A little more than a year after its splashy debut, the new harbor-side home of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is looking less than watertight. Museum-goers this winter have observed leaks along the ceiling of the building’s top level where it joins the glazing of the curtain wall, and buckling of stucco under an exterior stair adjacent to the main entrance. All buildings experience settling-in periods and require adjustments of one sort or another, and high profile buildings attract more scrutiny. But the ICA’s construction involved some bad luck, including the demise of

Santiago Calatrava’s 2,000-foot-tall Chicago Spire is a lofty experiment in bird-safe design. The residential skyscraper is rising in the midst of a large year-round bird population and in the path of a major migratory flyway on the shores of Lake Michigan, but its glass is designed to be visible to birds, which should help prevent fatal collisions. Images courtesy Studio Gang Architects Studio Gang Architects included several bird-friendly elements in its design of the Ford Calumet Environmental Center in Chicago, a 28,000-square-foot environmental education center due to open in 2009 (top) To reduce the possibility of bird strikes on the

In architectural terms, the 2007 World Series, which opens tonight in Boston, pits the Red Sox’s venerable 1912 Fenway Park against the Colorado Rockies’ 1995-vintage Coors Field in Denver—old bricks v. new bricks. Fenway is the oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball, but it’s receiving a makeover informed by the latest thinking on sustainability. The Red Sox are planning to add photovoltaic panels and make additional green improvements with advice from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Although there is not yet a standardized way of greening a stadium, the Sox join a host of other ball clubs pursuing LEED-inspired, or

Just as other cities around the country are experimenting with ways to streamline the plan review and permit process, New York City, a trendsetter in this respect, is clamping down on its practice of allowing architects to self-certify building plans. In an effort to save architects time, Oregon is taking Portland’s “e-permit” online submission tool statewide. Los Angeles has unveiled the Guaranteed Express Permit Program, which aims to serve walk-in customers with small projects within 30 minutes and issue a permit within 90 minutes, or the application is free. And in Honolulu, the city’s understaffed Department of Planning and Permitting

Who’s snickering about Brad Pitt’s interest in architecture now? The movie star jolted attendees at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual conference in late September by announcing a plan to replace 150 destroyed houses in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward with new, environmentally sustainable ones that cost less than $200,000 each. Seeking justice for city residents who lost their houses in what he termed an “abysmal” rescue effort, Pitt and his partners formed an organization called Make it Right to hire 13 architectural firms for green designs that fit the local vernacular. He promised that each model will match what residents

If there were a prize for the project most often mentioned during the conference “Engineered Transparency: Glass in Architecture and Structural Engineering,”

The McMansion phenomenon is likely to survive both the residential property slump and the popularity of green design, but communities are increasingly opting to regulate house size. Even Los Angeles, often blamed for spawning the culture of sprawl, is evaluating a measure that would limit the size of single-family infill housing—some 300,000 properties. Although there is no single set of nationwide data on such ordinances, the National Trust for Historic Preservation tracks the issue through its anti-teardown initiative. In a May 2006 study it found that more than 300 communities in 33 states have taken steps to combat teardowns and

The Battle of Gettysburg lasted three days. The battle over the fate of Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander’s Cyclorama Center at the Gettysburg National Military Park has dragged on for 10 years—and now, with the park poised to raze the building, it has shifted to the federal courts. Image Courtesy National Park Service Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg could be gone by 2009. Opened as a visitor center in 1961, the Cyclorama Center was built as part of the Park Service’s Mission 66 program, which erected roughly 100 Modernist visitor centers and hundreds of other tourist buildings between 1956