October 2007 The phrase “skin deep” applies to many architectural award programs in this country. One program, however, stands resolutely outside these compromises. For 30 years, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture has looked at architecture in a more holistic way. Since the program’s founding in 1977, process, rather than building-as-object, has dominated the awards program. Limited in scope to a three-year cycle, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture examines submissions from a worldwide network of nominators (including the editor in chief of Architectural Record), narrows the field to a manageable number, then sends out professionals to visit the projects,

September 2007 The early 21st century may be remembered as the time America began to crumble. While the assertion may lapse into hyperbole, the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge at Minneapolis on August 1 focused our attention on the perilous condition of our structural underpinnings, and we found them weak. While the experts continue to evaluate exactly what went wrong in Minneapolis/St. Paul, this disaster follows in the wake of other spectacular failures in other cities. Photo © André Souroujon Remember Boston in July 2006? We are only now fully sorting through the forensic evidence surrounding the malfunction

Arrive in KL for the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture, a triennial event, after 20-hour flight via Stockholm. Bleary-eyed, check into the business-chic Traveler’s Hotel, so new the furnishings still have scraps of wrapping tacked on.

August 2007 In the 18th century, Dr. Johnson asserted the critic’s role to skewer “delusive combinations, and distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be excused.” Excuse me! In the linked-in, blog-bursting 21st century, aren’t we all critics? Thankfully, the distinctions of language, between “gourmet” and “gourmand,” hold fast, and some writing still warrants savoring, not merely devouring. Photo © André Souroujon Since the mid-1980s, Martin Filler has contributed a medley of long critical essays on architects and architecture to The New York Review of Books. A new book by that publisher released on July 17

July 2007 Beneath the veneer of respectability or trustworthiness, a little bit of Jack Kerouac lurks in us all. Haven’t you, in the summer doldrums, wanted to chuck a few things in the back of a black convertible and hit the road--the mythic, American asphalt dreamstream that seduces us with the promise of abandonment and freedom? Bad boy Kerouac’s travels, and the metaphorical, picaresque adventures he encountered, lie at the core of a persistent 21st century dilemma: mobility runs counter to environmental responsibility. Photo © André Souroujon Unlike the heady days of the mid-twentieth century, when gasoline burned, burned, burned

May 2007 Architecture rises above abstractions. In case you have been seduced into thinking that our obligations to clients end when we hand over the keys to a project, or that all architecture inhabits a theoretical netherworld, think again. A building can engage an architect for a lifetime. Photo © André Souroujon I was reminded in a most personal way last week, when a trip to my hometown took an unexpected turn. Stopping off to visit an old client and friend on a brilliant spring day, we revisited his home on a hilltop, out near the Natchez Trace Parkway. Prior

June 2007 “History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew.” E.L. Doctorow According to E.L. Doctorow, architectural history becomes what we make of it: Interpretation and perspective shape our view. Today, the history of architecture, that most seemingly benign of subjects, has burst out of the classroom, far beyond Banister Fletcher, to generate energetic, lively debate among a generation revisiting accepted ideas and reexamining structures that rarely retain their original purpose. Contemporary concerns fashion new value systems for older buildings, sometimes resulting in an unforeseen sense of chic, such as when adaptation and preservation reinforce sustainability: What