Image courtesy SHoP Architects and Ellerbe Becket New renderings of the basketball arena were released last week. Past Coverage: First Word: Hasty Gehry Trims Staff Gehry Loses Atlantic Yards to Ellerbe Becket Gehry Downsizes Tower Design for Atlantic Yards After years of controversy and a total redesign, Forest City Ratner Companies, the developer of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, says it expects to begin construction of the development's centerpiece, an arena for the NETS basketball team, later this year. Ratner anticipates opening the facility, called Barclays Center, for the 2011-12 basketball season. On September 10, Ratner released renderings of

Call it a sidewalk shed or bridge: pedestrian protection by any name is viewed as a Big Apple eyesore to many, including local building officials and the New York City chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Through a design competition, they are trying to improve the covers, which they say number 6,000 and add up to more than 1 million linear feet of unsightliness. Photo © Tom Sawyer/ENR There are more than 6,000 sidewalk sheds in New York City. In August, the New York City Department of Buildings and AIA NY launched an international design competition called urbanSHED to

Lifestyle doyenne Martha Stewart, more at home with comforters than cars, likely never dreamed her commuting-to-work routine would inspire a way of living, which could be called insider parking.

Need to stop flooding or reduce stormwater runoff and sewer overflows? Looking to ease demand on treatment plants and avoid the cost of expansion? Seeking cleaner air or water? Interested in recharging an aquifer, rebuilding a shoreline or remediating a brownfield? Trying to stem highway pollution? Need to rebalance a watershed or ecosystem? Photos: SWA Group Houston’s buffalo bayou transformation turns derelict channel into urban paradise(top). The city’s Buffalo Bayou project involves re-engineering banks, stabilizing soil, anchoring rock and more. The park is designed to withstand natural periodic flooding (above). If so, a landscape architect may be in your future.

Though green-building experts and construction lawyers laud the good intentions of the U.S. Green Building Council’s popular Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green-building rating system, many have serious concerns about at least one new requirement in the latest version of LEED, which went into effect on July 1. The requirement, a “precondition” of certification for all buildings under LEED Version 3, says owners must commit to sharing building energy and water-usage data for at least five years after a new building is occupied or an existing building is certified. Another change sending a chill down the spine of construction

Several of the American Institute of Architects’ 2008 model contract documents for integrated project delivery are being challenged by a prominent lawyer who also is an architect and general counsel for a major A/E/C firm. The documents under fire are all related to the creation of a limited-liability company called a single-purpose entity (SPE). Their names are: C-195, or “Standard Form Single Purpose Entity Agreement for Integrated Project Delivery”; C-196-2008, or “Standard Form of Agreement Between Single Purpose Entity and Owner for Integrated Project Delivery”; and C-197-2008, or “Standard Form of Agreement Between Single Purpose Entity and Non-Owner Member for

Architect Ellerbe Becket, of Kansas City, has been retained by New Jersey Nets owner and Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner, of Forest City Ratner Cos. (FCRC) to come up with a new design for the long-delayed and controversial Atlantic Yards basketball and entertainment arena in Brooklyn. Ellerbe Becket replaces Gehry Partners. New York City-based structural engineer Thornton-Tomasetti, and mechanical-electrical-plumbing engineer, WSP Flack + Kurtz, will remain on the project. FCRC says it hopes to unveil new images of the arena, named Barclays Center, in late June and intends to break ground later this year in anticipation of a completed arena

On April 30 at its national convention in San Francisco, the American Institute of Architects released replacement construction manager documents and an updated version of AIA Contracts Documents software. The CM documents cover CM as advisor (CMa) and CM as constructor (CMc). The CM documents replace those released in 2007 and 2008. They include a dispute resolution check box that enables parties to select the method of binding dispute resolution. They incorporate the concept of an initial decision maker fill point where the owner and contractor may identify a third neutral party IDM other than the architect. The documents include

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is planning to revamp its popular Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system in an effort to make it more user-friendly. USGBC hopes to create, with some exceptions, one LEED system instead of having LEED for residential, for example, and LEED for commercial. It expects to roll out the new system next fall. Another likely change is that LEED will address life cycle analysis, something many of the users would welcome. USGBC is “harmonizing and aligning credits” across all LEED rating systems, the group says. This will make the system more “adaptive