By Leon Krier. Monacelli Press, 2013, 272 pages, $75. Designing the First Axis of Evil Leon Krier would like us to look at the Nazi architecture of Albert Speer in a detached manner. But he starts painting himself into a corner on the very first page. He decries the widespread opinion that Nazi architecture is “worthless, however well-designed.” Click the image above to see more photographs from the book. Let's stipulate that Speer, Hitler's architect and also the Third Reich's minister of armaments and war production, manipulated scale, proportion, columns, and entablatures with great facility—not to mention prodigiousness—and that the
Cities forge ahead with plans for new professional sports venues, despite their high cost and the tepid pace of development. Image courtesy Sasaki In Cincinnati, the first phase of a waterfront park recently opened. When the second phase is completed, a 45-acre swath of green will link the Paul Brown Stadium and the Great American Ball Park. Related Articles: Santa Clara Stadium Barclays Center Olympic Stadium BBVA Compass Stadium The view of Cincinnati's skyline from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River reveals the alluring, if complicated, relationship of sports facilities and cities. On the western edge of downtown, the
Why isn't sustainability a hot issue on the campaign trail? Illustration by Brian Stauffer Those fast-payback, high-efficiency lights you just specified? Job-killing. The daylighted, naturally ventilated workplace you've created that delights your client and decreases sick days? A drag on the economy. When it comes to sustainability, the political debate of 2012 relies on misinformation—if those issues are addressed at all. In many places the term "global warming" can't be uttered in polite company. The building industry has recognized the urgency of embedding sustainability deeply in product development, design, standards setting, and construction. A broad range of public and private
The centerpiece of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, Arkansas, is a vast room that rises in a graceful arc of laminated-wood roof beams and swells outward with canted walls of glass as it vaults a pond.
A cluster of windblown branches sprouts from a tree stump in front of a museum in Ascó, Spain. The tree is sufficiently battered that I wonder why architects Olga Felip and Josep Camps kept it. “Our landscape doesn’t have a lot of character.
J'rn Utzon, designer of the Sydney Opera House, died November 28 at age 90. Jørn Utzon died November 28 at age 90, after a long illness. He never saw his masterpiece, the Sydney Opera House, completed. Though it is among the 20th-century’s most widely admired and audacious works, it is the architect’s great failure. It jump-started a promising career and stunted what should have been a glorious maturity. Utzon married a great intuitive aesthetic to an almost heroic faith in the ability of technology to realize human aspiration. The son of a naval architect, Utzon was born in Copenhagen in
Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina pushed a 30-foot-high surge of water through East Biloxi, Mississippi, tall weeds grow along streets once lined with houses. Biloxi’s casinos have been reconstructed, larger than their former selves.
The Gulf Coast Community Design Studio provides a model for rebuilding after Katrina. “We’re not looking to make a sweetened vernacular,” Perkes explains. “If anything, we’re looking for something energetic or a bit more robust.” A striking butterfly roof allows the house for Le and Nghia Tran (opposite) to fit gracefully under mature trees and directs runoff to a cistern to water the garden. Working with students from Penn State University, as well as University of Texas, Austin professor Serge Palleroni and Bryan Bell of the Charlotte-based social-outreach organization Design Corps, the studio designed a fretwork of wooden braces to
Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina pushed a 30-foot-high surge of water through East Biloxi, Mississippi, tall weeds grow along streets once lined with houses.