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Photo © Ben Benschneider “It’s an instrument that the curators play,” says Brad Cloepfil of his Museum of Arts and Design. When Brad Cloepfil, AIA, founder and principal at Allied Works Architecture, unveiled his design for the Museum of Art and Design in New York, he added fuel to a heated and unusual preservation debate. His plan to alter a 158-foot marble edifice on the south side of Columbus Circle prompted some preservationists to rally behind an exemplary, but widely disliked work of late Modernism. Two Columbus Circle was built in 1964 and designed by Edward Durrell Stone for the

Photo courtesy Predock_Frane Architects “It’s like zoning gone wild,” says Hadrian Predock of California’s Inland Empire region. Design runs in Hadrian Predock’s family. The Santa Monica, California, architect is the son of celebrated New Mexico architect Antoine Predock, FAIA. Not only did the younger Predock inherit an interest in the profession from his father; his family also passed down an approach to practice that combines traditional design work with other art forms. Antoine Predock trained as a painter before going into architecture, and Hadrian’s mother is a dancer. “When I was growing up in Albuquerque, they would collaborate on pieces

Photo courtesy SHoP Architects “We’re basically focusing on digital integration services, but we could go as far as construction management advisory services,” says Jonathan Mallie of SHoP Construction, a newly founded spin-off of SHoP Architects. New York-based SHoP Architects made what might seem like a counterintuitive move early this month. The 12-year-old firm—best known for the meditative Hangil Book Hall (2004) in Seoul, South Korea, several high-profile New York residential projects, and still-shaking-out plans for Manhattan’s East River Waterfront and South Street Seaport—has decided to put itself at the forefront of the profession-wide push for greater design-build project integration, not

Cambridge, Massachusetts, architect Kyu Sung Woo, FAIA, has had an eventful summer.

Photo © Robert A.M. Stern Architects “This is a classical skyscraper without the rhetoric of classical language,” says Robert Stern of his Comcast Center in Philadelphia. In its ten-year history, the Vincent Scully Prize has been awarded to few practicing architects. The award honors individuals who have made noteworthy contributions to architectural practice—in addition to scholarship and criticism—but the majority of winners have been academics, policymakers, or patrons. Preservationist and Robert Moses nemesis Jane Jacobs was an early winner. The Prince of Wales and the Aga Khan have also taken home the prize—as has its namesake, Yale art-history professor emeritus

Photo © Eileen Barroso / Courtesy Columbia University “It was out of a fascination with what the digital revolution is doing about collapsing the distance between the designing board—the designing computer—and the site of fabrication,” says Barry Bergdoll of his motivation for organizing Home Delivery. The Museum of Modern Art has turned an empty lot on West 53rd Street in Manhattan into a playground of innovative building technology. Before it becomes the ground floor of a tower designed by Jean Nouvel, the skyscraper-flanked site is playing host to five full-scale prefabricated homes designed by contemporary architects. Jeremy Edmiston and Douglas

Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, director of the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colorado, considers space the only thing holding her institution back from an ambitious long-term goal. “We want to become the best non-collecting museum in the world,” she says. Photo © Karl Wolfgang / Courtesy Aspen Art Museum Aspen Art Museum board of trustees president Nancy Magoon, museum director Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, and Shigeru Ban. “The museum is looking for a unique gathering space,” says the architect. Founded in the late 1970s in a converted hydroelectric plant, the museum currently has 7,000 square feet of exhibition space, which the director

James Cutler, FAIA, is known for superbly wrought wood structures, including buildings on the Gates family compound in Medina, Washington (1997).