The results of two recent studies—one carried out by the New Buildings Institute (NBI), the other by CoStar Group—show that green building standards are not only effective, but also escalate property values. The post-occupancy studies, both released in March, attempted to measure the value of buildings with sustainability features compared to conventional buildings. They also aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of third-party certification programs, specifically LEED, administered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and Energy Star, managed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. One study confirmed that new LEED-certified buildings use less energy than
It’s no coincidence that the license plate for Chicago architect Walter A. Netsch, Jr. said "WN 21." "21" stood for "21st century," symbolizing where the progressive architecture of this strong-willed maverick always was headed. Netsch's geometrically complex buildings, including the much-admired Cadet Chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy, broke the mold of glass-box orthodoxy in the mid-20th century and helped set the stage for today's expressionistic, digital design. Yet any assessment of his work must come to terms with the fact that his labyrinthine structures could be bewildering as well as brilliant.
The revival of a scenario first envisioned some 30 years ago could yield Boston’s tallest residential building. Simon Property Group has unveiled plans for a 47-story luxury condo tower atop its Copley Place Mall, an upscale shopping hub in the historic Back Bay neighborhood. The proposed project, designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects, would also add more than 100,000 square feet of commercial space to the retail center. Images courtesy Simon Property Group Elkus Manfredi Architects is designing a slender, 47-story luxury condo tower (pictured left of center in middle image) that will sit atop Copley Place Mall, an upscale shopping
In April, attendees of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile strolled the vast corridors of the 5.7-million-square-foot Fiera di Milano complex that began hosting the springtime furniture fair three years ago. While traveling to the Massimiliano Fuksas-designed facility in Milan’s outskirts, some may have noticed that a portion of their old stomping grounds, the Fieramilanocity, located near the city center, is now a construction site. Image courtesy CityLife CityLife, a consortium of French and Italian companies, is redeveloping 2.7 million square feet of a 4.3-million-square foot exhibition center in Milan. The plan calls for residences, a museum, and office and retail
On Tuesday, a school board in Sarasota, Florida, voted to raze the Paul Rudolph-designed Riverview High School to make way for a parking lot. The narrow 3-2 vote ended a two-year long battle to save the structure, which opened in 1958, reported the Herald-Tribune newspaper. Preservationists were trying to raise money to convert the building into a community music center, a project anticipated to cost $15 to $20 million. As of this week, pledges totaled a mere $100,000, according to an article in The Architect’s Newspaper. "The time to show me the money was today,” said board member Shirley Brown
On May 27, less than two months after winning the 2008 Pritzker Prize, French architect Jean Nouvel defeated top firms such as Foster + Partners and Studio Daniel Libeskind in a competition to design a new iconic tower for La Défense, an aging business district on the outskirts of Paris.
If architecture is frozen music, as 19th-century poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, then this weekend it will sound like electro punk and rock-and-roll. London’s annual Exhibition Road Music Day, on June 21, will coincide with opening festivities for the third biennial London Festival of Architecture (LFA), which officially kicks off June 20. The month-long architecture event—devoted to London’s unique built landscape and avant-garde design community—will move across the city, stopping at five key hubs and featuring more than 600 installations and events.
Construction plans for the site of Le Corbusier¹s chapel of Notre Dame du Haut (1954) in Ronchamp, France, have ignited a vigorous debate, pitting leading architects against each other, and sparking disagreement between organizations seeking to preserve Le Corbusier¹s legacy.
An elephant house designed by Foster + Partners for the Copenhagen Zoo, in Denmark, opened this week, marking the firm’s first zoological building. “I don’t know how I can go back to designing office blocks for grumpy humans after this,” John Jennings, a lead architect on the project, told The Guardian newspaper. According to Foster’s office, the design was guided by research on the behavioral patterns of elephants. Because bull elephants tend to wander away from their herd, the designers created two sunken enclosures, both made of terra-cotta colored concrete and topped by glass domes. The fritted glass is meant
Images courtesy Rafael Viñoly Architects For the University of California, San Francisco, Rafael Viñoly Architects has designed a stem cell research facility that features terraced volumes with green roofs. The project is partly funded by taxpayers in California, where $271 million is earmarked for construction of stem cell labs throughout the state. It’s “one of the largest building programs ever dedicated to a new field of medical science,” says Robert Klein, chairman of California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In August 2001, the Bush administration announced it was cutting off federal funding for most stem cell research. Three years later, in