Year in Architecture 2022

• We learned during the first week of the new year that the Ponte della Costituzione in Venice, designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 2008, will have its slippery glass steps replaced in favor of stone.
• Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill Levi (pictured above), the prolific designer of hundreds of buildings in dozens of countries, died on January 14 at the age of 82.
• Lluís Comerón Graupera, president of the Superior Council of Architects of Spain, died on January 25.
• Near the end of the month, the Royal Institute of British Architects announced the Friendship Hospital in Bangladesh as winner of the 2021 RIBA International Prize.

​Selected Found: We took a virtual look inside the House of Music designed by Sou Fujimoto, which had just opened in Budapest's City Park.

Selected Insight: Madeline Beach Carey looked inside Apartment Blossom, the book by Li Han and Jin Qiuye that is "full of joy and budding with possibility."
 

• Stalin’s Architect: The Rise and Fall of Boris Iofan opened at the Tchoban Foundation – Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin on February 5.
• Following two years without a director, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York announced on February 8 that Maria Nicanor would helm the post.
• Dan Graham, the "unclassifiable" artist known for glass pavilions that literally and figuratively reflected the cities they were part of, died on February 19 at the age of 79.
• The Museum of the Future, billed as a "home for optimistic imagination, committed to a more sustainable future for all," opened to the public in Dubai on February 22.

​Selected Found: Tomás Saraceno inserted a 95-foot-diameter sphere (pictured above) inside The Shed in New York City.

Selected Insight: After the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC was voted by readers as US Building of the Year, we interviewed Mecanoo's Francine Houben about the project as well as other libraries and renovations.
 

• Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, we rounded up some statements and actions from architects around the world, plus some architecture-related news related to the war.
• Francis Kéré was named the laureate of the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize on March 15. (See also Ulf Meyer's interview with Kéré in his Berlin office.)
• Christopher Alexander, the enormously influential architect and theorist best known for authoring A Pattern Language, died on March 17.
• On March 21 and 22, experts convened at a symposium focused on the built heritage of Erich Mendelsohn, with the goal of adding buildings designed by the architect to UNESCO's World Heritage List.

​Selected Found: The 23rd Biennale of Sydney opened with more than 330 artworks by over 80 participants spread across various venues in the Australian city. We were drawn to the large-scale artworks in the subterranean Cutaway.

Selected Insight: Elias Baumgarten interviewed Ukrainian architect Anhelina Starkova on her experiences in Kharkiv: "I felt the greatest pain a human being can feel."
 

• We took note of the passings of Australian architect John Andrews, Swiss theorist Martin Steinmann, and American publisher Kevin Lippert.
• Oscar Niemeyer's final building, a pavilion at Château La Coste near Aix-En-Provence, France, opened to the public a decade after the Brazilian architect died at the age of 104.
• Engineers Jürg Conzett and Gianfranco Bronzini were named recipients of the Swiss Grand Award for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim on April 7.
• The two winners of the 2022 EUmies Award — Grafton Architects' Town House at Kingston University London and La Borda Cooperative Housing by Lacol — were announced on April 26.

​Selected Found: Japan-Architects curator Ryogo Utatsu sent us some photos of the Nakagin Capsule Tower (pictured above) in the days before the demolition of Kisho Kurokawa's 50-year-old Metabolist masterpiece.

Selected Insight: Ulf Meyer interviewed "poetic and pragmatic" Chicago architect John Ronan, whose Kaplan Family Institute at IIT was 2019 US Building of the Year.
 

• We learned in early May that a land art installation by Mario Botta for the Bonfol hazardous waste landfill was shelved due to lack of money for the project.
• Celebrated Canadian architect Claude Provencher, co-founder of Provencher_Roy, died on May 6 at the age of 72.
• The new home of the Museum of Ethnography, built as part of the Liget Budapest Project transforming Budapest's City Park, opened to the public on May 23.
• The Royal College of Art unveiled its new campus in Battersea, London, designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

​Selected Found: Finding ourselves in Barcelona for the award ceremony for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award, we toured the EUmies Awards 2022 Exhibition (pictured above).

Selected Insight: We interviewed Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion after the duo received the EUmies Award for Town House – Kingston University.
 

• Following an open letter written by the architects, Swiss-Architects editor Elias Baumgarten reported on the "questionable" proposed renovations to Sauerbruch Hutton's iconic GSW Headquarters in Berlin.
• On June 15, a team led by BIG and HOK was selected to design the new Dock A at Zurich Airport.
• Announced on June 24, the American Institute of Architects selected Steven Holl's Chapel of St. Ignatius, completed in Seattle in 1997, as the 2022 recipient of the Twenty-five Year Award.
• We toured the Glenstone Richard Serra Pavilion (pictured above) by Thomas Phifer and Partners on a visit (our second) to the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland.

