Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Frank Gehry has been slapped with a lawsuit by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which all alleges that the super-starchitect’s Stata Center is riddled with leaks, The Boston Globe reported on November 6. The negligence suit names both Gehry Partners and general contractor Skanska, alleging that they violated contracts and are responsible for design and construction failures. The 400,000-square-foot Stata Center was
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is planning to revamp its popular Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system in an effort to make it more user-friendly. USGBC hopes to create, with some exceptions, one LEED system instead of having LEED for residential, for example, and LEED for commercial. It expects to roll out the new system next fall. Another likely change is that LEED will address life cycle analysis, something many of the users would welcome. USGBC is “harmonizing and aligning credits” across all LEED rating systems, the group says. This will make the system more “adaptive
Former President Bill Clinton took the stage at the U.S. Green Building Council’s sixth annual Greenbuild conference in Chicago yesterday morning and, before a crowd of 6,000 people who gathered to hear his keynote address, described the green building movement the nation’s largest economic opportunity since the country mobilized for World War II. “It’s not going to be easy, but we have to move away from the carbon economy,” Clinton said, adding that he considers green building to be “perhaps the most important cause we can be involved in today.” In a lightly political speech—we are facing an election year,
Berlin, the capital of Germany, acknowledges the darkest chapters in its history by dispersing Holocaust artifacts amid vestigial Communist buildings and parks. New York City is struggling to remember its own trauma—September 11, 2001—amid new towers and fast-changing neighborhoods downtown. What might these cities say to one another? Photos: Courtesy the Center for Architecture The show 'Berlin-New York Dialogues,' at New York City's Center for Architecture, features images of this bridge in Berlin. Wilk-Salinas Architekten with Thomas Freiwald designed this bridge across the Spree River with a swimming pool in a boat whose planes of sight suggest a river dip;
The Four Seasons Hotel New York has unveiled its new 4,300-square-foot penthouse suite with nine rooms, ceiling heights up to 25 feet, and breathtaking city views.
Correction appended January 1, 2008 The word “sustainable” is not often used to describe the pollution-choked cities of Asia, but the continent is poised to host a new generation of green cities that right the wrongs of industrial-era urban planning. The question “Could we do better?” motivated New York-based SHoP Architects to take on one such project, the high-tech Sector 61 node of Gurgaon, India. Images: Courtesy Balmori Associates Balmori Associates' in-house studio Balmorilab teamed with Haeahn Architecture and H Associates to design the Public Administration Town district of Multi-Functional Administrative City in South Korea. Roughly 9.7 million square feet
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is set to release revisions to its A201 contract documents today. These forms, the most widely used in the construction industry, define the legal relationship between building owners, architects, and contractors; the AIA first prepared them in 1887 and issues updates once a decade. The AIA is also releasing a new owner-architect agreement. Chief among revisions to the A201 documents is the removal of mandatory arbitration, which has been specified since the AIA’s first owner-contractor agreement in 1888. Arbitration must now be selected, with mediation as the first option and litigation as the default
After some highly publicized fits and starts, developer Robert Congel’s Pyramid Companies quietly started construction in late July on a 1.3-million-square-foot expansion of the Carousel Center mall in Syracuse, New York. It is intended to be the cornerstone of Destiny USA: a 75-million-square-foot retail, hotel, and entertainment complex touted as the world’s most sustainable project. Hear more about Pyramid's vision for Destiny USA and see additional images in an audio-slideshow. (5:00). Image: Courtesy Pyramid Companies Despite delays, Pyramid Companies has high hopes for Destiny USA. Related Links: One of Largest Projects in U.S. History in Jeopardy Congel is moving forward
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Santiago Calatrava is suing the city of Bilbao, Spain, for the “cheek, arrogance, and ignorance” of allowing Arata Isozaki to add onto a 10-year-old footbridge that the Spanish starchitect designed near the Guggenheim Museum, the U.K.’s Independent reported on October 26. The suit, which landed in court last week and is expected to be decided “soon,” alleges that Isozaki’s addition “breaks the symmetry
Joe and Lucianne Carmichael were thinking green even before Hurricane Katrina. As the owners of A Studio in the Woods (ASITW), an artists center southeast of New Orleans, they have lived in the bottomland hardwood forests for 30 years using minimal energy resources. They rarely use air conditioning, even during humid Gulf Coast summers, and they always line-dry their clothes. The Carmichaels’ goal is to provide a retreat where artists can hone their craft—and give a lesson in living with nature. “The highest guiding principal of A Studio in the Woods is the opportunity to learn,” Lucianne says. Image: Courtesy
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