Correction appended August 19, 2008 After sparking opposition and getting sent back to the drafting tables in January 2007, Foster + Partners has returned with a dramatically different design for an addition to a 58-year-old building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The revamped proposal has placated some, but not all, of the project’s critics. Images courtesy Foster + Partners Company Foster + Partners recently unveiled a new design (top) for an addition to a 58-year-old building in Upper Manhattan after the first proposal (below) was rejected. The firm originally proposed erecting a 30-story elliptical glass tower atop the Parke-Bernet Gallery,

It was a longtime dream of producer/director Michael Selditch and screenwriter Stan Bertheaud to tie together the professions of film and architecture. Both men are trained as architects and met two decades ago in California while teaching studio at Woodbury University. After years of discussion, they finally are bringing their vision to the screen. Photos courtesy Tulane University This Wednesday, Aug. 20, the Sundance Channel will begin airing Architecture School, a six-part reality TV series about Tulane University students who design and build a low-income, single-family home in New Orleans. This Wednesday, Aug. 20, the Sundance Channel will begin airing

Photo courtesy SHoP Architects “We’re basically focusing on digital integration services, but we could go as far as construction management advisory services,” says Jonathan Mallie of SHoP Construction, a newly founded spin-off of SHoP Architects. New York-based SHoP Architects made what might seem like a counterintuitive move early this month. The 12-year-old firm—best known for the meditative Hangil Book Hall (2004) in Seoul, South Korea, several high-profile New York residential projects, and still-shaking-out plans for Manhattan’s East River Waterfront and South Street Seaport—has decided to put itself at the forefront of the profession-wide push for greater design-build project integration, not

Cambridge, Massachusetts, architect Kyu Sung Woo, FAIA, has had an eventful summer.

Photo © Robert A.M. Stern Architects “This is a classical skyscraper without the rhetoric of classical language,” says Robert Stern of his Comcast Center in Philadelphia. In its ten-year history, the Vincent Scully Prize has been awarded to few practicing architects. The award honors individuals who have made noteworthy contributions to architectural practice—in addition to scholarship and criticism—but the majority of winners have been academics, policymakers, or patrons. Preservationist and Robert Moses nemesis Jane Jacobs was an early winner. The Prince of Wales and the Aga Khan have also taken home the prize—as has its namesake, Yale art-history professor emeritus

Foster + Partners has been commissioned to design an ambitious, $177 million masterplan for the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the largest museum of European art in Moscow.

UFO Museum Has Close Encounter of the CAD Kind Have intelligent beings from other planets visited Earth? The International UFO Museum and Research Center, in Roswell, New Mexico, lacks a definitive answer, such as an alien spacecraft—but it does have plenty of intriguing photographs and affidavits from people who say they have seen one. “If visitors walk out of here with more questions than they had when they came in, that’s all we ask,” says executive director Julie Shuster. Images courtesy Ahearn-Schopfer Associates Ahearn-Schopfer Associates, a Boston-based firm, is designing a new home for the International UFO Museum and Research

Studio Pei-Zhu Designs Museum for Iconic Chinese Artist While the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May left a large portion of Western China in ruins, signs are emerging that some notable building projects in the area are pushing forward. One of these projects is the Art Museum of Yue Minjun, designed by Beijing-based Studio Pei-Zhu, a 2007 Design Vanguard winner. Image courtesy Studio Pei-Zhu Located near the Qingcheng Mountains, and adjacent to the Shimeng River in Sichuan Province, the 10,700-square-foot museum will house the work of Yue Minjun, a Chinese contemporary artist known for his repetitive images of large, smiling figures.