For a Utah Museum, Polshek Takes Its Cue from the Land Polshek Partnership has designed a new, 161,000-square-foot facility for the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. The $98 million project will enable the 45-year-old institution to better showcase its collection of fossils, rocks, minerals, and other artifacts. Presently, only 1 percent of the museum’s 1.2-million-piece collection is on display in its current location, the George Thomas Building on the University of Utah campus. Images courtesy Polshek Partnership Polshek Partnership has designed a new, 161,000-square-foot facility for the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.

Although the current financial crisis may make the good times of 2007 feel like ancient history, the AIA has confirmed that architectural compensation enjoyed a stratospheric rise from 2005 to the beginning of 2008. Not only did the 2008 AIA Compensation Survey find that salaries for architecture positions increased more than 5.7 percent annually during that period—the strongest performance since the AIA began collecting compensation data in 1990—but also that they outpaced the rest of the economy. Graphs courtesy AIA Since 2002, the salaries of architects and unlicensed staff have risen an impressive 29.2 percent while the salaries of all

A year ago, actor Brad Pitt presented lot owners in the devastated Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans with a portfolio of designs by 13 well-regarded architects, saying, in essence, choose a design and your house will be built. Photo ' Virginia Miller/courtesy Make It Right Foundation A house designed by Graft, a Los Angeles firm, is one of six recently completed in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The first six homes built by Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation are now finished. They represent not only fresh starts for homeowners, but also blueprints for affordable, storm-resistant, and sustainable

The American Institute of Architects today announced that Clyde Porter, FAIA, will receive its 2009 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. Barbara Nadel, FAIA, will be honored with the 2009 Edward C. Kemper Award for Service to the Profession. The association’s Twenty-Five Year Award for 2009 will go to Faneuil Hall in Boston by Benjamin Thompson & Associates. The Whitney M. Young Jr. Award is given each year to an architect or organization “exemplifying the profession’s responsibility toward current social issues.” Both in his present position as the vice chancellor of facilities for the Dallas County Community College District and as

As summer ebbed, many U.S. architecture firms were touting how their expansion into foreign markets, which had ramped up in earnest over the last few years, could hedge them against any domestic economic downturn. The reasons? Strong currencies. Non-reliance on foreign trade. Under-housed populations. Robust oil revenue. Image courtesy HKS The HKS-designed Royal Children's Hospital, in Melbourne, is under construction. Despite the global financial crisis, HKS says there's still a demand for healthcare facilities in Australia. Related Links: Brazil: Firms Still Moving Forward China: Stimulus Package Offers Hope Germany: Looking Farther Afield for Jobs India: Bowing to New Realities Japan:

The London-based Arts Alliance Productions (AAP) has been putting on “ID: Identity of the Soul” since 1994. This theatrical work, based on Henrik Ibsen’s epic poem “Terje Vigen” and Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies,” features dancers navigating around five screens displaying graphically manipulated landscapes. The set designs have been equally nimble. The show debuted in southern Norway with AAP improvising a lighthouse as a projection surface; for a staging in Japan in 2006, the group fashioned sails into screens by draping them over shipping containers in Yokohama harbor. Image courtesy Various Architects Measuring 40,900 square feet,

In recent months, motorists passing by the Polshek Partnership-designed WGBH headquarters, located about five miles west of downtown Boston, might have noticed that the building’s signature feature—a 30-by-45-foot digital facade—has gone dark. Photo © Jeff Goldberg/ESTO The 'digital mural' on the WGBH building, in Boston, has gone dark due to technical problems. The giant LED screen, which cantilevers toward the Massachusetts Turnpike, was switched off this summer, less than a year after the building opened (Polshek Fuses Media and Architecture). The screen is intended to display still images from the public broadcaster’s programs, such as Frontline and Nova. Ventilation problems

In 1973, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) moved into its 180,000-square-foot headquarters on New York Avenue, near the White House. The Modernist building was designed by The Architects Collaborative, a firm that counted Walter Gropius among its founders. Photo courtesy AIA The AIA is renovating its headquarters, designed by The Architects Collaborative and completed in 1973. Now, more than three decades later, the aging concrete building is slated to undergo its first comprehensive renovation. “The building is 35 years old and it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the systems operational,” explains James Gatsch, FAIA, who is serving as

Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects will receive the Firm of the Year Award, and Adele Naudé Santos, FAIA, will be honored with the 2009 Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education.