Articles by Fred A. Bernstein

Architects have something new to worry about.

The exhibition materials are displayed in a series of curved vitrines that form a circle within the main room of the Archives building. Japan is one of the many countries—both Eastern and Western—that hasn’t been sufficiently respectful of its modernist architectural heritage. Still, preservationists in most countries would envy Japan its National Archives of Modern Architecture, conceived by the late architectural historian Hiroyuki Suzuki and created by the government in 2012. The Archives benefits from public funding, its own building (within the Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Garden in Tokyo’s Yushima neighborhood), and, if that weren’t enough, Tadao Ando as its honorary director. It

Two of Paul Rudolph's houses are for sale, and they may be joined by his Orange County Government Center. Via michiganmodern.org Paul Rudolph's Frank and Anne Parcells House (1970) in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, is for sale. Its projecting rooms resemble the architect's Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York. Two buildings by Paul Rudolph—houses in Michigan and Massachusetts—are on the market, and they may soon be joined by a third: the Orange County Government Center, the sprawling structure in Goshen, New York, that has been the cause of hand wringing by preservationists for over a decade, and has been

The role of Jews in creating and popularizing post-war modernism has largely escaped attention, but it is now the subject of a new exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco.  Eichler model home advertisement, c. 1960. Are Jews particularly likely to embrace new forms of artistic expression? The ongoing coverage of collections looted by the Nazis strongly suggests that, when it came to avant-garde painting, Jewish collectors were essential. So too for architecture: Can it be coincidence that Mies’s greatest clients, the Tugendahts, and le Corbusier’s, the Savoyes, were Jewish?   In America, the Kaufmann family commissioned houses

Modular housing has already obscured most of the east facade of Barclays Center, long before the building has reached its full height. Until five years ago, the stretch of Flatbush Avenue between the Manhattan Bridge and Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn was an architectural wasteland. The strip started coming to life with a small project (WXY’s skillful security booths for the MetroTech center), then with a very big one—the Toren, an SOM-designed condo tower with an unusual, dimpled-metal façade. Next up was the SHoP-designed Barclays Center, where Mayor Bill de Blasio hopes the Democratic Party will hold its convention in

Carrying a firm on after the founders are gone requires planning, but isn't right for every practice. Photo: © Ulrik Jantzen Bjarke Ingels (standing at center, bottom) surrounded by his seven partners in BIG. Photo © Thomas Mayer Frank Gehry hopes his partners will continue on their own. Bjarke Ingels, who is only 39, would like to have one, soon. “The reason succession plans don't work,” he says, “is that people start to think about them much too late.” By contrast, Daniel Libeskind, 68, says he doesn't need a succession plan. He sees his architecture firm as the equivalent of

 Golden Lion Winner: The Minsuk Cho-organized Korean Pavilion in the Giardini. Could it be a coincidence that minutes after reporting that Phyllis Lambert had received the Venice Architecture Biennale's Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at a ceremony earlier in the day, the radio station in my rental car (as I mbarked on a pilgrimage to Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery) broadcast the Sondheim ballad “I’m Still Here”? Lambert, 87, could have been Elaine Stritch, now 89, singing about good times and bum times, my dear. Related links Exhibition Review: Time Space Existence Venice Dispatch: Highlights from the National Pavilions Venice

The U.S. pavilion (1930) was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich.  The Venice Architecture Biennale is a polyglot affair. Some countries use their pavilions as conventional galleries, displaying photographs of finished buildings. Others create architecture-based installations. A smaller number take an intellectual approach, posing and then answering questions derived from architectural theory or practice. And a very few—and these may be the ones taking the greatest risks—pose questions to which the answers are allowed to emerge, through real-time investigation, over the course of the Biennale’s six-month run. Related links Exhibition Review: Time Space Existence Venice Dispatch: