The end of an era in New York—and a new future for cities and technology. Two years ago, RECORD published an award-winning feature devoted to the evolution of New York City in the decade since 9/11. We gave much of the credit for the city's newfound vibrancy to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, under whose administration exemplary urban design and architecture have flourished. The vast enhancement of the public realm—hundreds of acres of new parks, especially on the waterfronts; miles of bike lanes; pedestrian plazas; handsome new civic and cultural buildings—have created a dynamic and alluring urban environment for residents and tourists,
Record looks at how interiors bring the outside in. The exhibition Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (through September 23), explores a provocative theme: that the giant of 20th-century architecture is wrongly categorized as an International Style designer whose “machines for living in,” as he termed them, could be plunked down anywhere. Rather, argue the curators Jean-Louis Cohen and Barry Bergdoll, Le Corbusier was a keen observer of nature and landscapes, which informed almost everything he touched, from the master plan for a city to the design of a single
New urban parks of all varieties are transforming neighborhoods around the country. It's August, and if you're a city dweller, it's great to be able to hang out on a summer's day in a nearby park. But just how nearby depends on what city you live in. In June, the Trust for Public Land issued its ParkScore, a rating of park systems in America's 50 biggest cities. Minneapolis came out on top, based on three criteria: the percentage of residents who live within a 10-minute walk of a park (94 percent); the median size of its parks (6.5 acres), and
For several months now, we've been reaching out to architects to talk about the status of women in the profession. Even before the Architects' Journal published its scathing survey of how women in architecture are treated in the U.K.—and well before two students at Harvard's Graduate School of Design launched their petition to pressure the Pritzker Prize committee to recognize architect and planner Denise Scott Brown, who was excluded from the 1991 award bestowed on her partner, Robert Venturi—we had begun to report on the inequities that persist in the field.
In this issue of RECORD, we explore works of architecture as urban catalysts—buildings that raise the stakes for design in their neighborhoods while successfully engaging the surrounding context.
Prizes for RECORD, as we raise the curtain on our annual honors for best residential design. Here at Architectural Record, we work not only to bring you the best contemporary projects but also to report on the most critical issues confronting the profession today. That's why we're particularly proud of the recognition we've received from American Business Media's annual Jesse H. Neal awards—the Oscars for magazines like ours. RECORD won three of the big prizes: two for our special issue “Building for Social Change” (March 2012) and one for best single issue for “New Life for the American City” (October
How good design is expanding the options for social housing. In October 2008, Architectural Record published a groundbreaking issue, Design With Conscience. A year ago, in March 2012, we cast a light again on architects engaged in humanitarian projects around the world, in a much-praised issue, Building for Social Change. By looking at a library and community center on the fringes of Medellín, Colombia, a school in Rwanda, and a neighborhood performing-arts space in Richmond, California, we explored a variety of ways that good design can have a major impact on people and places with few resources—what's been called architecture
The critic whose passion and insight changed the way we look at the built world. Last month, the world of architecture lost the best critic of our time. Ada Louise Huxtable set the standard for architectural journalism, not only because of her many firsts–first architecture critic for the New York Times, hired in 1963; first cultural critic to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1970–but because of the powerful influence of her voice, both on the public and on writers who followed her. The digging and research that informed her opinions is legendary: her articles were built on deep layers of