Articles by C. J. Hughes

With summer break fast approaching, some key federal design posts remain unfilled, including commissioner of the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration.

One White House nomination is still forthcoming for a job that has relevance to the design world, even if most Americans don’t know of its existence: the Architect of the Capitol.

After decades of false starts, one of architect Louis Kahn’s final works, a 4.5-acre park in New York City to honor President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is scheduled to break ground in mid-August on the synergistically named Roosevelt Island, in the East River. Image courtesy Vladislav Yeliseyev Today, the nine-member board of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation voted 7 to 1 in favor of the proposal. Related Links: Is Kahn's FDR Memorial Back on Track? Today, the nine-member board of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), which is the public authority that runs the island, voted 7 to 1 in favor

In the current troubled economy, a powerful one-two punch has stung architects searching for work. First, there are few openings at firms, many of which have laid off workers in droves in recent months while also imposing hiring freezes. Plus, competition for those few spots is fierce, as tens of thousands of out-of-work architects do battle with thousands of recent graduates. Illustration © A. Richard Allen But among those who aren’t enrolling in graduate school to ride out the storm, unemployed architects are hardly acting cowed. If anything, they’re redoubling their efforts to find work — including, of course, prepping

Clark Manus, FAIA It could be paying heed to the current economic crisis. It could be following President Obama’s lead in tackling tough social problems. And it might feel emboldened by recent federal legislation that architects lobbied for: the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act, which calls for grants to be made available to public school systems for facility upgrades, and the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which contains a range of promising construction projects. The “it” is the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and its recent election of new officers reflects a heightened commitment to

A public architecture school that for decades struggled with a chronic lack of funding has walked away with a historically large gift.  On April 2, the School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape at the City College of New York received a $25 million donation from Bernard Spitzer, a well-known city real-estate developer. Spitzer, who graduated from City College in 1943 with an engineering degree, also is the father of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who resigned last year in the wake of a prostitution scandal. Photo courtesy City College The School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape at

Photo © Craig Mitchelldyer for Architectural Record After getting laid off, Ben Straus started selling homemade ice cream to help pay the bills. In 2006, after Ben Straus earned an architecture degree from Carnegie Mellon University, he foresaw a long career of designing offices, hospitals, and university buildings. Instead, after being laid off in January from Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects in Portland, Oregon, Straus finds himself selling $6 pints of homemade ice cream out of his kitchen for Presidential Sweets, his new business. (Sample flavor: Vanillard Fillmore.) Still, even though Straus, 25, doesn’t expect to land a comparable architecture job

In the firmament of U.S. presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower may not be known for his star power. But the Washington, D.C., memorial planned for the 34th commander-in-chief will enjoy the talents of a marquee-name architect: Frank Gehry. Image courtesy GSA The $110 million project is set for completion in 2014. On March 31, after six months of sifting through 44 entries, the commission assigned to the job of creating the memorial announced it picked Gehry, a Pritzker winner, to design the four-acre site, which is located a block south of the National Mall. The $110 million project, which is part