Two years ago, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, writing in Architectural Record, lamented the “shrinking fraternity” of fellow newspaper critics focusing on the built environment. “At American dailies,” he wrote, “there are fewer than a dozen writers covering architecture with any regularity, and perhaps just four or five full-time critics.” The Dallas Morning News, however, is bucking the trend. In April, Mark Lamster, an editor at Architectural Review and contributing editor for Design Observer, will become the newspaper’s architecture critic. Lamster’s position is a partnership with the University of Texas at Arlington; he’ll teach a graduate seminar at

Construction of the Washington, D.C. memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower, a process more than 10 years in the making, is at a major crossroads. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission’s (EMC) congressional authorization has expired, and Rep. Sam Bishop (R-UT), has introduced a bill to reauthorize it. But Bishop, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, is seeking major changes. The bill would withhold $100 million in funding and toss out Frank Gehry’s design for the memorial, starting over the whole process of design selection. On Tuesday morning, the subcommittee held a hearing to discuss

Located inside the 1920s neoclassical Pedder Building, the renovation stripped the interior back to its structure but left some layers of construction from previous renovations visible on a central column and ceiling beam. The spare design by partner David Gianotten and project architect Miranda Lee relies on simple but tough materials, including wood panels for the reception area, bookshelves, and a sliding partition that separates the gallery's two exhibition areas.

Photo © Sharon Farmer/NMAAHC President Obama addressed the crowd at the February 2012 groundbreaking ceremony for the David Adjaye-designed Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. When president Barack Obama held a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron last year, the luminaries at the head table included Warren Buffett, George Clooney, and David Adjaye. Not long after, the British press began referring to Adjaye as the president’s favorite architect. At the time, there was no talk of an Obama presidential library—the election was still months away, and the president had reportedly told friends

The uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act and the future of Medicare and Medicaid has been weighing down health-care construction. Financing constraints have also had a dampening effect. Source: McGraw-Hill Dodge Analytics Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].

Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi created an innovative floating school to address the impacts of climate change and the need for safer, more livable buildings in Lagos. This story first appeared in GreenSource. There are no roads or much infrastructure of any kind in the floating world of Makoko, a shantytown flowing out from Lagos, Nigeria’s waterfront. Teetering atop small piers, the maze of tenuous wooden structures is frequently inundated by floods. Like many coastal cities, Lagos’ burgeoning population is faced with the increasing threat of more frequent flooding from rising sea levels. The architecture firm NLÉ, with offices in Lagos

Highlights from architecture photographer Iwan Baan's oeuvre are currently on display at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition, titled The Way We Live, features over a dozen projects, including Baan’s blockbuster photograph of a dark lower Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy that appeared on the cover of New York magazine. Click through the slide show for a sampling of Baan’s projects, which range from Toyo Ito's Mikimoto Ginza 2 building in Tokyo to Torre David, a skyscraper-turned-settlement in Caracas, Venezuela. The exhibition runs through April 13. Iwan Baan, Dubai #1, 2010, Digital C-Print, 48 x 72 inches

Filmmaker Su Friedrich discusses Gut Renovation, a personal and impassioned documentary about the transformation of a Brooklyn neighborhood. Still from Su Friedrich's documenatary Gut Renovation. This week, When SHoP Architects unveiled plans to overhaul the Domino sugar factory in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, it marked the most recent chapter in the area’s transformation from low-rise industrial zone to inexpensive artists’ enclave to in-demand residential district. In her impassioned new documentary, Gut Renovation, director and Su Friedrich chronicles that change over the course of several years. The film is at once a documentary about 21st century urbanism and an extremely intimate look

RECORD speaks with the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art about an exhibition devoted to the 19th-century French architect Henri Labrouste (1801-1875). Bibliothèque Sainte‐Geneviève, Paris, 1838‐1850. View of the reading room. Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), opens a major exhibition devoted to the 19th-century French architect Henri Labrouste (1801-1875) on March 10. The show, Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light, on view until June 24, 2013, looks at the major accomplishments of this progenitor of modern architecture,