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An ingenious Y-shaped mullion supports a quartz-like facade on Chicago's Michigan Avenue In developing their design for the new Spertus Insitute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, architects Krueck & Sexton realized that the facade would be the public face of a very unique institution. Their solution for a triangulated, all-glass facade expressed both the diversity and oneness of the organization. Its transparency serves not only as metaphor, but practical purposes as well, bringing light into the deep, narrow lot opposite Grant Park on Michigan Avenue. Though the architects anticipated an uphill battle with the city’s landmarks commission to endorse such

Interviewed in his Tokyo office, the Japanese structural engineer reflects on the dramatic turn his work has taken since Toyo Ito's Sendai Mediatheque, nearly eight years ago. The seemingly random arrangement of columns at Sendai, as well as the organic inspiration of seaweed transformed digitally into structure, suggests a strong precedent for the so-called “flux structure” that Sasaki designed for Isozaki’s Florence train station. He implemented a new shape-analysis approach, broadly described at the beginning of this article, that he calls Extended Evolutionary Structural Optimization (EESO). This is Sasaki’s own version of ESO (he added “Extended”), which is a relatively

In the not-too-distant future, there could be two U.S. standards for green buildings. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), in conjunction with two other industry organizations, is developing the Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Meanwhile, the three-year-old, nonprofit Green Building Initiative (GBI) is also working toward establishing its Green Globes rating system for commercial buildings as an official standard. Both organizations are following the protocols of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and expect to release fully completed and approved documents by the end of 2008. Photo courtesy Green

Inazawa City, Japan, is the home of Mitsubishi Electric’s elevator division, and accordingly, the city skyline includes six small peaks—all towers that the company uses to test its product. Earlier this year, Mitsubishi inaugurated its seventh elevator testing tower, a 568-foot-tall structure that’s also the tallest building of its kind in the world. Photo courtesy Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Mitsubishi will use its 568-foot-tall tower to help develop higher-speed and higher-capacity elevators. According to Mitsubishi, the new precast-concrete-clad tower, called Solaé, is a direct response to a high-rise building boom. With record-breaking skyscrapers under construction in emerging markets like Dubai and

The U.S. Army, in conjunction with private industry, is involved in a multiyear research project that could yield stronger, lighter, and longer-span structures, for both civil and military applications. The research is examining the benefits of adding vanadium to steel. Photos courtesy Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Engineers subjected vanadium-based steel angles (top) and fully assembled trusses (above) to various loads to analyze the components' behavior. Vanadium is an element distributed widely through a variety of minerals. But in the U.S., it is primarily recovered from by-products of chemical and petroleum processing. The addition of a small amount to steel, from

The Fourth Factor: A Historical Perspective on Architecture and Medicine, by John Michael Currie. Washington, D.C.: The American Institute of Architects, 2007, 191 pages, $39.99. The title of this book refers to the words of Hippocrates of Kos, widely regarded as the father of Western medicine. He held that there were “three factors” important to the success of medical care: the disease, the patient, and the physician. But here, author John Michael Currie, AIA, expands this list to acknowledge the role of the built environment in the healing process. Illustrated with historical images that Currie has been collecting for almost

The 172,000-square-foot roof that seems to hover over Coop Himmelb(l)au’s BMW Welt in Munich does more than keep out the elements. Together with the Double Cone—a 43-foot-tall, hourglass-shaped event and exhibition space—the wildly sculptural roof serves as the chief expressive element for the building, which functions as part automobile distribution center, part conference center, and part marketing tool. Photo © Duccio Malagamba From the second-level pedestrian bridge, visitors can glimpse the Premiere area where the purchased cars are transferred to their owners. Additional cars are on display on the plaza level. The undulating, stainless-steel-clad roof is like a tornado with