Architects from the global firm NBBJ have designed what they call a “No Shadow Tower” for a site along the Thames River in London. The hypothetical scheme, developed in response to a call for ideas from the architecture think tank New London Architecture (NLA), offers one way to lessen the impact of tall buildings on the urban fabric surrounding them.
Architect William Rawn is often asked about the 85-foot-long undulating glass facade at his recently completed Ruth Caplin Theatre on the campus of the University of Virginia (UVA), in Charlottesville. People wonder, he says, if it was inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s serpentine brick walls that are part of the so-called Lawn—the complex of 18th-century structures and grounds at the university’s historic heart.
A renovation and expansion of a midcentury academic tower restores a master's legacy. Preservation and Modernism might seem to have contradictory goals, but not for architects Bruner/Cott. The Cambridge, Massachusetts'based firm is renovating and restoring Boston University's Law Tower and has just completed a 93,000-square-foot addition at its base.
The Fulton Center's metal-clad oculus can be seen emerging from Grimshaw’s steel and glass station. The 125-year-old Corbin building, to the right of the station, was renovated and provides another entrance into the station. For months, commuters have been traveling through the almost complete Fulton Center, the transit hub conceived for Lower Manhattan in the wake of the September 11 attacks. But much of the $1.4 billion complex was off limits, hidden by temporary partitions and construction tarps as final construction and systems testing wrapped up. But the tarps and partitions have come down and nearly a decade after the
On October 31st, the Wood Innovation and Design Centre (WIDC)—a 96-foot-tall, 51,000 square foot structure built almost entirely out of engineered wood components—opened in Prince George, British Columbia.
A building that produces all the energy it requires, without sacrifices to its operations or concessions of human comfort, might sound like pie in the sky. But according to the New Buildings Institute (NBI), 160 commercial and institutional buildings in the U.S. are targeting or have achieved net zero energy—meaning that, over the course of a year, they produce at least as much energy from renewable sources as they consume.
The artist toiling in solitude has long been a romantic ideal. But it rarely holds in reality, especially for those who work at the civic scale, making pieces that straddle the blurry boundary between art and architecture. These artists rarely work alone, typically relying on a host of collaborators to realize their visions, including studio assistants, fabricators, and even city officials.