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I’m baffled by people who dismiss whole categories of things. Two decades ago, I was summoned to the office of House & Garden’s new editor in chief, Anna Wintour, and saw my dumbfounded expression reflected in her sunglasses as she declared, “I don’t like adjectives. You use too many adjectives. That’s all.” How can you eliminate a major part of speech, I wondered? Did she realize that her ultimate accolade — “It’s so modern” — is one-third adjective? But now I confess complete antipathy to an entire building type: the visitor center. Photos ' Paul Warchol The Capitol Visitor Center

Architect Giancarlo Mazzanti’s Biblioteca España [RECORD, November 2008], completed in 2007, is one of the 10 “park-libraries” built as part of the social plan for the city’s most neglected sections. Standing as a powerful symbol of a new cultural era, the building’s three rocklike volumes visually dominate what used to be the most violent and stigmatized part of town. Nearby is Carlos Pardo’s Santo Domingo Savio High School, one of the five proposed schools for low-income sectors. Although not completely finished, due to budget cuts and irregularities in the original financial plan, the school, which overlooks Medellín’s barrios with terraces

The problem of adding onto an icon. To recognize a masterpiece in a lovely building is no great feat; the trick is to spot one in an object as insolent, as splendidly belligerent, as Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building at Yale. Few did so when it opened in 1963; it seemed willfully provocative, as if its baffling spatial sequences and corrugated concrete walls were expressly devised to repulse understanding, let alone affection. As it happened, it existed in this shocking form for only a few years before it was mauled beyond recognition. Now the A&A has been restored by

Photo courtesy Peter Schubert Peter Schubert Congress and President Obama successfully negotiated a stimulus package that should bring economic relief, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors has listed 15,221 infrastructure projects in 641 cities that are “ready to go.” But while speed in getting work started and jobs created is key, the importance of good design, which will last for generations, should not be lost in the haste. We need to ensure that the money spent goes to creative, sustainable buildings that will stand the test of time and will still be used by our children and our grandchildren. After

Dear President Obama, I am extremely heartened that you are planning to address our miserable economic situation with a massive investment in infrastructure. This is not simply a logical and efficient way of translating dollars into jobs (although it’s always important to ask for whom), it is an investment in the long-term future of the country. Although I am writing this in December and don’t know precisely what the shape of your program will be, I appreciate that it will be of a magnitude commensurate with the problems at hand. You’ve already suggested that it will be the largest investment

6. Build schools. Speaking of research, let’s spend billions on building and repairing academic facilities. I may be prejudiced, but years of teaching have convinced me that good schools are the most important key to both prosperity and equity. Our underfunded and unequal school systems are both an embarrassment and an obstacle to real progress. While I will not offer my opinions on testing, vouchers, school choice, or any of the other educational policy controversies of the moment, I am certain of one thing: Beautiful, spacious, and well-equipped school and university buildings can make an enormous difference in the self-esteem

President-elect Obama, we’re informed, intends to create an Office of Urban Policy. Obama is a lawyer, and I’m sure he’s thinking more about social issues than about architecture or urban design. But at this writing (in early December), nobody knows who will occupy the new office, or what its brief will be. Maybe architects will begin to have some influence on public architecture? It doesn’t happen often. Architects aren’t known for their political skills. My friend Dick Swett, who used to be a United States Representative from New Hampshire, believes he was the only architect to serve in Congress in

The bigger picture There needs to be a caveat here, though. Density is a plus word today, and it’s often said that New York’s Manhattan is the greenest community in the U.S., because its high density leads to low per-capita consumption of energy for heating, cooling, and transit. But throw the frame a little wider, and you realize that a lot of the food for New York is coming in carbon-powered trucks and airplanes from California, or even Brazil or China. Maybe there’s a more optimal city size, one that would permit us to raise more food nearer home. Photo

Standing out in a gritty locale One thing that often surprises first-time visitors to downtown Los Angeles is the proximity of its gleaming clutch of skyscrapers and cultural facilities to the homeless encampments in the area known as Skid Row. From the front doors of Frank Gehry’s exuberant Walt Disney Concert Hall, it takes about 15 minutes to walk—or 2 or 3 minutes to drive—the mile or so downhill to a landscape full of quiet but marked desperation, a place where social-services agencies, single-room occupancy hotels, and liquor stores serve a stubbornly large homeless population. (From the steps of City