Year in Architecture 2023

• The Camden Highline, a project we've been following since it was unveiled in 2017, got planning approval.
• Balkrishna Doshi, the 2018 Pritzker Prize laureate, died on January 24 at the age of 95.
• Grand Central Madison, part of the $11 billion East Side Access project, opened on January 25.
• The busy Camden Council also approved plans, on January 30, for RSHP's extension of the listed British Library designed by Colin St. John Wilson.

​Selected Found: We took a trip down memory lane as we ogled the redrawn floor plans inside Fernando Casqueiro's Mies van der Rohe: The Collective Housing Collection.

Selected Insight: We mourned the passing of Stuttgart architect Arno Lederer, who died on January 21 at the age of 75.
 

• Victor Lundy, the designer of striking modern churches and other buildings in the middle of the last century, turned 100 on the first day of the month.
• Australian architect Peter Muller, who designed Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired houses in Sydney and, in later years, resorts in Bali, died on February 17 at the age of 95.
• The Museum of Art & Photography in Bangalore, designed by Mathew & Ghosh Architects, opened on February 18.
• A Frank Lloyd Wright house perched on the Pacific Ocean in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, sold for $22 million.

​Selected Found: We toured New York, New Publics, the first in a new exhibition series at MoMA called “Architecture Now.”

Selected Insight: We interviewed New York architect David Hotson after his design for the Saint Sarkis Armenian Church in Texas was voted US Building of the Year.
 

• Architect Rafael Viñoly died unexpectedly on March 2 at the age of 78, and then on March 10, British architect Michael Wilford, longtime partner of James Stirling, died at 84 years old.
• British architect David Chipperfield was named the laureate of this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize on March 7, making him the 52nd recipient of the award considered architecture’s highest honor.
• The firm of Michael Graves, who designed the Humana Building in the 1980s, was hit with a lawsuit over "latent defects" in the notably postmodern tower.
• The Hammer Museum completed its two-decade-long transformation by Michael Maltzan Architecture, opening to the public on March 26.

​Selected Found: We looked, from a distance, at architect Martand Khosla's Cloud and Cloud Burst installations in the third edition of The Sculpture Park that took place at Madhavendra Palace, Nahargarh Fort in Jaipur, India

Selected Insight: We spoke with Nadja and Lukas Frei of Luna Productions after the lookout tower they designed for the Hardwald recreation area near Zurich won Swiss-Architects Building of the Year.
 

• Although filmmaker Michael Blackwood, who made many documentaries about architects from the 1980s onward, died in February, we didn't learn and write about it until early April.
• Architect William (Bill) Hellmuth, the Chairman and CEO of HOK and nephew of founding partner George F. Hellmuth, died on April 6 at the age of 69.
• Studio Gang's transformation of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock, Arkansas, opened to the public on April 22.
• Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari was named the 2023 recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal.

​Selected Found: We took far too many photos of the “shotcrete canyon” at the heart of the the new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation at the American Museum of Natural History designed by Studio Gang.

Selected Insight: We toured Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, the 48-story mixed-use skyscraper designed by Yuko Nagayama & Associates.
 

• Istanbul Modern, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, opened its doors overlooking the Bosphorus on May 4
• Marta Maccaglia was named the inaugural winner of the divia award — a prize that aims to give female architects more visibility — on May 7.
• Before the Venice Architecture Biennale welcomed the public on May 20, curator Lesley Lokko addressed “an old and familiar tale.”
• The City of New York sued Steven Holl Architects over the additional costs needed to make parts of the stair-abundant Hunters Point Library fully accessible.
• Architect, historian and educator Paolo Portoghesi, who is best known for directing the first Venice Architecture Biennale, died on May 30 at the age of 91.

​Selected Found: As part of our extensive coverage of the Venice Architecture Biennale, we put together a list of “5 Lessons from Lesley Lokko's The Laboratory of the Future.”

Selected Insight: We made a visit to VOLstudio in Barcelona, speaking with Anna Codina and Toni Casamor about their background, their shared practice, and some of their projects.
 

• Lina Ghotmeh's Serpentine Pavilion opened to the public in London's Kensington Gardens on June 9.
• Perkins&Will was selected to design the new Bezos Learning Center at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
• The American Institute of Architects gave its Twenty-five Year Award to Frank Gehry's iconic, game-changing Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
• Michael Hopkins, a founder of high-tech architecture, died on June 17 at the age of 88.
• During a ceremony on June 29, EUmies Awards Day, the three winners in the Young Talent category were announced.

​Selected Found: We were impressed with the way architects Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats transported their studio from Barcelona to the Arsenale as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Selected Insight: We took in the the massive monographic exhibition on Norman Foster at the Centre Pompidou, a look back at six decades of arguably the world’s most successful architect.
 

