Articles by James S. Russell, FAIA Emeritus

Tadao Ando has just added 3,700 square feet of new gallery space to his Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, which first opened in 2001. The exterior of the introverted reinforced-concrete structure remains unchanged. The Pulitzer Arts Foundation unveiled 3,700 square feet of new gallery space May 1, tucked within the serenely introverted structure designed by Tokyo-based Tadao Ando. In 2001, the Pulitzer opened in the Grand Center arts district of St. Louis with two long wings enclosed in honed concrete embracing a shallow reflecting pool and sculpture terrace.  The main gallery, which remains unaltered, captures the movement of sun

Fabrication advances allow architects to make glass buildings that are not only transparent or translucent but sculptural. Photo © Thies Raetzke The Elbphilarmonie, a mixed-use complex designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is nearing completion on a riverfront site in Hamburg, Germany. To earn one AIA learning unit (LU), including one hour of health, safety, and welfare (HSW) credit, read each of the articles below and complete the test online. Upon passing, you will receive a certificate of completion and your credit will automatically be reported to the AIA. Find additional information regarding credit-reporting and continuing-education requirements at ce.construction.com, under

Photo © James S. Russell The Philharmonie de Paris under construction in October 2014.  The day of the gala opening of his design for the Philharmonie de Paris, January 14, Jean Nouvel announced he would not attend. The building is not ready for orchestras, he said in a statement released by his office. “There were no acoustic tests in the concert hall. The schedule did not allow the architectural and technical requirements to be respected.” The 2,400-seat concert hall rises like a shiny iceberg of mottled metal and rippling polished stainless steel in the Parc de la Villette at

The Harvard Art Museums, during renovation and expansion, showing the new addition. From Quincy Street, you would never know that the overhauled Harvard University Art Museums, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lurks behind the puritanically aloof facade of the neo-Georgian Fogg Museum. Even the long boxy volume of Renzo Piano’s addition, which hoists itself one-story above Prescott Street, behind the rear of the Fogg, doesn’t fully disclose its size, even with showy glass cubes poking out at either end. The Fogg is now just one of three merged collections that opened November 16. To accommodate a daunting array of competing programmatic agendas

The difficult cause of willful buildings that demand heroic efforts to preserve. Photo © Peter Mauss/Esto The American Folk Art Museum in New York, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien, invited visitors to explore its many levels with narrow atriums and stairs lined with display niches. Though the public spaces of Boston City Hall choreograph a theatrical itinerary of light and shadow, many citizens and politicians find the building intimidating. Though it was indisputably a significant work of architecture, New York's American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, is being demolished. Its fate was sealed when Diller

In New York City these days, residential towers cannot be too slim or too tall.

A Rebuild by Design team, led by BIG, proposes a "bridging berm" at New York City's East River Park. Protective sand islands in long narrow threads would run along the Atlantic seacoast from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to Cape May, New Jersey, in one of the most ambitious proposals unveiled last week by Rebuild by Design. The program is a high-speed, invited competition sponsored by a presidential task force, guided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and others. The islands were among the strategies proposed by 10 interdisciplinary teams, to rebuild