Photo © Aaron Sosa Ricardo Porro in Havana, Cuba, 2007. Cuban architect Ricardo Porro died December 25 of heart failure in Paris. He was the leading creator of the most outstanding and controversial architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution, the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte. He was 89. Related links Letter from Havana Ricardo Porro Hidalgo was born in 1925 in Camagüey, Cuba. As a young man he moved to the capitol where he studied architecture at the Universidad de la Habana. There he became acquainted with Fidel Castro whose best friend from law school was the brother of Porro’s fiancée Elena

The Immersion Room on the museum’s second floor features more than 200 examples of the Cooper Hewitt’s collection of wallcoverings, and allows visitors to select their favorites or draw their own designs, and then project them onto the gallery walls. There are “super-high-definition smart tables”—glass touchscreens mounted on aluminum pedestals—throughout the newly renovated Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in Manhattan. By running their fingers across the tables, visitors make shapes that are then displayed as hats, lamps, tables, vases, chairs, or buildings. During the museum’s opening week earlier this month, the system attracted the attention of everyone from a 4-year-old

Thierry Jeannot's Green Transmutation Chandelier (2010) made from reclaimed materials, green dye, aluminum, and light bulbs. Don’t envy Lowery Stokes Sims, the curator of the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan, her many recent trips to Latin America. As the force behind New Territories, the museum’s survey of recent design in 14 countries (through April 6), Sims maintained a punishing schedule of studio visits; her itineraries and notes are viewable on iPads in the museum’s ingenious “Curator Lab.” Sims discovered many more worthwhile items, most of them by young designers, than the museum had room for. Her other challenge

The Van Alen's new storefront space in Manhattan's Flatiron district joins a large event space to a series of alcoves that can be hidden behind accordion doors during public programs. The Van Alen Institute in Manhattan, an advocate of “smart public design” for more than 100 years, is taking to the street. Last year David van der Leer, the institute’s new director, arranged to swap its longtime quarters on the sixth floor of a Flatiron district building for a storefront space in the same building, where, van der Leer says, “our ability to connect with audiences is much greater.” But

Museum expansion and new construction projects are as few and far between as they are glamorous. But, while such projects are far from plentiful, they tend to have generous capital budgets. Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].

An exhibition at the Yale School of Architecture explores the early uses of digital tools in architecture. Greg Lynn No single tool has become more critical to architectural practice than the computer. In fewer than 30 years, CAD software and related products have become an entire industry by catering to the needs of designers. But the early years of architects’ use of digital tools are little known. Greg Lynn, founder of Greg Lynn FORM and a professor at UCLA, has curated exhibitions that explore this early architectural experimentation. The exhibition, the second of three on this theme, Archaeology of the

Gene Kaufman's plan to turn Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center into artist studios is the best thing to happen to the building since county officials began threatening to tear it down in 2004. Image courtesy Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects Gene Kaufman's proposal for Rudolph's Orange County Government Center includes live/work studios (green), work studios (pink), and gallery spaces (purple). With almost 50 cheesy hotel buildings to his name (sometimes two or more to a block), Gene Kaufman has done immeasurable damage to Manhattan. But Kaufman has a chance to redeem himself. His plan to save the Orange

“It’s not ripping my flesh off,” says Denise Scott Brown of the loss. Photo Venturi Scott Brown and Associates Denise Scott Brown in Las Vegas in 1968. There’s a long shadow hanging over the AIA Gold Medal for 2015. Yesterday, the institute announced that Moshe Safdie is next year’s winner—a surprise for those who were expecting Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to get the prize. This was the first year Venturi and Scott Brown were jointly eligible because of a change in the rules to allow two architects to win the award together. That change was made in the

 The 79-minute documentary Design is One: Lella & Massimo Vignelli, released on DVD last week, is a biography, of a kind, of the designer and his wife, originally hit the festival circuit in 2012. It neatly tracks Massimo and his wife Lella’s careers as the preeminent design team of the postwar era at something of a breakneck pace. A series of images of the Vignellis’ work flashes by at the start of the film as if we were quickly flipping through a retrospective (or high-end product) catalogue, and things don’t get much slower from there. Directors Kathy Brew and