Prizes for RECORD, as we raise the curtain on our annual honors for best residential design. Here at Architectural Record, we work not only to bring you the best contemporary projects but also to report on the most critical issues confronting the profession today. That's why we're particularly proud of the recognition we've received from American Business Media's annual Jesse H. Neal awards—the Oscars for magazines like ours. RECORD won three of the big prizes: two for our special issue “Building for Social Change” (March 2012) and one for best single issue for “New Life for the American City” (October

How good design is expanding the options for social housing. In October 2008, Architectural Record published a groundbreaking issue, Design With Conscience. A year ago, in March 2012, we cast a light again on architects engaged in humanitarian projects around the world, in a much-praised issue, Building for Social Change. By looking at a library and community center on the fringes of Medellín, Colombia, a school in Rwanda, and a neighborhood performing-arts space in Richmond, California, we explored a variety of ways that good design can have a major impact on people and places with few resources—what's been called architecture

The roof of the cathedral will be comprised of 96 cardboard tubes when the building is completed in May. The day before the second anniversary of the cataclysmic and fatal earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, architect Shigeru Ban stood in the half-finished nave of the “cardboard cathedral” he designed for the devastated city, his largest temporary structure yet. Thirty-seven of the cardboard tubes that form the soaring A-shaped church roof were already installed, and will be covered in translucent corrugated polycarbonate panels. The project is meant to evoke the feeling of being in the 19th century Christchurch Cathedral, which toppled

The critic whose passion and insight changed the way we look at the built world. Last month, the world of architecture lost the best critic of our time. Ada Louise Huxtable set the standard for architectural journalism, not only because of her many firsts–first architecture critic for the New York Times, hired in 1963; first cultural critic to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1970–but because of the powerful influence of her voice, both on the public and on writers who followed her. The digging and research that informed her opinions is legendary: her articles were built on deep layers of

The storm and its aftermath. As journalists, we at Architectural Record are by nature outside observers–writers and editors who consider the content of the magazine as objectively as possible. But a month ago, all of us who work here in New York City were caught up in the enormous and disturbing story of Hurricane Sandy. Awaiting the storm on a Monday, with offices and schools shut, and the transit system–the lifeblood of the city–closed, we each hunkered down at home, staying connected through the Internet, posting on our website, and working on the issue of the magazine you're now reading.

Using high technology and low, architects are pushing new ideas in design and construction. Every year at this time, a new crop of students is busy assembling applications and portfolios for architecture school. In this issue of record, we're publishing our annual rankings of the best graduate and undergraduate programs in the United States, from research conducted and analyzed by the DesignIntelligence group. Despite the costs of higher education-and the hammering the profession has taken in this economy-becoming an architect is still a powerful aspiration. In 2011, enrollment in architecture schools was down only 1.1 percent from the previous academic

The crane atop One57, the rising $1.5 billion residential tower designed by Christian de Portzamparc opposite Carnegie Hall, has fallen over in the winds of Hurricane Sandy, leaving it dangling dangerously 1,000 feet over West 57th Street in the heart of Manhattan. Firetrucks and police cars have swarmed the area and closed off several blocks to all pedestrians and traffic as the winds increase. Terry McGettigan, a tower crane expert in Seattle with 36 years of operating, maintenance and inspection experience, told Record's sister publication, ENR, in a phone interview that the crane, believed to be a Favelle Favco Model