Beth Broome

On May 8 the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction announced the winners of its second Global Holcim Awards competition. Selected from nearly 5,000 submissions from 121 countries, the four winning entries include a river remediation scheme in Morocco, a greenfield university campus in Vietnam, a rural planning strategy in China, and a shelter for day laborers in the United States. In total, $2 million in prize money was awarded.

Built in 1962 to house the Fayetteville, Arkansas, Public Library, the Fulbright Building sits in a leafy residential neighborhood on the edge of the city’s historic district and to this day is surrounded by Victorian houses and Craftsman-style cottages.

The August 1976 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reinvented Faneuil Hall Marketplace was planned as a modest affair. But a crowd of 50,000 flooded the complex, kicking off an impromptu four-day party with street performers and revelers filling the historic site. The frisson in the air no doubt came from the wide realization that this was the beginning of something new.

A couple hours drive from Washington, D.C., Hooper’s Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore on the Chesapeake Bay, seems to exist in a time warp.

Although Medellín, Colombia, a valley metropolis of more than two million in the northern reaches of the Andes, is sometimes called the City of Eternal Spring, it is better known for its erstwhile reputation as Murder Capital of the World.

If you come (naively) expecting to see a lot of architecture at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2008 — as traditionally understood in tangible form — plan to leave disappointed.