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In July, Autodesk acquired the experimental New York design firm The Living, led by architect David Benjamin, in order to enhance its research capabilities. This union is just one effort by the software leader to engage in wide-reaching discussions about the future of design. Last year it opened Autodesk Workshop at San Francisco’s Pier 9, a 27,000-square-foot playground for employees and partners to explore advanced manufacturing resources. And, more recently, a summer-residency program charged participants with writing science fiction. “We have an extraordinary talent base that can make stuff,” says Jeff Kowalski (left), “but we also need those folks who

Photo courtesy Alan Kranairz Part of the festival, the DETROIT MADE exhibition includes 10 Detroit designers, including Alan Kaniarz of Mobël Link Modern Furniture. His ZigZag chair, above, is his take on Gerrit Rietveld's 1934 model. When one thinks of Detroit, many things come to mind. Design is not usually on the top of the list. But the city is a growing design hub, home to both leading design-driven industries and a vast network of skilled workers with the know-how to make things. And its low cost of living has attracted a growing number of creatives who want to do

McGraw Hill Financial announced yesterday that it has agreed to sell McGraw Hill Construction, the parent company of Architectural Record, to Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm based in Palo Alto, California. Under the new ownership, Architectural Record looks forward to continuing to serve as the premiere publication of the architectural profession, as it has for more than 120 years. Read the full announcement below. McGraw Hill Financial yesterday announced it has agreed to sell McGraw Hill Construction to Symphony Technology Group, a strategic private equity firm based in Palo Alto, California, for $320 million in cash. The transaction,

Fumihiko Maki’s Aga Khan Museum is a simple rectangular volume.

Image © HOK Among the nine rejected locations was one in Bronzeville, a historically black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, where HOK had developed a proposal (above). When the Barack Obama Foundation announced its choice of four possible homes for the Obama Presidential Library, eliminating nine other contenders, it didn’t say a word about who might design the building. But there may be reason for several well-known​ architects to celebrate. They include Renzo Piano, the master planner for Columbia University’s Manhattanville Campus, and Thom Mayne, a consultant to the University of Illinois at Chicago. Those schools, along with

The Art Institute looks to Chicago’s ambitious architectural and urban past to find new inspiration for the present. Installation view of Chicagoisms. If the story of 19th century America was industrialization and the birth of the modern metropolis, then the story of Chicago’s explosive growth resounds in almost every American city. In the 1830s Chicago was a meagre outpost of some 300 residents, yet by the 1870s it boomed with a population of 300,000. This city on the prairie exemplified the urban density, manufacturing power, and rail infrastructure that reworked the U.S. into an industrial power. The Chicagoisms exhibition at

Although retail construction has experienced moderate growth over the past two years, the sector's health varies by region. In 2013, for example, the South was the only area of the country to see a gain in the value of construction starts. Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].

Perkins Eastman restored Albert Ledner’s 1964 National Maritime Union headquarters in Manhattan’s West Village, and inserted a stand-alone emergency department inside. When New York’s St. Vincent’s Hospital closed in 2010 after years of financial strife, Greenwich Village lost a beloved 150-year-old institution that had served the poor and working class and was “ground zero” when the AIDS epidemic erupted in the 1980s. While most of the St. Vincent’s campus was demolished, a quirky precast-concrete building on Seventh Avenue between West 12th and 13th streets, designed by Albert Ledner and completed in 1964, remained. St. Vincent’s purchased it in 1973, but

Balmori Associates' and Cooper, Robertson & Partners' proposal. Last week, the 11th Street Bridge Park unveiled four finalist design concepts for a proposed linear park to be built on the piers of an old highway bridge spanning the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. The finalist teams in the design competition, which attracted more than 40 entrants, are: Balmori Associates / Cooper, Robertson & Partners; OLIN / OMA; Stoss Landscape Urbanism / Höweler + Yoon Architecture; and Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) / NEXT Architects / Magnusson Klemencic Associates.Competition organizers urged the designers to create an active, multi-use public space, and