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
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.
The Battle of Gettysburg lasted three days. The battle over the fate of Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander’s Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg National Military Park has dragged on for 10 years—and now, with the park poised to raze the building, it has shifted to the federal courts. Image Courtesy National Park Service Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg could be gone by 2009. Opened as a visitor center in 1961, the Cyclorama Center was built as part of the Park Service’s Mission 66 program, which erected roughly 100 Modernist visitor centers and hundreds of other tourist buildings between 1956
Athletes are no doubt excited about the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, but before the games begin at least one architect is crying foul. Whitefield McQueen Architects, of Melbourne, Australia, claims that the Chinese government’s design for the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park, a “floating boathouse” with an undulating roof, resembles a scheme that it submitted for a design competition in 2005. Tim Whitefield has no proof that his design was intentionally stolen, but he finds the similarities suspicious—and disappointing. “We are a young firm, so it would have been a substantial opportunity for us. I am saddened by the experience.” Images:
Barry LePatner, a Manhattan-based attorney who counts Frank Gehry and other big-name architects among his clients, sees a problem with the construction industry in the United States—clearly indicated by the title of his book Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets, published today by the University of Chicago Press. “This is the industry that time has forgotten,” he says. “Mom-and-pop shops, composed of 20 people or less, make up 92 percent of the industry. They are hugely inefficient, and they have no money to spend on improving performance and technology.” The result, LePatner continues, is tremendous waste in a $1.2-trillion-a-year business—nearly half of
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