Up to 600 U.K.-based staffers of engineering consultant Arup Group Ltd., London, face possible layoff as construction shows signs of slowing down. The design firm, with a nearly 10,000 -person global workforce, began 90 days of “consultation” with employees over the planned job cuts. Current market weakness and public sector spending cuts in the U.K. are prompting Arup’s retrenchment, says a spokeswoman. “Projects in the public sector [are being] cut or put on hold,” she adds. Arup cut 330 jobs last year. The planned job losses come as this month’s survey of construction-sector purchasing managers reveals a continuing drop in
Nine years after the September 11 attacks, the long-delayed redevelopment of Ground Zero finally has gained momentum. Redevelopment of Lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center site has been beset with problems: design changes, funding problems, and political squabbling. And, there wasn’t even much to see at the site for nearly a decade, save for the tops of cranes and a few rumbling trucks, as a tall fence wrapped the perimeter. But nine years after the September 11 attacks, there finally are tangible signs of progress. A memorial and a tree-filled plaza will be completed next year, in time for the 10th
Autodesk announced on August 31 that it has released AutoCAD 2011 for Macintosh, along with AutoCAD WS, a mobile app that will allow users to share their AutoCAD designs in the field using iPhones, iPads, and iTouches. Image courtesy Autodesk “What this does,” says Autodesk spokesman Noah Cole, “is give anyone with an iOS device or a modern Web browser the ability to view, edit, and collaborate on an AutoCAD DWG file. We imagine that people on the construction site can carry around an iPad as opposed to carrying around a roll of blueprints.” AutoCAD WS joins two other Autodesk
Photo courtesy rmjm.com David Pringle One of the world's largest architectural firms, the Scotland-based RMJM, is losing three key executives, in addition to losing two others within the past 10 months. Most significantly, David Pringle, the company’s CEO, Asia and Middle East, will leave at the end of this year. Gordon Affleck, design director for the firm’s Middle East office, and Colin Moses, international principal based in Europe, will also leave at that time. Hugh Mullan, managing director in the Middle East, left in May. It is unknown what they plan to do next. Moreover, Adrian Boot, another international principal
Photo courtesy Anshen + Allen Roger Swanson, CEO of Anshen + Allen Stantec, Canada’s largest architectural firm, announced on Aug. 26 that it has signed a letter of intent to purchase Anshen + Allen, a firm of roughly 200 employees with offices in San Francisco, Columbus, Boston, and London. Weeks earlier, Stantec announced it plans to acquire California-based ECO:LOGIC Engineering. If both sales go through, they will be Stantec’s seventh and eighth acquisitions in 2010, adding to the 70-plus companies it has purchased since 1997. The recent bids verify that Stantec is homing in on its goal, announced in 1998,
This October, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute’s Museum of Art in Utica, New York, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Philip Johnson-designed home with an exhibition commemorating the work of the illustrious Modernist and Postmodernist architect.
Virginia Tech architecture student Christopher Morgan has won an international competition to design the Yéle Music Studio in the Cité Soleil area of Port-au-Prince. Launched last December, prior to the deadly January 12 earthquake, the competition invited students from around the globe to create a music facility that empowered a Haitian community. The Royal Institute of British Architects, along with architecture firm John McAslan + Partners and developer Allied London, sponsored the competition on behalf of Yéle Haiti, a nonprofit organization founded in 2005 by Haiti-born musician Wyclef Jean. The winner was announced in May. Click on the slide show
The Trenton Bath House, just restored by Farewell Mills Gatsch, respects Louis Kahn’s original design, even if his full vision remains unrealized. To many architects, Louis Kahn’s 1955 Trenton Bath House in Ewing, New Jersey, just restored by Farewell Mills Gatsch Architects (FMG), exudes everything that worked in 20th-century architecture. This concise design for the Jewish Community Center in a Trenton suburb engages in a thoughtful dialogue with history using modest materials. But the Bath House also is a disappointment. It began crumbling soon after completion, and Kahn’s larger civic vision for the site proved too idealized for the clients
A little-known building in Aspen, Colorado, designed by the late Chicago architect Harry Weese—whose most celebrated work is the Washington, D.C., Metro system—is threatened with demolition. Built in 1972, Weese’s Given Institute is a small concrete-block conference center owned by the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The 12,000-square-foot structure sits on a 2.25-acre lot in Aspen’s pricey West End residential neighborhood. For years, the medical school has used the institute for summer conferences and retreats, but faced with ongoing budget cuts, it now plans to close the Given and sell the property. School officials are negotiating with a potential
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