In the world of architecture, it isn’t unusual for projects to fall victim to shifting priorities or changing financial circumstances and subsequently stall or be shelved indefinitely.
Last week, two years after its first occupants moved in, the owners of the 55-story office tower at New York City’s One Bryant Park celebrated the building’s official opening with a reception in the lobby.
Almost since its inclusion in LEED in 2001, the materials and resources credit pertaining to certified wood products has been controversial. The credit recognizes only wood products that meet the standards of one organization—the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). But last week, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) moved a step closer to adopting new credit language that, at least in theory, could open up the rating system to other wood-certification schemes. The revamped credit, available for review and comment at usgbc.org, is the third set of revisions released since 2008. At the heart of the proposed changes is the elimination of
Performing Arts Centers: Dallas Arts District Winspear Opera House Wyly Theatre Copenhagen Concert Hall Copenhagen, Denmark Ateliers Jean Nouvel Model behavior: A not-so-miniature version of the real thing helps tune a design From the earliest stages of the project, the client for Jean Nouvel’s Copenhagen Concert Hall, the Danish Radio, had decided that the building’s main auditorium should have a so-called “vineyard configuration,” or one in which stepped blocks of seating surround the stage. Even though there are many shoebox-shaped halls with excellent acoustics, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (Adolf Leonard van Gendt, 1888) and Boston Symphony Hall (McKim, Mead & White,
An overarching goal for the design team behind the new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House in Dallas was to re-create the experience found in some of Europe’s much-loved opera venues.
In an effort to ease the exchange of structural information among construction project participants and between applications, Pennsylvania-based software developer Bentley Systems has released two tools, making them available to users without charge. The new applications, Structural Synchronizer V8i and Structural Dashboard V8i, released in late January, provide various features, including a shared repository for structural model data, the ability to pass data back and forth among several applications including those created by other vendors, and the capability to track revisions. The dashboard and synchronizer support a workflow management process that Bentley has dubbed Integrated Structural Modeling, or ISM. “Current