Studies show that health drives the school construction market, but many buildings lag far behind. This story first appeared in GreenSource. The connection between sustainable school buildings and student performance can be difficult to quantify—but the idea that children learn more readily when they can see, hear, and breathe clearly isn’t exactly controversial. This year, a full 89 percent of K–12 school respondents in a recent market survey conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction (Record's and Greensource's parent company) listed enhanced health and well-being among the most important reasons to build, retrofit, and operate greener schools. That number is up from 61
The exhibition "Informal Studio: Marlboro South" at Johannesburg's Goethe-Institut (through May 9) includes four five-minute films. In the heady days after the end of apartheid, the South African government promised to build millions of new houses. These houses would make “informal settlements”—communities of squatters living in deplorable conditions they are unable to change given their lack of legal ownership— a memory. But the national government has delivered two million fewer houses than promised; meanwhile the population of Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg, has increased 30 percent in the last 10 years. Informal settlements have not been eliminated—they’ve grown. Thorsten
Acclaimed Japanese architectural photographer and founder of Global Architecture (GA) magazine Yukio Futagawa died of cancer on March 5, 2013, at the age of 80.
Two years ago, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, writing in Architectural Record, lamented the “shrinking fraternity” of fellow newspaper critics focusing on the built environment. “At American dailies,” he wrote, “there are fewer than a dozen writers covering architecture with any regularity, and perhaps just four or five full-time critics.” The Dallas Morning News, however, is bucking the trend. In April, Mark Lamster, an editor at Architectural Review and contributing editor for Design Observer, will become the newspaper’s architecture critic. Lamster’s position is a partnership with the University of Texas at Arlington; he’ll teach a graduate seminar at
Construction of the Washington, D.C. memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower, a process more than 10 years in the making, is at a major crossroads. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission’s (EMC) congressional authorization has expired, and Rep. Sam Bishop (R-UT), has introduced a bill to reauthorize it. But Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, is seeking major changes. The bill would withhold $100 million in funding and toss out Frank Gehry’s design for the memorial, starting over the whole process of design selection. On Tuesday morning, the subcommittee held a hearing to discuss
Located inside the 1920s neoclassical Pedder Building, the renovation stripped the interior back to its structure but left some layers of construction from previous renovations visible on a central column and ceiling beam. The spare design by partner David Gianotten and project architect Miranda Lee relies on simple but tough materials, including wood panels for the reception area, bookshelves, and a sliding partition that separates the gallery's two exhibition areas.
The uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act and the future of Medicare and Medicaid has been weighing down health-care construction. Financing constraints have also had a dampening effect. Source: McGraw-Hill Dodge Analytics Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].
Toyo Ito has been awarded the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize, announced Thomas J. Pritzker, Chairman of the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the award.