Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchiecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download A 300-pound chunk of marble plunged 54 stories to the ground from Canada’s tallest building, First Canadian Place, during a windstorm on Tuesday; no one was hurt. Crews are investigating which components that secured the facade panels failed, the Globe and Mail reported on May 17. Some observers, though, contend that marble was a poor choice for cladding so tall a tower, the
In a move expected for several months, Foster + Partners announced today that is expanding its shareholder base to include more employees as well as its first external investor, the private equity firm 3i. Although the London-based firm is remaining mum on how much the deal with 3i costs, the Financial Times reported earlier this week that it is worth between $800 million and $1 billion. Lord Norman Foster founded his practice 40 years ago. In an interview yesterday with Tom Sawyer, an editor of Engineering News Record, RECORD’s sister magazine, the firm’s current financial director Gary Lawley said that
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchiecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download The newly restored Griffith Park Observatory isn't the only architectural gem to dodge the bullet of this week's wildfires in Los Angeles. Just outside the park are Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House as well as residences by Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Gregory Ain, Craig Ellwood, and Raphael Soriano'what the Los Angeles Times described on May 11 as 'one of the most important concentrations
If you’re a professional association representing more than 81,800 members, such as the American Institute of Architects (AIA), it helps to plan ahead—way ahead. So while more than 21,000 architects were in San Antonio last week for the AIA’s 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition, delegates held elections for the 2009 president as well as other leadership slots for 2008. The results? Marvin J. Malecha, FAIA, won the presidency; Peter J. Arsenault, AIA, and Clark Manus, FAIA, were elected vice presidents; and Hal P. Munger, FAIA, ran unopposed for the office of treasurer. The vice presidents and treasurer will serve
People are treating the atmosphere like “an open sewer,” former vice president Al Gore contends, and the best way to stop them is with a pollution tax. Gore laid out just such a penalty system, as well as financial incentives for not polluting, during his keynote address at the AIA’s 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition in San Antonio on Saturday. It was a speech tailored to his audience, using little of the same content from “An Inconvenient Truth”—his Academy Award-winning documentary—and with good reason. “Architects have by far the greatest opportunity to affect how our society deals with the
By accident or design, Creative Time has helped catalyze the transformation of New York City’s built environment. This nonprofit group has sponsored and commissioned public art to energize buildings and streetscapes since 1974. Now it is looking outside the Big Apple. It recently sponsored a video installation along four blocks of the Strip in Las Vegas, and this spring will announce plans for an ambitious project in New Orleans—a city in transition that, like New York in the 1970s, could use a big dose of transformative art. Photo: Courtesy Creative Time “Real estate is an important part of the history
An estimated 25,000 architects descended on San Antonio, May 3, for the American Institute of Architects’ 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition. In keeping with this year’s theme, “Growing Beyond Green,” president RK Stewart, FAIA, said at Thursday’s opening general session that the AIA is purchasing clean, green power to offset carbon emissions generated during the three-day event at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. (More details about this transaction will follow on the web.) Click the play button to begin | Click here to download “Steady growth forever is the creed of cancer cells and the economists,” said ecologist
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is about to start walking the talk. Already garrulous on matters of sustainability, its leadership is evaluating a range of options for greening its headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We want to make our headquarters a demonstration project,” says RK Stewart, FAIA, the AIA’s president. “We have the opportunity to provide a great place for people to work and for our members to visit, and an opportunity to reach out and show the public what’s possible.” Photos: courtesy the AIA Designed by The Architects’ Collaborative, the Walter Gropius—led design firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchRecord.com, as a podcast below: Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Herzon & de Meuron were tapped to design a new football stadium for the coastal city of Portsmouth, England—that’s British football, by the way, known only in the U.S. as soccer. “We’ve taken the ingredients of the city and mixed them up—the docks, the sea, the transport, a city oriented to labor—and we’ve brought football into that,” Jacques Herzog told the U.K.’s Financial Times on April
Photo: Courtesy Chris Schultz, AIA The 2007 National Convention and Design Exposition of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) opens next week in San Antonio. In this six-minute podcast, AIA San Antonio chapter president Chris Schultz, AIA, chats with McGraw-Hill Construction’s news director, Heather Hatfield, about how his organization is gearing up for the event. Local AIA chapters are responsible for organizing galas as well as tours of their cities. In this case, AIA San Antonio is offering more than 100 tours that highlight everything from the Alamo and other historic Spanish missions, to the dance halls of Texas.