Paul Abelsky

Gazprom City, the planned 1,050-foot-tall headquarters in St. Petersburg for the energy giant Gazprom, has been rechristened the “Okhta Center,” which refers to the traditional name for the neighborhood where it could be built. The skyscraper’s name may have softened, but not its potentially harsh visual impact on the historical skyline. Image Courtesy RMJM / © www.glocg.com Gazprom City, the RMJM-designed 1,050-foot-tall headquarters in St. Petersburg for the energy giant Gazprom, has been rechristened the “Okhta Center. UNESCO cautioned in August that if the tower, designed by Edinburgh-based RMJM, is built as planned, St. Petersburg risks losing “world heritage” status,

Paris is usually the world’s most romantic city—except during this, the hottest stretch of summer, when the sweltering heat forces even the meekest Parisians to behave rudely. To provide some measure of relief, the city temporarily closes sections of the Georges Pompidou Expressway, which runs along the Seine River, as well as other riverfront areas and transforms them into beaches. Known as Paris Plages, the annual event opened on July 20 and runs until August 19. It gets bigger with each year, drawing 4 million visitors in 2006, according to the city’s Department of Culture. Photo: © Project for Public

An all-star roster of avant garde international architects, mixed with some of Russia’s top talent, was announced last week in the first-round results of a competition to design a major new art museum in Perm, Russia. Among the 25 names on the shortlist are Asymptote, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Eric Owen Moss, Hans Hollein, Odile Decq, and Zaha Hadid. The competition is unprecedented in Russia for its scope and ambition, attracting 320 firms from 50 countries. Perm is a major industrial center near the Urals, on the eastern edge of European Russia. The city’s art gallery features one of the better and

Burrowed 50 feet into a hillside near Washington, D.C., a once secret, nuclear-blast-proof Cold War bunker that held billions in cash officially re-opened today as a showcase for the world’s largest collection of moving images and sound recordings. BAR Architects and SmithGroup have overseen the transformation of this former Federal Reserve Bank facility into the new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center for the Library of Congress. Photos © Barbara J. Saffir Burrowed 50 feet into a mountain near Washington, D.C., a once secret, nuclear-blast-proof bunker has been transformed into the Library of Congress’s new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The facility, seen