Image courtesy Richard Meier & Partners The 180-room W Retreat Kanai will be located near Cancun. Marking his first foray into Central America in a five-decade career, Richard Meier has unveiled plans for a pair of W hotel projects in Mexico. One will be part of a mixed-use complex in Mexico City, while the other will be a resort near Cancun. Image courtesy Richard Meier & Partners The Liberty Plaza project in Mexico City calls for three 15-story towers. One will contain a W Hotel; the other two will have offices. Related Links: Gagosian Gallery by Meier Interview: Richard Meier

Part of the reason that professor André Sorensen, an urban geographer at the University of Toronto, chose Japanese city planning in the early 1990s as his academic niche is that the topic had barely been explored at the time, at least in English. “Japan was the second largest economy in the world, and there was almost nothing written about it,” says Sorensen, whose Ph.D. focused on Tokyo’s problematic sprawl and whose books have included 2004’s The Making of Urban Japan. Photo courtesy André Sorensen André Sorensen Related Links: Updated on Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai Reassessing Japanese Design Priorities Five Days

In tough economic times many architecture firms are being swallowed in a merger and acquisition frenzy, sometimes with unexpected results.

Despite the economic downturn, supertall towers continue to rise. Of the top 10 now in progress, six were designed by U.S. firms. Only one, however, is on American soil. Image courtesy Gensler Shanghai Tower (far right) by Gensler. Click on the slide show button to view images of the world's tallest buildings now under construction. As might be expected during a prolonged downturn, plans for huge new record-setting skyscrapers have been delayed or flat-out scrapped, from the 91-story Dubai Towers in Qatar to the 84-story Faros de Panama in Panama. Here in the United States, Santiago Calatrava’s Chicago Spire, which

Image courtesy Iu + Bibliowicz Architects Click on the slide show button to view more images. After years of planning, Carnegie Hall, the historic performing arts venue in Manhattan, has pulled back the curtain on a proposal to reconfigure about half of its interior space. The $200 million redesign from New York’s Iu + Bibliowicz Architects will transform space in upper stories formerly used as apartments and offices into music classrooms and practice rooms. On January 19, artistic director Clive Gillinson unveiled details of the project, which is under way and is expected to be completed in 2014. Related Links:

Organized by the Department of Energy (DOE), the Solar Decathlon is a competition held every two years that invites university teams to design solar-powered homes, which they then construct on the Mall as part of a public expo.

Image courtesy ARCHIVE “Breathe House,” from a joint U.S. and U.K. team led by architect Anselmo Canfora, won first place. Exactly one year after an earthquake rocked Haiti, and months after a deadly cholera outbreak began, the winners of competition to design homes that can halt the spread of infectious diseases have been unveiled. Today, the Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments (ARCHIVE), a New York- and London-based nonprofit development group, will reveal the winners of its contest, which attracted 147 teams from around the world after being announced in July. The five winning teams, made up of architects, engineers,

Image courtesy Rodney Leon Architects The competition drew 400 proposed designs, including this one by New York architect Rodney Leon. After notable delays, the winners of the “Building Back Better Communities” competition, a Haitian government-sponsored initiative to generate housing solutions for the earthquake-ravaged country, will finally unveil their ideas. This month, one year after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, 150 teams representing designers, manufacturers, and builders from around the world are expected to converge in Port-au-Prince for a four-day conference at which they will present renderings to government officials and the general public. The event is scheduled for January 31 to

For architects, the Great Recession hasn't really let up since its official start in December 2007. Countless projects are stalled or canceled, including Santiago Calatrava's Chicago Spire ' now a 110-foot-wide void. We investigate what's in store for architects in the near future and beyond. Photo © Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune Numerous projects have been halted globally, including Calatrava’s Chicago Spire, now a 76-foot-deep hole. If the slew of Internet posts, letters to editors, and comments to reporters are to be believed, the economy has put the architecture business in such a deep funk, it’s like a proverbial doornail: dead. And

Underscoring the difficulties facing the rebuilding effort in Haiti, a government-sponsored competition to create housing for the earthquake-ravaged nation has been delayed. In October, winners of “Building Back Better Communities” were scheduled to begin exhibiting models of their designs at an expo in Port-au-Prince. To be built on a 12-acre former sugar plantation, the homes would be toured by government officials, who in turn would commission some to be constructed in decimated neighborhoods. Image © John McAslan +Partners The expo is slated to be built on a 12-acre site in Port-au-Prince. Related Links: Haiti Launches Housing Design Competition Special Report: