For 15 years, Architectural Record has made it easy to earn Continuing Education credits. In our print issues and online, we offer our community of readers editorial articles for credit as well as sponsor-supported courses. We know lots of you have to fulfill your requirements by the end of 2012, but if you take one of our courses before the end of October, you’ll be part of our celebration of the one-millionth Architectural Record CEU test taker—and have a chance to win prizes in a sweepstakes. Click here to access the CEU section of the Record site. From our October

October 2012 Reinventing the urban realm for the 21st century. Detroit was the first real city I knew. I grew up less than an hour's drive away, and am old enough to remember when downtown Detroit had beautiful stores and restaurants, and where my parents might take me to shop for school clothes, followed by a fancy lunch. Later in the 1960s, I remember the news of cities burning and the term "white flight" -the race-based exodus that sealed the steady decline of industrial urban America. Photo © Michel Arnaud But for some years now, the country has been turning

The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the city's enduring assets and a legacy of its history as an industrial powerhouse.

Designing great interiors calls on architecture's best. Architectural Record's annual Interiors issue is a favorite among readers both inside the profession and out. Who doesn't enjoy ogling photographs of a room's rich finishes and furnishings, such as those on display in the pages ahead? Yet frankly, even we acknowledge it's a little weird to consider interiors apart from “architecture.” Clients often divide duties between architect and interior designer, but the essential values should be no different: the artful creation of space and deployment of light; the careful designation of materials and details. Eero Saarinen, who designed chairs, master plans, and

Western architects are beginning to design all over the swiftly urbanizing continent. We all know that American architects are finding work in China, Korea, and Qatar—but Angola, Botswana, and Burundi? Africa is booming: The continent is home to seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. It is also urbanizing at astonishing speed, with rapidly rising education rates and a burgeoning middle class. Yes, in parts of Africa there are tragic clashes of violence, desperate refugees, and entrenched poverty—and growing development may only widen the socioeconomic chasms. But news reports rarely paint the

Buildling Types Study - Specific Type Here: Project 1 project 2 project 3 project 4 Finding the delicate balance between tradition and innovation. A friend who recently returned from China remarked that the country reflects the past, present, and future, all at the same time. In smog-choked Beijing, where the 15th-century Temple of Heaven is still a beloved and much-visited oasis, the eye-popping, epic-scale works of contemporary architecture—the CCTV headquarters by OMA, the Bird’s Nest by Herzog & de Meuron—announce that the future is already here. Photo © Michel Arnaud But the latest Pritzker laureate, Chinese architect Wang Shu, has

How the 2012 Olympics became the “alibi” for reclaiming a derelict swath of the city. After the gold medals are carried home and the frenzy of each Summer Olympics dies down, what becomes of the much-televised architecture and urban designs created for the Games? Beijing’s Bird’s Nest from 2008—that spectacular blend of artistry and engineering by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei—is mostly visited by tourists these days, who grab a shot of themselves in front of it, but its vast interior is only intermittently filled with shopping stalls or the occasional athletic event or concert. In Sydney, the

A sense of tradition endures in “The City,” London's historic financial district, despite years of economic turmoil.

RECORD sits down with the new architecture critic of the New York Times to discuss his plans for covering the designs of buildings, New York, and the wider world. Michael Kimmelman Photo: © Marco Tambara Last fall, Michael Kimmelman, the longtime chief art critic of the New York Times, became the architecture critic at the paper and immediately set a new agenda. Rather than write about the latest starchitect building, he began with a piece on a mixed-income housing project in the Bronx by Grimshaw Architects and Dattner Architects called Via Verde, and followed up with articles that focused largely