An opening in the SOM-designed canopy over the train platform has am opening that frames the historic Denver Union Station. The neon sign on top of Denver’s historic Union Station says “Travel by Train,” a reminder of the bygone era when up to 80 trains a day would stop at the busy depot. In recent years, however, the building’s grand waiting room has sat empty except for the few Amtrak passengers waiting to catch the California Zephyr to Chicago or San Francisco.
A Maggie's Centre, designed by Snøhetta, opened in Aberdeen, Scotland, on September 23. Architecture can’t cure cancer, but good design has the power to heal. That’s the philosophy behind Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, a network of drop-in facilities in Great Britain. The centers—17 and growing—are named for writer and landscape architect Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died of breast cancer in 1995. Married to the influential American architecture critic and landscape architect Charles Jencks, Maggie spent the last two years of her life conceiving a warm, inviting place where cancer patients could spend time learning how to cope with their disease
Spanish architect Luis Vidal, principal of Madrid-based Luis Vidal + Architects, is just 44, but he’s already become one of the world’s top airport designers, with major projects in Spain (Madrid, Pamplona, Murcia, Reus, and other cities) and Poland (Warsaw). His current aviation project is the new T2 terminal at London’s Heathrow, scheduled to open in 2014. Although Vidal spends several weeks each year in San Francisco, he’s never done a project in the United States. But that could change. And no, he’s not designing a new U.S. airport. For now, at least, he’s leapfrogged past that to design a
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is one of the city’s most important institutions. It has been around for more than 100 years and has a strong national reputation. It’s also a top local tourist attraction and a destination for groups of schoolchildren—they arrive by the busload, more than 3,000 a day. But in a city with showpiece cultural projects by David Adjaye, Allied Works, and Daniel Libeskind, the Museum of Nature & Science is definitely not an architectural icon. In fact, it’s downright ugly. Sure, there are some fine neoclassical buildings
Studio de Arquitectura y Ciudad (Querétaro, Mexico) - 1st place When Jeff Sheppard, principal of Denver’s Roth Sheppard Architects, launched the "Micro Housing Ideas Competition" back in January, he had no idea where the entries would come from. The contest—sponsored by the Denver Architectural League—was open to just about anyone in the United States or abroad associated with the architecture profession, including registered and non-registered architects, interns, and students. As the models and drawings began pouring in, Sheppard noticed that many were coming from outside the U.S. By the time the competition closed on May 9, there were 70 entries
Two years ago, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, writing in Architectural Record, lamented the “shrinking fraternity” of fellow newspaper critics focusing on the built environment. “At American dailies,” he wrote, “there are fewer than a dozen writers covering architecture with any regularity, and perhaps just four or five full-time critics.” The Dallas Morning News, however, is bucking the trend. In April, Mark Lamster, an editor at Architectural Review and contributing editor for Design Observer, will become the newspaper’s architecture critic. Lamster’s position is a partnership with the University of Texas at Arlington; he’ll teach a graduate seminar at
Photo courtesy SCAD A student in the Savannah College of Art and Design's Interactive Design and Game Development department. Students from the game department are collaborating with architecture students to design an video game that will simulate working in an architecture firm. Let’s face it: Architect: The Video Game doesn’t sound quite as sexy as Grand Theft Auto or Mass Effect. But faculty members at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) are hoping that an interactive approach to teaching professional practice will engage architecture students in a subject that is often met with little enthusiasm. They’ve just won
