Joe Addo looks beyond architecture for his native Ghana. Joe Addo Twenty years after leaving his native Ghana to attend the Architectural Association in London and then seek employment abroad, Joe Osae-Addo found himself contemplating a return to his homeland during a visit in 2000. The West African nation had just elected a new president, and Addo sensed a “democratic fervor” that had not existed before. “There was an atmosphere of optimism and euphoria, and I wanted to be part of it,” he says. In Los Angeles he had started a practice in the early 1990s focusing on small civic

One of the limitations of relying on images to explain architecture is that the practice can sometimes encourage viewers to see buildings primarily as objects.

Project Specs Nordpark Cable Railway Innsbruck, Austria Zaha Hadid Architects << Return to article the People Architect Zaha Hadid Architects 10 Bowling Green Lane London, EC1R 0BQ. Tel: 020 7253 5147 Fax: 020 7251 8322 Architect of record: Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher Associate architect: Thomas Vietzke (project architect) & Jens Borstelmann Engineer(s): Bollinger Grohmann & Schneider Frankfurt and Vienna Baumann & Obholzer Innsbruck Consultant(s) Landscape: ILF Lighting: Zumtobel & Staff Acoustical: Helmut Prader Engineer Other: ILF General contractor: Strabag AG Renderer(s): Zaha Hadid Architects CAD system, project management, or other software used: Autodesk AutoCad Rhino   the Products Exterior

The 172,000-square-foot roof that seems to hover over Coop Himmelb(l)au’s BMW Welt in Munich does more than keep out the elements. Together with the Double Cone—a 43-foot-tall, hourglass-shaped event and exhibition space—the wildly sculptural roof serves as the chief expressive element for the building, which functions as part automobile distribution center, part conference center, and part marketing tool. Photo © Duccio Malagamba From the second-level pedestrian bridge, visitors can glimpse the Premiere area where the purchased cars are transferred to their owners. Additional cars are on display on the plaza level. The undulating, stainless-steel-clad roof is like a tornado with

The Fourth Factor: A Historical Perspective on Architecture and Medicine, by John Michael Currie. Washington, D.C.: The American Institute of Architects, 2007, 191 pages, $39.99. The title of this book refers to the words of Hippocrates of Kos, widely regarded as the father of Western medicine. He held that there were “three factors” important to the success of medical care: the disease, the patient, and the physician. But here, author John Michael Currie, AIA, expands this list to acknowledge the role of the built environment in the healing process. Illustrated with historical images that Currie has been collecting for almost

The U.S. Army, in conjunction with private industry, is involved in a multiyear research project that could yield stronger, lighter, and longer-span structures, for both civil and military applications. The research is examining the benefits of adding vanadium to steel. Photos courtesy Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Engineers subjected vanadium-based steel angles (top) and fully assembled trusses (above) to various loads to analyze the components' behavior. Vanadium is an element distributed widely through a variety of minerals. But in the U.S., it is primarily recovered from by-products of chemical and petroleum processing. The addition of a small amount to steel, from

In the not-too-distant future, there could be two U.S. standards for green buildings. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), in conjunction with two other industry organizations, is developing the Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Meanwhile, the three-year-old, nonprofit Green Building Initiative (GBI) is also working toward establishing its Green Globes rating system for commercial buildings as an official standard. Both organizations are following the protocols of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and expect to release fully completed and approved documents by the end of 2008. Photo courtesy Green