​Selected Found: Kazuo Shinohara’s Umbrella House found a new home — on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Selected Insight: Ulf Meyer interviewed "Elephant Whisperer" Boonserm Premthada of Bangkok Project Studio, "Thailand’s most interesting architect." 
 

• Curator, Aedes founder, and "Ambassador of Architecture" Kristin Feireiss celebrated her 80th birthday on the first day of the month.
• The long-awaited Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles, designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture, opened to the public on July 9.
• Famed sculptor Claes Oldenburg died on July 18 at the age of 93.
• Details of The Line — the 500-meter-tall, 200-meter-wide, 170-kilometer-long "city" in Saudi Arabia — were released on July 25.

​Selected Found: We highlighted 15 Summer Reads, from a pocket-sized book about Vitruvius’s De Architectura to a large-format reprint of Richard Saul Wurman's 1962 monograph on Louis I. Kahn.

Selected Insight: We visited the Barcelona studio of Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats (pictured above), a former apartment whose rooms are now packed with models and drawings.
 

• Edward Schwarz, general manager at the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, died on August 3 at just 62; Andreas Ruby penned an obituary.
• Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, who was also influential in the world of architecture, died on August 5 at the age of 84.
• OMA's Taipei Performing Arts Center, designed by partners Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, opened to the public — finally!
• Andrés Jaque, founder of the Office for Political Innovation, was appointed dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) on August 18.

​Selected Found: Japan-Architects visited the new Daigo Town Hall (pictured above) in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, designed by Katsuhiko Endo Architect and Associates.

Selected Insight: Ulf Meyer visited Kaunas, the 2022 European Capital of Culture, to learn about the Lithuanian city rediscovering its heritage of modern architecture.
 

• New York architect James Stewart Polshek, former dean of Columbia University GSAPP and founder of Ennead Architects, died on September 9 at the age of 92.
• Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima (pictured above) and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA were named recipients of Japan Art Association’s 2022 Praemium Imperiale on September 15.
• The winners of the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture were announced on September 22.
• Chicago architect Brad Lynch, founding partner of Brininstool + Lynch, died on September 26 at just 64.

​Selected Found: Ulf Meyer hiked the Minett Trail in Luxembourg, looking at some of the lodgings recently designed by young architects.

Selected Insight: Lynnette Widder delved into Kirsty Bell’s The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin, an intimate book that "is neither an impressionistic memoir nor a personal essay."
 

• Bruno Latour died on October 9 at the age of 75; Stefan Kurath penned an obituary.
• Updated visuals of the infamous Munger Hall for the University of California Santa Barbara were released in early October as part of the proposed project's approval process.
• The winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize (Níall McLaughlin Architects' The New Library, Magdalene College) was announced on October 13.
• Susanna Koeberle reviewed the sixth Lisbon Architecture Triennale, which opened in late September and was dedicated to the theme "Terra."

​Selected Found: We visited In Praise of Caves (pictured above), an exhibition with projects by four Mexican artist–architects at The Noguchi Museum in New York City.

Selected Insight: Eduard Kögel spoke with Chinese architect Xu Tiantian of DnA Design and Architecture about her teaching concepts and design strategies for rural contexts.
 

• On November 8, 3XN's Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney, Australia, was named the "world’s most innovative high-rise." (A few weeks later it won World Building of the Year at WAF.)
• The reimagined public space (pictured above) at the base of 550 Madison (aka the AT&T Building) opened to the public on November 16.
• Annabelle Selldorf's controversial plans for the remodeling of Venturi Scott Brown's Sainsbury Wing at The National Gallery were approved on November 29.
• German architect Meinhard von Gerkan died on November 30 at the age of 87.

​Selected Found: Rana Begum's colorful mesh sculptures were on display at Rice University in Houston as part of the group show Urban Impressions: Experiencing the Global Contemporary Metropolis.

Selected Insight: We delved into Swissness Applied, the award-winning book that focuses its attention on New Glarus, the Wisconsin town whose downtown buildings have facades that exude Swissness.
 

• SANAA's Sydney Modern expansion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales opened on December 3.
• The Santiago Calatrava-designed St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at the World Trade Center opened to the public on December 6.
• The American Institute of Architects announced Chicago architect Carol Ross Barney as the winner of the 2023 AIA Gold Medal on December 7.
• The ninth MPavilion, designed by Bangkok's (all)zone, opened in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens on December 8.

​Selected Found: We toured Eagle + West, the just-completed residential development on the waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, designed by OMA New York under partner Jason Long.

Selected Insight: Elias Baumgarten argued that architectural criticism is in a crisis but found that a new book edited by Wilfried Wang (pictured above) could bring momentum back to the discipline.