James Murdock

The Architectural Billings Index rebounded in October, after two straight months of steep losses, gaining 1.1 points for a score of 53.2. The American Institute of Architects, which compiles the index based on surveys sent to 300 mainly commercial architects, says that this indicates fallout from the credit crunch has not worsened. Although the index of new business inquiries slipped 4.2 points to 58.1, its lowest level in 16 months, any score above 50 indicates growth.  

Corrections appended December 17 and 19, 2007 The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced today that it is awarding its 2008 Gold Medal, one of the profession’s highest honors, to Renzo Piano, Hon. FAIA. The AIA also announced that KieranTimberlake Associates will receive its Firm of the Year Award and that Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, will be lauded with the Topaz Medallion. Photo © Michel Denancé, Courtesy FXFowle Renzo Piano’s New York Times headquarters, completed in 2007. Photo ' Peter Aaron/Esto KieranTimberlake’s Loblolly House, completed in 2006. Image ' Built Light, 2006 Stanley Tigerman’s Pacific Garden Mission, completed in 2007. Related

Oscar Niemeyer, one of the 20th century’s greatest and most imaginative Modernist architects, is due to mark his 100th birthday on Saturday, December 15. But why limit a quick biographic and birthday sketch to just one century? The centenarian maintains an active practice in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo © Giuseppe Bizzarri / WPN Oscar Niemeyer photographed in his studio, December 2002. The Brazilian architect will celebrate his 100th birthday this Saturday, December 15. Photo © Douglas Harrison Engle/WPN Designed and built during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Niemeyer’s works in Brasília, Brazil’s capital city, include

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 Architects’ conceptual scheme for a Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio was unveiled this week by Donald Fisher, the project’s backer and founder of the Gap retail chain. Fisher is seeking to build a 100,000-square-foot building to house his art collection in San Francisco’s Presidio, a former military base turned National Park. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported on December 4,

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 Herzog & de Meuron has unveiled its design for the Miami Art Museum and, as The Miami Herald wrote on November 30, this new $220 million waterfront structure “looks unlike any building in Miami—or any other place.” The paper added that the “dreamlike composition, inspired in part by the houses of Stiltsville in Biscayne Bay, resembles nothing so much as a giant sandwich,

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 Jean Nouvel and the developer Hines have unveiled a 75-story skyscraper to be constructed next to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, according to a November 15 article in The New York Times. The building will contain a hotel, luxury apartments, and three levels of galleries for MoMA, which sold the narrow 17,000-square-foot

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 Frank Gehry has been slapped with a lawsuit by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which all alleges that the super-starchitect’s Stata Center is riddled with leaks, The Boston Globe reported on November 6. The negligence suit names both Gehry Partners and general contractor Skanska, alleging that they violated contracts and are responsible for design and construction failures. The 400,000-square-foot Stata Center was

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is set to release revisions to its A201 contract documents today. These forms, the most widely used in the construction industry, define the legal relationship between building owners, architects, and contractors; the AIA first prepared them in 1887 and issues updates once a decade. The AIA is also releasing a new owner-architect agreement. Chief among revisions to the A201 documents is the removal of mandatory arbitration, which has been specified since the AIA’s first owner-contractor agreement in 1888. Arbitration must now be selected, with mediation as the first option and litigation as the default

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 Santiago Calatrava is suing the city of Bilbao, Spain, for the “cheek, arrogance, and ignorance” of allowing Arata Isozaki to add onto a 10-year-old footbridge that the Spanish starchitect designed near the Guggenheim Museum, the U.K.’s Independent reported on October 26. The suit, which landed in court last week and is expected to be decided “soon,” alleges that Isozaki’s addition “breaks the symmetry