Laura Mirviss

Laura Mirviss was a staff writer and editor for Architectural Record between 2012 and 2015.

Articles

ARTICLES

Architectural Record Honors One in a Million

Laura Mirviss
November 15, 2012
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The results of our continuing education sweepstakes are in. Photography: Ezra Stoller © Esto The United Nations renovation, featured in Record's September issue, is one of the most popular courses this year. When it comes to continuing education, few architects get a free pass. From recently licensed practitioners to Pritzker Prize–winning architects, most need to fulfill state licensing requirements by completing a minimum number of education credits. Bernard Tschumi, Deborah Berke, and Frank Gehry each filed credits through Architectural Record's continuing-education portal this year. (It's really them. We checked.) Courtesy Tim Kwiatkowski Kwiatkowski won Record's Millionth Test-Taker Sweepstakes. Furiously trying
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Century Building

Laura Mirviss
October 16, 2012
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Photo © Eric Staudenmaier In 2009, Koning Eizenberg Architecture completed the transformation of the 104-year-old Century Building in Pittsburgh’s downtown cultural district, converting the 12-story commercial office building into 60 residential units with retail and office space on the lower floors. The LEED Gold–certified building offers some of the first mixed-income housing in the city’s downtown; the affordable and market-rate units are indistinguishable, and residents have access to a fitness room, lounge areas, and a roof deck with views of the Allegheny River. The exterior of the building is embellished with a loud, lime-green billboard stamped with a bike icon
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Bakery Square

Laura Mirviss
October 16, 2012
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Photo © Joseph Hoffheimer In 2007, a Pittsburgh-based real-estate developer purchased a vacant Nabisco factory in the city's predominantly residential East End. The repurposed 495,000-square-foot building, dating to 1918, reopened in 2010 following a $110 million renovation by Pittsburgh-based Astorino. The complex now includes a hotel, retail space, and offices and serves as Google's new Pittsburgh headquarters. The tech giant occupies a two-story penthouse designed by another local firm, Strada. The office features an open floor plan and whimsical elements, including a giant suspended hammock. Plans are in the works for Bakery Square 2.0, a $120 million office, retail, and
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Rebuilding Detroit Piece by Piece

Laura Mirviss
September 28, 2012
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Experts and residents rally in an ambitious plan to save a struggling city. Photo © Dave Jordano Detroit Works recommends expanding existing neighborhood initiatives, like the Spirit of Hope garden in Midtown. In Detroit, the statistics are jarring: The city has 26 jobs for every 100 people, 47 percent of residents are functionally illiterate, and, with 344 homicides in 2011, its violent-crime rate eclipses that of any other major U.S. city. Twenty-three percent of the housing stock is vacant, and though municipal tax rates in Detroit are 2.5 times the national average, services are spread thinly across the city’s expansive
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Cultural-Centre-Amenities

Cultural Centre Amenities

Laura Mirviss
September 16, 2012
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Since 2008, Australia has been a cautious bystander to the worldwide recession, and the city of Perth in Western Australia has pressed ahead with several major building projects, including a new 45-story office tower and plans for a six-star, 500-room luxury hotel in the city’s outskirts.


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Herzog & Meuron and Ai Weiwei's Serpentine Pavilion

Laura Mirviss
August 16, 2012
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Collective memory was the driving force behind the latest incarnation of the annual, temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei. To build a kind of manufactured archaeological site based on the previous 11 pavilions, the team created a drawing that fused the foundations of those structures into a single digital rendering, and then carved this form out of the ground.


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Top 250 Architecture Firms: Gensler Takes the Crown

Laura Mirviss
June 16, 2012
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HOW TO USE THIS TABLE Companies are ranked by revenue (in millions of dollars) for architectural services performed in 2011. This data also appears in the Top 500 Design Firms list produced by our sister publication, Engineering News-Record; unlike our ranking, that list includes engineering-exclusive firms. Data is collected by Dodge Data & Analytics’s Research and Analytics group. To participate in next year’s survey, contact Gary Tulacz at gary.tulacz@construction.com. Key to how firms classify themselves: A = Architect AE = Architect-Engineer AP = Architect Planner EAL = Engineer Architect Landscape AEC = Architect-Engineer-Contractor (not all combinations listed) Top 250: 1-50
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