In the early 1920s, Adolph and Elisabeth Winters, recent German 'migr's, hired a little-known San Francisco architect, Albert W. Cornelius, to design a center for ballroom dancing, concerts, and the occasional boxing match, in downtown Richmond, California. The Beaux-Arts structure became known as the Winters Building and, over the years, housed retail space and a bank. But by 1973, when the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts took up residence in part of the building, much of it had fallen into disrepair: Its roofs leaked, its ceilings were low, and the first level's stalwart concrete face gave it the

In the low-income, banana-farming community of Shiroles, 140 miles southeast of San Jos', infrastructure and basic amenities are sparse: Before San Jos'based architects Elisa Marin and Manfred Barboza helped establish the Shiroles Rural School in 2009, the closest school was 12 miles away. Government assistance, too, was minimal. Instead, 'we had a lot of support from the community,' says 27-year-old Marin. This support came in both matter and might: parents and other members of the community donated manual labor and building material'timber from the surrounding forest and corrugated metal from a small store about an hour away. The most recent

The Nueva Esperanza School, which was completed in 2009, attempts to live up to its name'new hope in Spanish'by providing a much-needed one-room schoolhouse for a coastal Ecuadorian community. Simple materials (including locally sourced wood, dried palm fronds, and a minimum of purchased hardware) went into the 387-square-foot thatched-roof building, designed by David Barrag'n and Pascual Gangotena of Quito-based al bordE arquitectos, who were commissioned by one of the school's teachers, and donated their services. Construction was a team effort: Members of the community assisted a team of volunteers and al bordE staffers to finish the building's hexagonal base, walls,

Pop-up architecture helps boost spirits in earthquake-devastated Christchurch. Re:START is constructed of colorful, stacked shipping containers.  Related Links: In Quake-Ravaged Christchurch, Ban's Cardboard Cathedral Ready for Groundbreaking One year after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 185 people, much of the city still lies in disarray. The central business district remains restricted to the public, with guards standing sentry at access points. Within this “red zone,” innumerable residential and public buildings have been earmarked for partial or complete demolition, including the iconic, Gothic Revival Christchurch Cathedral, whose 19th-century spire and tower sustained heavy damage. New Zealand economists speculate

Sebastian Schmaling and Brian Johnsen describe their studio’s work as being “informed by a reading of site and terrain.

Photo courtesy Tina di Carlo Tina di Carlo, Founder of ASAP Tina di Carlo is on a mission for architecture: Having served as a curator in the architecture and design department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 2000 to 2007, and as a contributing editor at LOG: Observations on Contemporary Architecture and the City, di Carlo is now launching an organization called Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis. The group’s acronym, ASAP, a riff on the phrase “as soon as possible,” was chosen to underscore the urgency di Carlo feels should be given to elevating and promoting

Leadership shakeups at U.S. and European architecture schools continue as a sluggish global economy adversely affects the profession. The United States’ top-ranked schools of architecture are largely absent from the list of schools at which the guard is changing, but some well-regarded departments have seen their share of turnover. New arrivals will need to address a salient question: how can a school of architecture prepare its students for a volatile marketplace while continuing to keep them inspired? If you know of other major leadership changes at architecture schools, post them in the comment box below or send a note to