Clifford A. Pearson

Letter from Havana

March 21, 2014

Surrounded by history but bereft of innovative work from the past four decades, Cuban architects hope for the future. National School of Ballet (1961-5), by Vittorio Garatti. Making a living as an architect is tough anywhere. But in Cuba it is essentially impossible. Although Raúl Castro has loosened state control of the economy a bit, the private sector still barely exists. All legally-sanctioned construction is done by the government. And everyone agrees that a government salary doesn’t cover anyone’s monthly expenses. Cubans, though, are resourceful and somehow find ways to make ends meet. Over coffee at the Habana Libre Hotel

Shenzhen Bao International Airport Terminal 3

Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport Terminal 3 by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas

Shenzhen, China

Clifford A. Pearson

March 16, 2014

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Treating an enormous airport in Shenzhen, China, as a cinematic experience, a Rome-based firm designs a series of architectural scenes in which light and space play leading roles.

Johnston Marklee Designs New Buildings for The Menil Collection

Clifford A. Pearson

February 21, 2014

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Museum to add a $40-million Drawing Institute and an energy-efficient power plant to its Houston campus. The Menil Drawing Institute, west façade as seen from the Energy House. At a news conference in New York in mid-February Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee presented its design for the Menil Drawing Institute (MDI), a freestanding addition to the Menil Collection’s 30-acre campus in Houston. The 30,000-square-foot structure will sit south of the Menil’s main museum building from 1987 and its Cy Twombly Gallery from 1995, both designed by Renzo Piano. Johnston Marklee will also design an Energy House, which will serve

WMS Boathouse at Clark Park

Stroke of Genius: Part of a mayor's push to make the Chicago River a public asset, an energetic building turns structure and materials into a graceful expression of the activity it houses.

Clifford A. Pearson

January 16, 2014

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A rower crouches with her knees tucked below her fists, then dips her oars in the water and pulls back. The lines of the oars sketch an elegant V in the air, which is repeated over and over as the slender boat cuts through the water. Jeanne Gang thought about such movement when she started designing the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park in Chicago.

Exhibition Previews Herzog & de Meuron's M+ Museum in Hong Kong

Clifford A. Pearson

January 15, 2014

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Herzog & de Meuron’s design for the M+ museum in Hong Kong. An exhibition examining plans for M+, the new visual arts museum scheduled to open in Hong Kong in late 2017, is on display through February 9 at ArtisTree, a multipurpose venue on Hong Kong Island. Curated by Aric Chen, who is the new museum’s curator of design and architecture and an international correspondent for Architectural Record, Building M+: The Museum and Architecture Collection looks at designs for the institution’s building and some of the items that will fill its design and architecture galleries. Last year, an international jury

Exhibition Review: Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture

Clifford A. Pearson

December 30, 2013

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The fifth edition of the show takes on urban questions against the backdrop of China’s rapidly changing cities. At the entrance to the Value Factory site in Shenzhen, Noreen Heng Liu of Node Architecture designed a restaurant standing on columns above an existing concrete structure.

William O’Brien, Jr.

A teacher and practitioner challenges accepted notions of balance, reality, and narration as he establishes his small firm.

Clifford A. Pearson

December 16, 2013

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Cerebral and fluent in the language of ideas, William O'Brien, Jr. has moved skillfully within academia and the art scene while slowly establishing a practice that will allow him to build too.

A University Re-brands

Clifford A. Pearson

November 15, 2013

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For the new campus of a business school in Vienna, six international architects design a series of innovative buildings. Photo © Iwan Baan Angled at 35 degrees, Zaha Hadid’s 300,000-square-foot library and Learning Center asserts itself on the central square. The campus sits between the rectangular buildings of the Messe Exhibition Center and Prater park The challenge was daunting: plan, design, and build an entirely new campus for the Vienna University of Economics and Business in just five years. With 25,000 students, the school had outgrown its 30-year-old home in the city’s Ninth District and decided to move to a

City Library

Out from the Master's shadow: Just as Alvar Aalto pioneered a softer, less severe form of Modernism, a young Finnish firm innovates with social spaces that point a library addition—and a small town—in the direction of the future.

Clifford A. Pearson

October 16, 2013

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Designing an addition to an Alvar Aalto building is hard enough—try doing it with five other Aalto structures hovering nearby, in a Finnish town whose identity has been indelibly linked to the master since the 1960s.

Elegant and Exuberant Architecture: A Report From the Monterey Design Conference

Clifford A. Pearson

October 4, 2013

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Odile Decq and Thom Mayne Watching the presentations at this year’s Monterey Design Conference in northern California, attendees got a multiple-image portrait of architecture in the early 21st century. Elegant buildings with refined details alternated with exuberant installations that relied on digital know-how and student labor. Snapshots from Arkansas, Minnesota, and California appeared between reports from France, Japan, and Brazil. And a tribal elder told stories of working with Louis Kahn, as newer members of the profession listened raptly. More than 600 people gathered at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove at the end of September for the event,