If the fate of its mid-century bank buildings is any indication, Phoenix is withdrawing valuable architectural assets from its skyline to make way for growth in the nation’s sixth-largest city. Photo: Courtesy DWL Designed by Weaver & Drover, now called DWL, in the 1960s, this Chase Bank in Phoenix's upscale Arcadia neighborhood, pays homage to Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. Photo: Courtesy City of Phoenix. Frank M. Henry, the lead designer, hand-selected rocks for the bank’s walls. Photo: Courtesy Roger Brevoort. The bank’s 5-acre site also contains a public greenway, but developer Opus West is eyeing the site for a mixed-use
Time’s almost up for submitting comment on Standard 189P—it will be accepted until July 9 at www.ashrae.org/publicreviews. Officially called the “Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings,” it will provide a baseline for sustainable design, construction, and operations—and ultimately could be incorporated into building codes. Addressing both new commercial buildings and major renovations, it encompasses energy and water efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable site selection, and materials. The American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and the U.S. Green Building Council developed it. Standard 189P is expected
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Jorn Utzon’s 1973 masterpiece, the Sydney Opera House, is among the sites that UNESCO the added to its World Heritage List on Thursday. Also added was the Red Fort Complex, a 17th century garrison in New Delhi, whose accreted architecture recalls Indian history from the Mughal period to independence, Bloomberg reported on June 29. Appearing on the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
A delay in the start of construction on Foster & Partners’ Rossiya skyscraper in Moscow this month seems to have barely dented the firm’s far-reaching plans in the rest of Russia. Construction on another major project began moving forward and it has just signed on to design a skyscraper in the Siberian oil boomtown of Khanty Mansiysk. Foster + Partner’s 919-foot-tall Yugra tower will be the tallest thing in the surrounding city of Khanty Mansiysk, located in Russia’s Siberia region. Images Courtesy Foster + Partners The proposed skyscraper will contain a mix of retail, office, residential, and hotel space. STT
More than 350 board members and invited guests from industry organizations convened in Denver last week for the 88th annual meeting of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Representatives from nearly all 54 jurisdictions, except for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, attended the multi-day event. During his keynote address, Chris Luebkeman, director of Global Foresight and Innovation for Arup in London, urged attendees to make decisions that will “survive and thrive” well into the future. Trained as a geologist, structural engineer, and architect, Luebkeman described himself as a generalist “in the spaces between professions.” Using a classic
Rows of Victorian-era workers’ cottages line the streets in Richmond Hill, a residential neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia. While these humble dwellings do not appear intimidating, the surrounding historic district’s covenants make some architects cringe. Jon Clements, of Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, is among them. When given the opportunity to work there in 2001, afforded by his brother’s acquisition of a house, he faced a quandary of expressing originality within preservation’s restrictive prerogatives. Courtesy Jackson Clements Burrows Architects The house in question was a single-story weatherboard cottage in a significant state of decay. Clements’s brother hoped to build a new structure
Photo by John Brooke, courtesy Irene Jenks Charismatic, daring, artistic. We don’t always associate these qualities with structural engineers, but the highly esteemed Bill LeMessurier, who passed away June 14 at the age of 81, embodied all of them. Trained as an architect at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, LeMessurier graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master’s degree in building engineering and construction in 1953—“then all his [Harvard] classmates hired him,” remembers his wife, Dorothy, who married him the same year. Indeed, since LeMessurier started his eponymous practice in 1961, he distinguished himself with a
Margaret Helfand, FAIA, died June 20 at the age of 59. Her death was due to colon cancer. Since she opened her office in 1981, Helfand had created a body of work distinguished for its clean, Modernist vocabulary and skillful use of natural materials, combined with a quiet and subtle inventiveness. Her commitment to the craft of construction, the exploration of materials of varying textures, as well as her attention to details, set Helfand apart from a number of her colleagues. Photo: Courtesy Helfand Architecture Margaret Helfand Except for a brief partnership, Helfand practiced on her own and gradually broke
It’s getting to be legacy time for President George W. Bush and, among other things, that means building a presidential library—which, after months of official denials and equivocations, is headed for Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, the alma mater of first lady Laura Bush. This location was confirmed in an RFQ issued on May 24 by 3D/I, a Houston-based firm hired by the Presidential Library Foundation to oversee the selection process. The document outlines a 145,000-square-foot library and 40,000-square-foot public policy institute on “property that SMU recently acquired.” The project must be compatible with “the distinct architectural character of
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