Magazine

While the SCI-Arc/CalTech team finished sixth (out of 19 teams) in the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, they created a house whose form and skin belie our assumptions about green building today. By wrapping the angular house in insulation pillows, it puts on display what is...

In the United States, a growing number of architecture schools are integrating design-build programs, where students collaboratively design and construct a building to gain experience about how a building goes together and how ideas translate into reality. A number of the programs follow the...

The Winona County History Center in southeastern Minnesota is located in a former National Guard Armory from 1915. This historic brick structure helped determine much of the Laird Norton Addition’s contemporary design, which occupies a surface parking lot immediately to the south....

The influence of Kazuo Shinohara (1925-2006) on Japanese architecture can be seen in the work of Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima and numerous young studios. However, Shinohara's work is scarcely known in the West, in large part due to the very tight control that the architect exerted over the...

As green building becomes the norm rather than the exception, green features in a design can read like a laundry list of the same components and systems: low-e glazing, lo-flow toilets, recycled materials, etc. These features are certainly good, but they have become relatively easy to...

In the United States, a push for small class sizes and therefore small schools has reoriented educational architecture towards, among other things, campuses rather than megaschools. This approach results in projects—like the Marysville Gretchell High School north of Seattle—with...

Architecture is art of compromise. We learn form of building does not exist without context of its surroundings. It is not easy to create valuable space with a balance between elements. Even more, it is difficult to enrich the space with new elements in order to maintain its continuity of...

Tougaloo College is “a private, historically black, liberal arts institution” founded in 1869 on the northern edge of Jackson, Mississippi. The Bennie G. Thompson Academic & Civil Rights Research Center is the first building to be constructed on the historic 500-acre campus...

Retrofitting suburbia is a 21st-century concern in America as buildings created for short life spans now require attention. The infill and improvement of suburban sprawl towards more sustainable ends includes projects like this office building, located in a business park near the New Jersey...

Peters Park occupies a plot of land in Boston’s South End that was actually water before the city was built up in the 19th century. The park coincides with the Neck to the Shawmut Peninsula, a historic location without a trace of its watery past. Local residents formed the Neck Art...

On the northern edge of the University of Minnesota Duluth’s campus sits the Bagley Nature Area, an area for student learning and research. A new classroom building adjacent to Bagley Pond serves the students, while itself serving as a learning tool for sustainable design. The LEED...

This guest house, small at only 850 square feet (80sm) has a strong presence on an impressive site overlooking the Dry Creek Valley near Sonoma, California. Almost the same amount of area is given over to terraces, taking advantage of the beautiful vistas. Architects Chris Cooper and Wendy...

The women’s housing project [ro*sa] is a piece of applied utopia. After a lengthy, discursive incubation period Köb&Pollak Architektur, together with the developer WBV-GPA, have carried out a building that allows enough room for the individual as well as the community, Tailor-made...

In 2006 the Gary Comer Youth Center designed by John Ronan Architects opened on Chicago’s underserved South Side. The colorful building housing recreational facilities received numerous awards and led to the recent Gary Comer College Prep, which forms a small campus with its...

Philip Johnson designed the 1953 Wiley Residence as a glass pavilion cantilevered above a stone podium. The house, in the same town as Johnson’s iconic glass house, also included a pool adjacent to an existing barn on the site. Roger Ferris + Partners renovated the house and barn for a...

The Levine Center for the Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina is made up of four downtown venues that instill culture in a city better known for banking, finance and racing. One such component is the Mint Museum Uptown, which houses a collection of art, craft and design and international traveling...

The Astronomy Department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts was created in 1901, housed in a building that now takes the name of school trustee and donor Sarah E. Whitin. A small expansion and restoration by Boston-based designLAB architects had to contend with a century of use and...

In recent years the countries of the former Yugoslavia have experienced a fascinating cultural transformation that has also affected architecture. Since it was founded in 2001 (following the split of the studio njiric+njiric), the work of the Croatian studio njiric+ arhitekti, led by Hrvoje...

