Sarah Amelar

Just a few years ago, the idea of planting a hip, upscale restaurant on a sleepy alley in San Francisco's China Basin neighborhood might have seemed nuts.

Decades ago, Steve Jobs purchased the historic Jackling mansion in Silicon Valley. In February, he finally succeeded in tearing the house down. Photo courtesy Town of Woodside History Committee The white-stucco house had an unusual and superbly insulating double-wall system, evoking the heft of adobe. The massing drew inspiration from Andalusian villages. Culminating years of legal battle with preservationists, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs finally demolished the historic Jackling House on his property in Woodside, California, in February. This affluent Silicon Valley enclave, some 30 miles from San Francisco, issued the demolition permit, and, within days, the 1926 mansion—by architect

Designers transform a defunct shipping complex and reconnect a city with its waterfront.

In 1968, the year before the Oakland Museum opened, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: “In terms of architecture and environment, Oakland may be the most thoughtfully revolutionary museum in the world.”

Photo courtesy Eva Franch i Gilabert Eva Franch i Gilabert Following a four-month international search, the Storefront for Art and Architecture has named Eva Franch i Gilabert its new director. The announcement came on May 10, after the organization’s board vetted more than 70 contenders, according to Storefront’s Web site, acknowledging the “overwhelm[ing] breadth and depth of candidates who applied from around the world.” A Catalan architect, researcher, and teacher, Franch i Gilabert, 31, is founder of the solo practice OOAA (office of architectural affairs). During the past two years, she directed the Masters Thesis studio at Rice University, where

Since its start, in 2001, A+D Architecture and Design Museum has been a vagabond, migrating from one donated (i.e.: rent-free) space to another, staying for as long as three years and, once, unexpectedly, a single night. But the museum will finally wrap up that nomadic journey, on April 27, with the opening of its first permanent home, at 6032 Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles. Image courtesy A+D Architecture and Design Museum A+D Architecture and Design Museum A+D was the brainchild of Stephen Kanner, FAIA, and Joe Addo, AIA, inspired by a design museum in Finland and their volunteer experience, under

Few municipal transit fleets have cruised through popular culture like the Big Blue Bus (BBB) of Santa Monica, California. “The blue bus is callin’ us. . . . ,” insisted Jim Morrison in the Doors song “The End.” A later model, starring in the 1994 movie Speed, careened through city streets, at risk of detonating a bomb if it slowed down. Image © Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects and Bruce Mau Design Click on the slide show icon to see additional photos. While the busses—colorful descendents of Santa Monica’s original blue livery jitney, from 1928—have been highly visible, the bus stops haven’t

Photo courtesy SCI-Arc Raimund J. Abraham Raimund J. Abraham, an Austrian-born architect and educator, remembered as an unflinchingly independent thinker, died in a traffic crash on March 4th. The early-morning collision between the car he was driving and a city bus came after the dinner following a lecture he’d given at SCI-Arc, where he was currently visiting faculty. He was 76 years old. Known for his bladelike Austrian Cultural Forum building [RECORD, August 2002], in New York, and his forceful, deeply textured, often visionary hand-drawings, Abraham was most of all a passionate and influential teacher. Closely allied with John Hejduk’s

High School #9 commandeers your attention, even as you’re zooming along the Hollywood Freeway in central Los Angeles.