Young architects deploy new tools to advance common values Design Vanguard, our annual look at the best emerging architectural practices, is a window into the future, a glimpse of where the profession is heading. This year, two of our 10 winning firms are from Spain (despite the country's damaging recession) with work that demonstrates a powerful materiality, such as Venecia Park by Héctor Fernández Elorza Architects, featured on our cover. Other international winners come from Mexico, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. We're pleased, as well, to honor four U.S. practices—though young American architects have often had less opportunity to build

The present moment may be full of uncertainties, but this month, RECORD is focusing on the future.

The end of an era in New York—and a new future for cities and technology. Two years ago, RECORD published an award-winning feature devoted to the evolution of New York City in the decade since 9/11. We gave much of the credit for the city's newfound vibrancy to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, under whose administration exemplary urban design and architecture have flourished. The vast enhancement of the public realm—hundreds of acres of new parks, especially on the waterfronts; miles of bike lanes; pedestrian plazas; handsome new civic and cultural buildings—have created a dynamic and alluring urban environment for residents and tourists,

Record looks at how interiors bring the outside in. The exhibition Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (through September 23), explores a provocative theme: that the giant of 20th-century architecture is wrongly categorized as an International Style designer whose “machines for living in,” as he termed them, could be plunked down anywhere. Rather, argue the curators Jean-Louis Cohen and Barry Bergdoll, Le Corbusier was a keen observer of nature and landscapes, which informed almost everything he touched, from the master plan for a city to the design of a single

Designed by Bernardo Bader Architects, the new cemetery serves the local Muslim community in industrialized western Austria, where the younger descendents of immigrants wanted a community burial place, rather than following the tradition of returning the dead to former homelands.

New urban parks of all varieties are transforming neighborhoods around the country. It's August, and if you're a city dweller, it's great to be able to hang out on a summer's day in a nearby park. But just how nearby depends on what city you live in. In June, the Trust for Public Land issued its ParkScore, a rating of park systems in America's 50 biggest cities. Minneapolis came out on top, based on three criteria: the percentage of residents who live within a 10-minute walk of a park (94 percent); the median size of its parks (6.5 acres), and

One is a cool place for urban pioneers, attracting talent and investment to dense parts of the city, and building on a history of innovation. The other Detroit includes those who live in economic privation and geographic isolation. Photo © Flickr user john in the d The 1930 Argonaut building in Detroit, once the General Motors research laboratory and now home to the College for Creative Studies and the headquarters for upscale accessories company Shinola. Late last month, an upscale accessories boutique designed by the Rockwell Group opened on a fashionable Tribeca street in downtown Manhattan. Shinola, as it’s called, sells

With good design as a key ingredient, contemporary culinary culture is having a big impact on neighborhoods, cities, and towns. We all know that American cities are undergoing a renaissance, with growing populations, the renovation of parks and waterfronts, the proliferation of bike lanes and pedestrian promenades. But here's another leading indicator of renewed urban vitality: food, in the form of new restaurants, cafés, and the farmers' markets that have sprouted everywhere in the last few years, even in the most precarious urban centers. Photo © Michael Arnaud Take Detroit. When the über-cool barbecue joint Slows Bar BQ opened in

Photo © Matt Wargo Denise Scott Brown in front of the Provincial Capitol Building in Toulouse, France. Designed by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, it was completed in 1999. On June 18, the national board of directors of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) voted to allow the national AIA Gold Medal to be awarded to two individuals. The amendment was voted on at a meeting at the national AIA convention in Denver. The updated rule goes into effect on January 1, 2014. The New York chapter of the AIA spearheaded the initiative to overturn the rules governing the awarding