Located one block from the LAPD Police Administration Building in Downtown Los Angeles, this garage and parking structure serves the Police Department while creating a unique...

Kunshan is a town in the Yangtze River Delta near Shanghai. Many of the old canals in the city are converted into six-lane streets. For local residents it is difficult to find an atmospheric spot which reflects the former close relationship between nature and the urban environment in the...

The Hudson River Park stretches from Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan to West 59th Street. This transformation of the island’s industrial waterfront and its many piers into recreational parkland features a number of new structures, including these four structures west...

Architects’ contributions to the public realm are more than just the façades of buildings. They also include street furniture and other elements of urban design, especially in cities where design is valued for making contributions to a sense of place. Robert Maschke...

Strongly informed by site conditions, both locally and regionally, inform Studio created a stunning branch for the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) that is rooted in its place. The building acts as a bridge over an internal roadway to accommodate parking and protect the site’s landscape...

This residence on the Big Island of Hawaii is big itself, actually made up of a few separate structures. Most striking is the entry pavilion, which uses local basket weaving to infuse the thoroughly contemporary design with local culture. Digital technology also interesects with traditional...

What's more exciting than competition? Venture to say it makes the world go round. Especially exciting when has been launched among cities - complex entities, organisms  within internal  struggle. Competition encourages the pursuit of perfection, acts as a catalyst allowing to...

Called Beekman Tower before its completion, 8 Spruce Street is architect Frank Gehry’s first large-scale residential project. And it is a big one, reportedly the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere at 870-feet tall. Just steps from City Hall and the Woolworth Building,...

With a small budget, a lot of self-build and a highly developed sensitivity Carmen Wiederin and Philipp Tschofen from propeller z have made a desolate farmstead into an atmospheric refuge. A section of the barn roof was cut out, in its place a lightweight space capsule now sits on the top of the...

San Juan Island is one of a number of islands in the Salish Sea, a waterway straddling the United States and Canada. On an understandably dramatic site with mature douglas firs, rocky outcroppings, and water views, Heliotrope Architects curved this long and low house to cradle the landscape...

Perched high upon Yeomalt Bluff, the Ellis Residence, enjoys a commanding 180-degree view of Puget Sound and the Seattle skyline. The architects responded to some questions about the LEED Platinum home.

Pratt Instiute’s northern expansion beyond its five-block main campus brings the school to Myrtle Avenue. The appropriately named Myrtle Hall by WASA/Studio A gives Pratt a strong presence on this major thoroughfare. Further the building responds to this context by differing the street-...

Since its foundation in 2006, the work done by Ábalos+Sentkiewicz, has stood out on the Spanish and international architecture scene for its original synthesis of technical rigour, formal richness and its integrating of architecture, landscape and environment. 2G issue number 56...

Jiading District is one of the 18 districts of Shanghai in the North-West of Downtown. The district includes several towns, like Anting, known for its focus on car industries. But the district also has some rural villages based on intensive agriculture with huge orchards and vineyards. In...

De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop is one of the recipients of The Architectural League’s 2011 Emerging Voices, an award that “spotlights individuals and firms with a distinct design ‘voice’ that has the potential to influence the discipline of architecture,...

Sacred Heart University is the second-largest Catholic University in the New England, with multiple campuses in Connecticut. Fairfield is home to the school’s main campus, growing per a masterplan by Sasaki Associates. The Chapel is the first built component of this plan, also by...

On January 15 the Museum of the Moving Image opened an expansion that doubles its size to approximately 100,000 square feet. The museum renovated its landmark 1920’s building—appropriately a film studio originally—and added a striking pale blue volume at the rear, covered in...

Finding potential in the mundane can be difficult, but when necessity dictates the result can be accommodating, as if it were meant to be. Such is the case with this small tea shop in Oregon; a wood portal frames the reconfigured interior of an old house, a window into something...