Photo by Sean Hemmerle, via Graham Foundation Paul Rudolph's three-story Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York, completed in 1970, has 87 roofs. The long-running saga over Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center—which officials have been threatening to demolish for more than a decade—took perhaps its strangest turn last week: Gene Kaufman, an architect best known for designing colorful towers for national hotel chains on the West Side of Manhattan, offered to buy the building. At a meeting of the County Legislature on May 1, Kaufman offered to purchase the Rudolph building, which has been closed since 2011, and
Fred Schwartz, visiting his 9/11 memorial in New Jersey in June 2011. Frederic Schwartz, who died on April 28 after struggling with cancer, wasn’t so much an architect as a public citizen who used architecture as a tool to improve lives. Other tools included empathy and patience. His best-known project in New York was the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, a project he inherited from his former employers, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, after public officials tinkered with their design so many times they felt unable to continue. Schwartz picked up where they left off, focusing not so much on
It's still early in 2014, but already several important modernist buildings have fallen. Perhaps the most notable is Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Women's Hospital (1975), a cloverleaf-shaped tower that, with other Goldberg variations (including the twin-corncob Marina City complex of 1959-1964), helped define Chicago in a period when the city, under the influence of Mies, was going from gritty to griddy. A beloved oddity, Prentice was as important to Chicago as Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim is to New York, and now it's almost gone. (These photos were taken on a Sunday, April 20.) Northwestern University, which owns the property, has announced
For the first time since it was completed in 1950, Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin, opens for tours next month. Visitors will see firsthand its functional shortcomings along with its spectacular innovations. Both the Research Tower (1950) and the company’s Wright-designed Administration Building (1939) are now on the National Register of Historic Places. Any list of the greatest buildings of the 20th century would have to include Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower, the 15-story companion to his equally spectacular administration building in Racine, Wisconsin. On May 2, the company will begin offering tours
Fifty years ago this month, an architectural wonderland opened in Queens, New York—the 1964-65 World’s Fair that Robert Moses created to bring millions of visitors to Flushing Meadows and raise money to build a permanent park there.
With several large projects about to open and others in the pipeline—such as housing at London's Battersea Power Station site—Frank Gehry has his hands full. Frank Gehry and Foster + Partners unveiled their designs for residential buildings that will be part of London’s redeveloped Battersea Power Station site. Gehry's buildings are in the foreground. If you’re wondering when architects will get the respect they deserve, the answer may be: never. By some measures, Frank Gehry, 85, is having a good year, with several large projects about to open and others in the pipeline. But nothing comes easy. After 10 years
Photo courtesy The Skyscraper Museum Rafael Viñoly discussed the design of 432 Park Avenue in the context of his high-rise work during a February 24 lecture hosted by The Skyscraper Museum. For Rafael Viñoly, running large offices in London and New York sometimes means putting out fires. Last summer, 20 Fenchurch Street, a Viñoly-designed skyscraper in the City of London, nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie, was blamed for incinerating a car—after its concave glass surface concentrated too much sunlight onto a parked Jaguar. The tabloids had a field day. Meanwhile, in New York, he may be best known for designing 432 Park