “It’s the piece that ties us together along to the
With the ambitious goal of reducing its greenhouses gas emissions 30 percent by the year 2030, the City of New York recently completed an inventory of its carbon output from buildings and transportation—and the results weren’t pretty when it comes to buildings, which contribute a whopping 79 percent of the total emissions. The audit is the most comprehensive ever undertaken by a city. Its findings came as a surprise to some observers, given that New Yorkers, with their tiny apartments and extensive mass transit network, produce about one-third the carbon per capita compared to the national average. Given the city’s
Message to Brad Pitt: if you’re reading this, Dion Neutra, AIA, has a business proposition for you. Neutra, son of the late California modernist Richard Neutra, is looking for someone to buy his firm’s former office, in Silver Lake, California. Completed in 1950, it is now his father’s only surviving commercial structure. The asking price is $3.5 million, but there’s a catch. In addition to paying all-cash, a buyer must agree to leave the landmarked property untouched—or risk losing the deed. Photo: Courtesy Dion Neutra Neutra created this innovative conservation easement because he’s frustrated with seeing his father’s iconic buildings,
CityCenter Scores Greenbacks for Going Green Project CityCenter, MGM Mirage’s starchitect-studded $7 billion complex on the Las Vegas Strip, is the nation’s largest privately funded development. It also aims to be the greenest for a project of its size, seeking a LEED Silver rating. Image courtesy Gensler Situated on 76 acres between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio resorts, CityCenter includes 18 million square feet of hotels, casinos, retail shops, and residential space. Among the architects tapped to design it are Rafael Viñoly, who did a 50-story, 1,543-unit condo-hotel; Norman Foster, who produced a hotel and condominium tower called “The Harmon”;
RSS