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Photo © Leonardo Finotti The triple-glazed facade of Christian Kerez's Leutschenbach School in Zurich is emblamatic of the transparency that's currently popular in new school design. It is unknown how, if at all, the elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, will affect school design going forward. The Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school shootings on December 14 that killed 20 students and six staff members have prompted many to call for a ban on semi-automatic rifles, or assault weapons. In the week since the shootings, others have said video games should no longer contain such violent content. And some are urging that

Image courtesy MoMA Architecture photographer Iwan Baan’s apocalyptic aerial of a dark lower Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy went viral when it graced the cover of New York Magazine. And now the famous photograph is coming to a living room or dorm room near you. Baan’s photograph, titled “The City and the Storm,” is on sale at the MoMA Design Store for $20. All proceeds will go to Hurricane Sandy relief through the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.Baan is quickly gaining traction in the fine art world as well. The prestigious Kulapat Yantrasast-designed Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Los Angeles

Photo courtesy SHINE Architecture SHINE Architecture and TAarquitectura used Rhino 5 to help retrofit a university building in León, Mexico. In November, Robert McNeel & Associates released the fifth version of Rhinoceros (Rhino), a 3-D-modeling program for Windows. Rhino, which began as a program for naval design 20 years ago, gained a foothold among architecture students and young designers in the early 2000s by offering a low-cost and intuitive platform. That user base has grown substantially in recent years with the introduction of Grasshopper, a computational design plug-in that allows designers to code visually. Today those students have moved into

The lessons of Sandy provide clues for how to adapt existing buildings. Photo © Victor Blue Sandbags helped to spare the Goldman Sachs building in Manhattan’s Battery Park City from hurricane damage. From tiny New Jersey Shore bungalows to Manhattan high-rises, properties were caught unprepared for the might of Superstorm Sandy. Now architects are grappling with the stark reality that many structures were not designed to withstand a changing climate. As the rebuilding process begins, so do complicated discussions about how to adapt existing buildings. The growing consensus is that they, too, must change with the climate. “There is an

Cities need to grapple with complex ideas to prepare for the next superstorm. A New York City worker clears a sewer drain in Lower Manhattan after Superstorm Sandy. Two large buildings stand about a quarter mile apart in Red Hook, on the Brooklyn waterfront. One is a 19th-century brick warehouse handsomely renovated to house apartments and Fairway Market, a much-beloved gourmet grocery; the other is the local outpost of IKEA in a sprawling yellow-and-blue shed whose ground floor is mostly parking. The storm surge from Superstorm Sandy wrecked Fairway, which will take months to rebuild. IKEA, by contrast, with its

Photo courtesy Carlos Zapata Studio Carlos Zapata’s design for a 12,000-seat soccer stadium in Cité Soleil, Haiti. Carlos Zapata, who designed Chicago’s Soldier Field football stadium with Benjamin Wood in 2003, has just unveiled his design for a pro bono stadium in Cité Soleil, Haiti. The 12,000-seat soccer stadium will include an attached school and sports complex in a phased development. The project, dubbed Phoenix Stadium, will be used by underprivileged youth—and eventually a new professional team seeded, in part, by the best of them—in what is considered to be Haiti’s poorest and most dangerous slum. It is being spearheaded

The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations chose 11 very different firms from among 88 applicants to design new embassies, consulates, and diplomatic buildings. Nine others were chosen for renovation and rehabilitation projects. Image © Alan Silverman, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill The street entry of the U.S. consolate in Guangzhou, China, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It is scheduled to open in May. The U.S. Department of State has named the architects selected to compete for commissions in its new Design Excellence program. The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), under the direction of Lydia Muniz, chose 11 very different

A small number of large projects drive historical trends in the sports-construction market. Source: McGraw-Hill Dodge Analytics Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].