Alexander Gorlin, FAIA, has wanted to be an architect since the age of seven, when he would fill the floor of his parents’ living room, in Queens, New York, with model cities—complete down to the toy cars and miniature people that populated them. Now aged 52, Gorlin notes that his career has marked a “seamless” progression in scale. As the principal of his own atelier, he designs everything from individual residences to community master plans. Photo © James Murdock Alexander Gorlin holds a photo of himself as a child constructing a model city. Click here to watch a six-minute feature

Three architect-developer teams presented their plans for a massive downtown redevelopment scheme in San Francisco last week and the public now has until September 17 to comment on them. The designers are vying in a competition for the Landmark Transbay Transit Center and Tower: a 1-million-square-foot, multimodal transit hub and adjacent skyscraper on a roughly 12-acre site within a 40-acre downtown redevelopment district. Images Courtesy Transbay Joint Powers Authority Proposal by the team of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners—formerly the Richard Rogers Partnership—and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners (top). Proposal by the team of Skidmore Owings & Merrill and

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Gluckman Mayner was tapped by Donald and Doris Fisher, founders of the Gap clothing chain, to design a 100,000-square-foot museum in San Francisco to house their collection of contemporary art, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on August 8. Called the Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio, the building will be located in the city’s Presidio park and contain 55,000 square feet of galleries—making

SmithGroup, already No. 11 on Architectural Record’s 2007 list of the Top 150 Architecture Firms, just got a little larger: the Detroit-based architecture and engineering giant acquired Area Design, a boutique firm based in Chicago, for an undisclosed amount yesterday. Area is a seven-person commercial interiors firm founded by Angie Lee, FAIA, and Scott Baker, AIA, in 2005. Among its 20 clients are DDB Chicago, Exelon Corporation, and The HON Company. It posted $1.23 million in 2006 revenue. Prior to founding Area, Lee worked for 13 years at OWP/P—ending her career there as director of corporate practice. She will now

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download There’s a chance that funding could made available for the construction, preservation, and rehabilitation of 1.5 million housing units for the poorest Americans. The 10-year program, which would be established through the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007, is open to households earning less than 30 percent of an area’s median income. The House Financial Services Committee approved this proposed legislation,

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Rem Koolhaas is designing a 984-foot-tall skyscraper that, if built, will be the tallest in Mexico City and Latin America. Although currently it’s “nothing more than an idea on paper,” Reuters reported on July 24, the Torre Bicentenario is timed to open in 2010 on the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s war of independence against Spain. Located in an active seismic zone, the $600

It’s become an almost weekly occurrence this summer: a leading architecture practice acquiring a smaller firm to give itself additional capabilities or a presence in a new market. This week’s deal sees Perkins+Will buying Rozeboom Miller Architects. Terms of the transaction, which was announced yesterday, are undisclosed. Based in Atlanta, the 72-year-old Perkins+Will is a leader in sustainable design, educational facilities, and health care buildings. It maintains offices in 16 cities nationwide—many the result of past acquisitions—as well as additional offices in Canada and China. Posting $268.3 million in revenue last year, Perkins+Will ranked No. 5 on RECORD’s annual list

Six finalists for one of Great Britain’s top architecture awards, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize, were unveiled today.

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download “Confrontational and controversial” architecture is what Gehry Partners’ Edwin Chan hoped to find among the five designs unveiled this week for the new Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan, according to a July 18 article in City Pulse. With an avant-garde roster of finalists, it’s likely that Chan, one of the university’s eight jurors, got

Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Rafael Viñoly’s “Walkie-Talkie,” a proposed 500-foot-tall skyscraper that the group English Heritage labeled London’s “ugliest and most oppressive” building, received the go ahead from government regulators this week, The Financial Times reported on July 11. A public inquiry was launched last winter in response to concerns that the cell-phone-shaped building might spoil views of the Tower of London and other landmarks. Construction could