Two recent deals point to a growing number of mergers and acquisitions among design firms. The Anacostia Library in Washington, D.C. by The Freelon Group and R. McGhee & Associates. At the start of this month, two significant deals combining design firms were announced within days of each other. On March 4, Perkins+Will (P+W) and The Freelon Group—the Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, firm headed by Phil Freelon—said they would merge. The day before, Shanghai Xian Dai Architectural Design Group unveiled its acquisition of Wilson Associates, a 400-person interior design firm with headquarters in Dallas and offices around the

To attract the best and brightest faculty and students, universities today are asking architects for buildings that not only serve their academic goals but also bring prestige to their campuses through innovative design.

New York City Renzo Piano Building Workshop with FXFOWLE Curtain-wall ingenuity eliminates the fear factor Fear factor. That was the obstacle the New York Times and its New York–based architect, FXFOWLE, faced when it was time to bid the curtain wall for the media giant’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Design architect Renzo Piano conceived of a brise-soleil made of horizontal rods to project 18 inches from the curtain wall. Simple in concept, confounding in execution, when one imagines finding a strategy that would work for a 52-story tower. “While this approach has been achieved on a smaller scale in

After languishing for years outside the mainstream, "switchable glazing" is poised to become a viable alternative and could soon have a significant impact on facade design. Two other types of switchable glazing are called liquid crystal device windows and suspended particle device windows (SPD). Liquid crystal technology has been used for some time in wristwatches and is gaining popularity as privacy glazing. A thin layer of liquid crystals is sandwiched between two transparent electrical conductors on thin plastic films, and the entire device is laminated between two layers of glass. When power is off, the liquid crystals are in a

Is there a design language that is unique to civic architecture? Critic Robert Campbell posed this question to the architects, judges, and others attending “Function, Form, and Meaning: Design Excellence in Federal Courthouses” last Friday. Hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA), this day-long forum in Washington, D.C., was billed as “a review and national conversation on federal courthouse design.” Campbell’s opening lecture juxtaposed Modern designs with classical models and challenged attendees and speakers to debate whether or not one of these modes is more appropriate for civic buildings. Taking up Campbell’s challenge, several audience members asked if Modernism has