• Royal Academy of Arts in London gave Irish architect Shane de Blacam the 2023 Royal Academy Architecture Prize.
• On July 5, the board of the Village of Oak Park, Illinois, just west of Chicago, deemed that Harry Weese's nearly 50-year-old Village Hall should be demolished.
• Morphosis completed Vialia Vigo Intermodal Station, a large complex mixing high-speed trains, a shopping mall, and the city's largest public plaza.

​Selected Found: We visited the sixth — and last — installment in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s six-part “The Architect’s Studio,” an exhibition on Kenya's cave_bureau.

Selected Insight: We spoke with architect Marta Maccaglia, winner of the inaugural divia award for her work on educational buildings in the Peruvian Amazon region and in settlements near Lima.
 

• French architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen, longtime professor at New York University, died unexpectedly on August 7.
• The Cooper Hewitt announced the winners of the 2023 National Design Awards, including nARCHITECTS and Kongjian Yu of Turenscape.
• On August 21, the New York City Planning Commission approved plans for the renovation of 60 Wall Street, a 1989 office building designed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo with a striking postmodern lobby.
• Author, critic, curator, and editor Peter Buchanan died on August 23 at the age of 80.

​Selected Found: We spoke with architect Florian Busch, who opened his eponymous practice in Tokyo in 2009, at such great length we presented it in two parts.

Selected Insight: We spoke with architect Christoph Ingenhoven about incorporating progressive and sustainable ideas into the buildings designed by his eponymous firm.
 

• Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré was named one of the recipients of the 2023 Praemium Imperiale, one of the world's most prestigious awards for architects and other artists.
• Reports indicated that construction of Kingdom Tower, the 1,000-meter-tall tower designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, was set to resume.
• SCAPE's Living Breakwaters was named the fifth recipient of the annual Obel Award.
• Zvi Hecker, the “Bad Boy of Israeli Architecture,” died at his home in Berlin on September 24 at the age of 92.

​Selected Found: We took a close look at Emerging Ecologies, the first exhibition from MoMA's Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment.

Selected Insight: We were in attendance for the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Perelman Performing Arts Center, a translucent marble box at the World Trade Center designed by REX.
 

• Skin of Glass, the film by Denise Zmekhol that follows her journey to São Paulo to learn about her later father, won Best Documentary Feature Film at the BARQ Festival.
• Too many passings: Harriet Pattison died on October 2; Andrea Branzi died on October 9; George Baird died on October 17; Anthony Vidler died on October 19; and Robert Irwin died on October 25.
• The 2023 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, the biennial $100,000 award organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation, was given to Kongjian Yu of Turenscape.
• The Royal Institute of British Architects named Mæ's John Morden Centre the winner of the 27th RIBA Stirling Prize.

​Selected Found: We trekked to Harvard University to see The Book in the Age of …, an exhibition that came out of a research seminar at the GSD taught by architect Rem Koolhaas, graphic designer Irma Boom, and architectural historian Phillip Denny.

Selected Insight: We spoke with architect Stanley Saitowitz about his background and some of the projects he has worked on in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
 

• Mexican architect Gabriela Carrillo was awarded the RA Dorfman Award by the Royal Academy of Arts on November 2.
• Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) completed its restoration of Lever House, the modern masterpiece designed by SOM in 1952.
• Rob Krier, the influential architect, author, and sculptor who was born in Luxembourg and spent much of his life in Germany, died at the age of 85.
• The winners of the 34th annual Piranesi Awards were announced on November 25 during the 40th Piran Days of Architecture.
• The Tangshan Quarry Park in Nanjing, China, was named the winner of the 2023 Rosa Barba Casanovas International Landscape Prize.

​Selected Found: We took a virtual, immersive jump into the studio of Es Devlin, the superstar production designer whose first monographic show, An Atlas of Es Devlin, opened at the Cooper Hewitt.

Selected Insight: We spoke with Marta Vall-llossera Ferran, president of the Superior Council of Architects’ Associations in Spain, about the crises Spain is facing and the role of architects in addressing them.
 

• The Huizhen High School in Ningbo, China, was crowned World Building of the Year 2023 at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore.
• Dogma, the Brussels-based practice of Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara, was named the 2023 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award.
• Miami's Chad Oppenheim was named the winner of the 2023 American Prize for Architecture, billed as “the highest honor for architecture in the United States.”

​Selected Found: We looked at — and smelled — the Chocolate Room at the heart of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, the comprehensive retrospective on Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha at MoMA.

Selected Insight: We watched Denise Zmekhol's award-winning Skin of Glass, the feature-length documentary about her father's masterpiece, the 24-story “Pele de Vidro” (Skin of Glass) in São Paulo.