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For design students in New York, Christmas comes in April. That’s when SpecSimple.com, a New York–based company that operates an online directory of design products and services, distributes free swatches, material samples, brochures, finish cards, and other goodies to local schools. Now in its tenth year, the Save a Sample! Box-A-Thon is gearing up for what it hopes will be a record amount of donations and deliveries. Trucks and drivers provided by local furniture dealers will fan across the metropolitan area from April 7 to 9 to collect the spoils from architecture and design firms and to deliver them to

Earl R. Flansburgh Photo courtesy Flansburgh family On February 3, Earl Flansburgh, FAIA, died from complications resulting from a protracted battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 77. Flansburgh received his bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1953 and his master’s degree from M.I.T. in 1957. He went on to practice architecture in the Boston area for more than 45 years. His firm Earl R. Flansburgh + Associates (ERF+A), founded in 1963 and since renamed Flansbugh Architects, completed some 250 projects for educational institutions. These include the Cornell University Campus Store (1971), the William Kent Elementary School (featured in the May 1971

Weeks after the federal government enacted the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, two students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Wayne Congar and Troy Therrien, have convened an open ideas competition, dubbed Imagining Recovery, devised to integrate design into the conversation of how and where stimulus dollars should be spent. Calling the competition an attempt to "make sense of these numbers that are being thrown around," Congar hopes that the submissions will help interpret the 1500-plus page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and create visions for the future. In a larger sense, the organizers hope

Frank Lloyd Wright Photo courtesy Wikipedia Though Frank Lloyd Wright passed away decades ago—April 9 will mark the 50th anniversary of the death—two separate projects completed in recent years in New York owe their designs to the legendary architect. Massaro House Toward the end of his life, after enduring a few boom-bust cycles, Wright reached a remarkably productive stage of his career, often noting that he couldn’t shake buildings out of his sleeve fast enough. In 1952, the 85-year-old Wright designed a house and 300-square-foot guesthouse for Petre Island, located in Lake Mahopac, approximately 50 miles north of Manhattan. The

J. Max Bond Jr. J. Max Bond, Jr., FAIA., one of the nation’s most influential African-American architects, succumbed to cancer on February 18. He was 73. The partner at New York–based Davis Brody Bond Aedas was widely regarded as a mentor, a voice of social responsibility in practice, and a magnetic presence. “In a sense we all got robbed, including Max, because he was young,” says firm partner Steven M. Davis, FAIA. “There was a lot left to do and a lot we wanted to do together—that we would have done together.” At the time of his death, Bond was

When unveiled a few months ago, the federal economic stimulus bill tantalizingly hinted at heaps of jobs for architects building schools and retrofitting federal buildings to make them more energy efficient. The $787 billion version that ultimately became law in mid-February, though, had fewer opportunities for design professionals, at least explicitly, as lawmakers had pared it along the way to garner support. Specifically, school construction-aid was removed from the final bill. Photo ' Danielle Austen/Architectural Record Ideas for how the federal government can help create work for architects have been discussed during recent forums at the Center for Architecture in

Green building activity could take a hit in this troubled economy, but there's still a bull market in green standards, ratings and certification programs. And now, Underwriters Laboratories, the 115-year-old product safety and certification organization, is joining a long list of industry players, offering services for verifying building product claims and certifying compliance with existing standards. UL Environment, the new division focused on green building products, is entering a crowded market promising to help cut through the thicket of sustainability claims with an Environmental Claims Validation (ECV) service. "There's fragmentation in the marketplace, a lack of credibility. It's often a

Over the last decade, the green building industry has risen on the tide of a culture-wide trend toward sustainability, and many in the architecture profession believe it will continue to prosper even as the U.S. falls deeper into a recession. “I think there’s a very compelling argument that the economic environment we’re going into right now will only enhance the value of doing green,” says Guy Geier, FAIA, senior partner of FXFOWLE. Image courtesy Perkins + Will Perkins + Will, a signatory of the 2030 Challenge, designed the 69,000-square-foot New Science Facility at Lehman College in the Bronx. The firm