Correction appended March 25, 2008 Construction on Forest City Ratner’s $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn could be “put off for years” and Frank Gehry’s design could be scaled back, according to two articles published by The New York Times on March 21. In one article, the developer’s president and CEO, Bruce Ratner, told the paper that the nation’s slowing economy and credit crisis “may hold up the office building”—which is the 8-million-square-foot project’s signature component and was due to be completed in July 2009—and that “the bond market may slow the pace of the residential buildings,” which were

Construction on two towers at the World Trade Center, designed by Richard Rogers and Fumihiko Maki, will begin this week—or by the end of the month, depending on whom you believe, and whether or not you consider test blasts to represent the start of foundation work. A March 13 article in the New York Post says “this week,” whereas The New York Sun wrote that it would be “later this month” when workers begin “foundation work” following this week’s test blasts. Both papers were reporting on remarks made by developer Larry Silverstein during a speech at the New York Building

The first public review period, held last summer, generated more than 900 comments. Now a coalition of groups developing the Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, better known as Standard 189, is for a second time seeking input on a proposed code-enforceable language for sustainable buildings. Related Links: Groups Advance High-Performance StandardsSeeking Public Comment on Standard 189 The coalition developing Standard 189 includes the American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). Speaking with RECORD in January, ASHRAE

Czech-born architect Jan Kaplický, whose British office Future Systems won the design competition for a new National Library in Prague, is threatening to pull out of the project, according to a March 4 article in the Prague Daily Monitor. Chosen in March 2007, Kaplicky’s scheme for the $183.5 million project has earned the evocative monikers “the blob” and “the octopus.” It calls for a bulbous, gold-tinted volume with round windows to rise in a neighborhood of more traditional, older buildings—a funky look that some observers think is too funky. Prague’s mayor, who initially appeared to endorse the project, feels that

An engineering firm based in the U.K. says it is designing a tower that will rise nearly twice as high as the Burj Dubai, The Architects’ Journal reported on February 20. Speaking at a construction conference in the Middle East, sponsored by the Journal’s sister publication MEED, a representative of Hyder Consulting said that his firm is working on a structure some 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) tall. “Andy Davids, Hyder Consulting’s director of structures, confirmed that the tower would be located in the Middle East region, but would not give any further details,” MEED wrote on February 14. Hyder is

The 2008 Jury of Fellows from The American Institute of Architects (AIA) elevated 116 association members to its College of Fellows yesterday. These men and women join an elite cadre: of the AIA’s total 83,000 members, fewer than 2,650 are fellows. The AIA bestows the honor on architects who have been association members for at least 10 years and have made significant contributions to the profession in one or more of five categories: (1) Promoting the aesthetic, scientific, and practical efficiency of the profession. (2) A dvancing the science and art of planning and building by advancing the standards of

Despite rising construction estimates and at least a $1 billion funding gap, New York governor Eliot Spitzer remains committed to remaking Penn Station. At a press conference this week, The New York Sun wrote on February 13, he said that “‘real progress’ was being made in the planned overhaul”—and that the project would avoid the fate of the Javits Center expansion, a Richard Rogers design that was drastically scaled back last month. As RECORD has reported, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Foster + Partners, and Kohn Pedersen Fox have been engaged to redesign the existing subterranean rail station in Midtown Manhattan

A design flaw and the use of the wrong type of steel in Rafael Viñoly’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center, in Pittsburgh, caused a partial collapse there last year, according to a report released this week, as detailed by the Associated Press in an article appearing February 5 on enr.com. A 30-by-60-foot slab of concrete in the loading dock collapsed and fell onto a walkway below in February 2007, as RECORD reported; no one was injured in the incident. “An engineering firm hired to investigate the collapse, Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, said a slotted bolt connection used to attach a