Architectural illustrator David Macaulay and Richard H. Driehaus, the philanthropist and preservationist, were feted last night with Soane Foundation Honors. These awards recognize individuals who carry on the legacy of Sir John Soane, a visionary British architect who practiced in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Macaulay, who was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2006, is best known for his children’s books including Cathedral, Building Big, and The Way Things Work. He has also hosted PBS television series based these books. Macaulay teaches illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his degree in 1969.

Editor’s note: New this week, with the unveiling of the redesigned ArchRecord.com, you may read the news digest below—or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchRecord.com, as a podcast. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Is Frank Gehry’s Manhattan debut a “minor mood piece” or a “milky hulk”? Take your pick of these less-than-flattering phrases to describe his IAC office building in Chelsea, which Newsday critic Justin Davidson reviewed on April 15. “Instead of being a marvelous mirage, it’s only an office building wrapped in a gimmick,” he wrote of the white-glass-clad structure.

Ask David Childs, of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, what he thinks the most important project in New York City is right now and his reply might surprise you—not the Freedom Tower, as you might expect, but the relocation of Penn Station from its current site under Madison Square Garden into a McKim Mead & White post office across the street. Click above to watch a video of some of New York's most influential architects discussing the city's future. “It’s the centerpiece of New York, it’s the front door,” Childs says. “It’s the piece that ties us together along to the

Message to Brad Pitt: if you’re reading this, Dion Neutra, AIA, has a business proposition for you. Neutra, son of the late California modernist Richard Neutra, is looking for someone to buy his firm’s former office, in Silver Lake, California. Completed in 1950, it is now his father’s only surviving commercial structure. The asking price is $3.5 million, but there’s a catch. In addition to paying all-cash, a buyer must agree to leave the landmarked property untouched—or risk losing the deed. Photo: Courtesy Dion Neutra Neutra created this innovative conservation easement because he’s frustrated with seeing his father’s iconic buildings,

The American Institute of Architects’ Architectural Billings Index for February indicates that the return of colder, more seasonable weather impacted billing activity at many of the 300, mainly commercial, firms surveyed. The index posted gains in January due to warmer temperatures nationwide that month.

Zaha Hadid receives the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture at a ceremony held today at the University of Virginia. The honor is only the latest for the British architect, born in Iraq, who in 2004 became the first women to win architecture’s top prize, the Priztker. In winning the Jefferson, Hadid joins a distinguished group of architects, writers, and planners including Mies van der Rohe, Lewis Mumford, Ada Louise Huxtable, James Stirling, Frank O. Gehry, and Jane Jacobs. The Jefferson Foundation and the University of Virginia have jointly awarded the medal for architecture since 1966. Former Federal Reserve chairman

Italian officials have selected Tadao Ando’s design for a new art museum in Venice, to be operated by the French billionaire and art collector Francois Pinault, The New York Times wrote on April 7. They chose this scheme instead of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s plans for a new facility; the Guggenheim and Pinault were competing for the right to convert the 17th century Punta della Dogana building. Construction of Ando’s design, estimated to cost $26 million, will be finished in time for the 2009 biennale. Heavy snowfalls this winter, which continued even into this week, kept visitors away from

Julie Iovine, an architecture writer and former The New York Times reporter, is joining The Architect’s Newspaper, the organization announced today. She will serve as executive editor, a newly created position in the wake of several headcount changes at the semimonthly architecture news source. Cathy Lang Ho, who had co-edited the paper, resigned in late March. William Menking, who co-edited with Ho, was named founding editor—and Anne Guiney, who was previously the paper’s associate editor, was promoted to New York editor. Headquartered in New York City, The Architect’s Newspaper began publishing in late 2003. It launched a California edition, edited