Image courtesy Drexel University Plans call for restoring the stone-clad house and constructing a 4,600-square-foot addition. The building will double as an educational space and dorm. Image courtesy Drexel University The dwelling, built in 1872, has sat vacant since the late 1990s.  Situated on a tree-lined street on the Drexel University campus in West Philadelphia, a stone-clad dwelling circa 1872 served as the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity house for three-plus decades. In the late 1990s, however, the university shuttered the residence following an arson incident. It has sat vacant ever since. Now, a student-run organization backed by faculty members is

The architect discusses winning this year's Driehaus Prize, which honors classical architecture and traditional urbanism, and how he plans to spend the $200k award. 2012 Driehaus Prize winner Michael Graves Photo courtesy University of Notre Dame School of Architecture Michael Graves is better known for appropriating traditional forms in his monumental Postmodern compositions than for being a strict classicist, so it may seem surprising that in December he was named the winner of the 2012 Driehaus Prize, which celebrates architects who advance classicism in their work. Graves, the founding principal of the New York- and New Jersey-based firm Michael Graves

A sprawling show in London tries to capture the manic pace and self-conscious ways of Rem’s firm. Photography © Lyndon Douglas Organized by the Belgian design collective Rotor, the exhibition includes stools made from the same blue foam that OMA uses for its study-models. In the late summer of 2010, the Belgian Pavilion was the talk of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Curated by Rotor, a young Brussels-based design collective, the pavilion was a beautifully sincere, irony-free study of the ways that architecture ages and is worn down by daily use. In the midst of the Biennale, which is often obsessed

While architects report some progress, rebuilding challenges persist. Architecture for Humanity recently completed construction of Ecole la Dignité, a school in Jacmel. Read more about the project in an upcoming issue of Architectural Record. Dozens of housing prototypes are now on display at an expo outside of Port-au-Prince. Click on the slide show button to see images. Read more about the expo: Haiti: A Housing Expo Gone Bad Related Links:Haiti Dispatch: Ongoing Report on the Rebuilding Effort A Housing Expo Gone BadHaiti: Few Major Haiti Reconstruction Projects Have BegunIn Haiti, Emerging Signs of Progress Haiti Experiences Progress, Exasperation Two Years

Cornell University topped the competition to build a new tech campus with an SOM design that aims to generate more energy than it uses. Click on the slide show button to view additional images. When New York City named Cornell University and The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology winners of its highly touted competition for a new “tech campus,” there were cheers in Ithaca and Haifa. Also celebrating were architects in the New York office of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, whose design for the campus, on the south end of Roosevelt Island, were part of Cornell and Technion’s proposal. Among the

The firm's chiseled office building will mark the eastern gate to the city. Click on the slide show button to view additional images. A 606-ft-high chiseled obelisk designed by FXFOWLE, New York City, will delineate the eastern entrance to Istanbul when construction finishes in July 2014. Renaissance Tower, as the office building will be known, is being developed by Ankara-based Renaissance Construction Co., which plans to lease most of the 914,900-sq-ft high-rise. Located on the Asian side of Istanbul, the 44-story tower will be a highly visible landmark in this city of roughly 12 million people. Situated in the developing

U.S. firm Moore Ruble Yudell is master planning a huge development for China's largest agriculture company. Click on the slide show button to view additional images. China's largest agriculture company has hired California-based Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners (MRY) to master plan a 1,215-hectare agricultural and residential development 30 miles southwest of Beijing. The project, called the Agricultural Eco Valley, will be carbon-neutral. With all of the recent tainted food scares in China, the client, COFCO, has a high stake in ensuring its brand is equated with food safety, says James Mary O'Connor, a MRY principal. "[COFCO sees] themselves

Click on the slide show button to view additional images. A state-of-the-art headquarters for China CITIC Bank designed by Foster + Partners is starting to rise along the banks of the Qian Tang Jiang river in Hangzhou. The building, designed in collaboration with East China Architectural Design Institute, will serve as a high-tech landmark in a new business district that is taking this ancient city into the 21st century. Construction workers broke ground for the project in March, 2011 and are now sinking pilings for the foundations of the 63,000 square-meter, 20-story steel structure. The design of the 100-meter-high building

Shanghai, China Years in the making, the prominent project, designed by the Shanghai office of Sparch, will wrap up construction next year. Photo © Christian Richters. Photo © Lin Ho After eight years in development, the Shanghai International Cruise Terminal will soon be completed. The architecture firm Sparch began work on the multi-use project (and opened its Shanghai office) in 2004, broke ground on the site in 2006, and will be fitting out its final buildings there in early 2012. In designing the project, the firm had to consider two nearby districts: the concession-era buildings of the Bund, and the

Click on the slide show button to view additional images. Area architects may not have had to claw their way in but they recently put their design and engineering skills to the test on an animal-rescue mission to design warm, weatherproof, portable and safe shelters for New York City’s stray cats. The designers volunteered their time and resources to design and build the shelters for the second annual Architects for Animals competition, part of the non-profit Mayor’s Alliance for New York City’s Animals. There are more than 10,000 stray cats in New York City, says Co Adaptive Architecture, a Brooklyn-based