Steven Holl Architects will design the master plan for the 14-acre Fayez S. Sarofim Campus.

Design-oriented nonprofits and foundations choose their best contributions to the built environment last year. The Design Trust for Public Space erected the Boogie Down Booth as part of its Under the Elevated project. The temporary installation transformed an underused space beneath subway tracks in the South Bronx into a seated bus stop with solar-powered lighting and directional speakers playing local artists’ music. The end of one year and the start of a new one belong to the makers of lists—of most fascinating people, brightest ideas, and biggest red-carpet disasters. At RECORD, we decided to combine clickbait and goodwill, asking a

Photo © James S. Russell The Philharmonie de Paris under construction in October 2014.  The day of the gala opening of his design for the Philharmonie de Paris, January 14, Jean Nouvel announced he would not attend. The building is not ready for orchestras, he said in a statement released by his office. “There were no acoustic tests in the concert hall. The schedule did not allow the architectural and technical requirements to be respected.” The 2,400-seat concert hall rises like a shiny iceberg of mottled metal and rippling polished stainless steel in the Parc de la Villette at

A conversation in Singapore explores architects' roles. Photo © Aaron Pocock The National Design Centre in Singapore, designed by SCDA.  Design got personal at an event organized by Asia Design Forum (ADF) at Singapore’s National Design Centre in November. A diverse group of speakers looked at how architecture and design can affect people—changing the way residents engage with their environment or altering the emotional condition of the designer herself. Participants, who ranged from a former government official to an art gallery owner, focused on different scales, looking at that of the community or a single brick. But all of

The exhibition center as it looks today. Last spring, the sound of hammers started up, reverberating along the wide pedestrian avenues of the All-Russia Exhibition Center in Moscow (known to Muscovites as VDNKh). After decades of neglect, the city of Moscow has begun the process of renovating the most iconic pavilions of its 13,000-acre, Stalin-era exhibition center. The cheap cafes and makeshift booths selling seeds or electronics that had occupied the ornate spaces built to showcase Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and others have been dismantled. A couple of slick new food courts and the city’s chicest McDonald’s have gone in.But, say

China's president wants to put a stop to strange buildings. Does MAD Architects' Sheraton Huzhou Hot Springs Resort, completed in 2012, fit Chinese President Xi Jinping's definition of weird architecture? Kooky buildings or innovative architecture? Playground for extreme forms or testing ground for new ideas? The remarkable results of China’s recent construction boom have been viewed in various—often contradictory—ways. Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his own judgment on the matter at an arts symposium in Beijing in October, when he called for the end of “weird architecture.” While his definition of weird, alternatively translated as “strange” and “bizarre,” has not

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