Magazine

Our focus on adaptive reuse projects for this year's US Building of the Week feature takes us to the Bronx and a charter school housed in an old industrial building. KSS Architects renovated the building and added a gymnasium, the latter of which gives the school a strong presence in the... KSS Architects

Estimated number of oak trees at least 200 years old needed to restore the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris:... René Ammann

As part of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects' (CSLA) 2021 Awards of Excellence, the transformation of a former quarry along the Bow River in Calgary into Dale Hodges Park has been awarded the Jury's Award of Excellence. John Hill

The Fundació Enric Miralles, with the support of Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia, has launched MIRALLES, a series of exhibitions and events celebrating the life of Enric Miralles, the still-influential Catalan architect who died in 2000. John Hill

The new Brooklyn outpost for D.S. & Durga, the perfume house founded by David Seth Moltz (D.S.) and Kavi Ahuja Moltz (Durga), stands out for the striated walls that resemble rammed earth. The walls are actually concrete, though, a product of circumstance and hands-on testing. John Hill

Tianjin Juilliard School was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the same firm that expanded Juilliard's iconic New York home at Lincoln Center twelve years ago. A short film takes viewers inside the new building that welcomed its first students last fall. John Hill

The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has announced that set designer Mimi Lien will turn the plaza at the heart of its iconic 1960s campus on Manhattan's Upper West Side into "The GREEN," a park-like "site of social infrastructure." John Hill

Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life is a major exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York City devoted to the self-taught French-American artist known for playful figural sculptures, the large Tarot Garden in Italy, and other architectural works that spark joy, especially in... John Hill

During a virtual press conference on Monday, April 12, Biennale president Roberto Cicutto announced this year's exhibition will indeed open on May 22. Curator Hashim Sarkis also outlined the expanded program that will take place over its six months. John Hill

From cheese to culture: The Momentary is a new contemporary art space housed in a former Kraft factory in Bentonville, Arkansas. The cultural venue with galleries, theatre, and dining spaces is a satellite of the popular Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Wheeler Kearns Architects

Estimated number of villages across China: 940,000 René Ammann

Opening on April 16 at Garagem Sul / Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, At Home: Projects for Contemporary Housing follows the exhibition of the same name that opened at MAXXI in Rome back in 2019. The new iteration builds upon the predecessor's pairing of housing projects at a range... John Hill

Genevese architect/landscape architect Georges Descombes is one of three recipients of the Swiss Grand Award for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim for 2021, alongside curator Esther Eppstein and artist Vivian Suter. John Hill

London's National Gallery has announced the six shortlisted teams vying to work with the museum on "a suite of capital projects," including a reconfiguration of the famous Sainsbury Wing, to mark its bicentenary in 2024. John Hill

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has revealed plans for a major expansion designed by Safdie Architects, the architect of the original museum that opened in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2011. John Hill

Vienna's Coop Himmelb(l)au has won an international design competition to design the "SCA Arena and Park" in St. Petersburg. Their design follows follows the tradition of Russian Constructivists El Lissitzky and Vladimir Tatlin. John Hill

Paris's Bruther, the firm of Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot, is the recipient of the seventh biennial Swiss Architectural Award, as announced in early April. Three short films by Daniele Marucci show a trio of the firm's buildings in context and in use. John Hill

Swiss-Architects Editor in Chief Elias Baumgarten recently interviewed architect Saikal Zhunushova, who placed third in the 2021 Foundation Award, which annually recognizes the innovate work of Swiss architecture offices less than five years old. Born in Kyrgyzstan and now based in Winterthur,... Elias Baumgarten

The first Avenues: The World School opened in 2012 inside a former industrial building next to the High Line in New York City, setting a precedent of adaptive reuse for the international system of schools. The first piece of the Avenues Silicon Valley Campus transforms part of an old office... Efficiency Lab for Architecture

Number of skyscrapers up to 59 stories containing approximately 6,000 mostly rental apartments in the 12-acre development planned by the Canadian indigenous group Squamish First Nation in Vancouver, René Ammann

Designed and built by master's degree students at the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, The Voxel is a prototype for a quarantine cabin, where an individual can live self-sufficiently for two weeks. It was made entirely from... John Hill

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has announced that Frank Gehry's renovation, reorganization, and expansion of the museum's 93-year-old landmark building will open to the public on May 7, 2021. John Hill

Following a sixteen-month closure due to restoration work and the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC is reopening with two exhibitions on Boston's MASS Design Group: Justice Is Beauty and Gun Violence Memorial Project. John Hill

The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello have announced that Francis Kéré is the recipient of the 2021 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture. John Hill

"A Meeting with Architects" is a series of short films produced and hosted by Julia Zhu, featuring her interviews with Chinese architects Ma Yansong and Yung Ho Chang, European architects Álvaro Siza and Christian de Portzamparc, and Israeli-Canadian-American architect Moshe Safdie. John Hill

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has announced that architects Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe are recipients of the 2021 RAIC Gold Medal, "the highest distinction the Institute can bestow in recognition of a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian... John Hill

Consecutive months architecture billings in the United States were in decline before turning positive in February: 11 René Ammann

The Mushroom is located in a pine forest. Thus, handling the relationship between nature and the architecture became the essential approach of our design. ZJJZ

The Shanghai office Scenic Architecture was commissioned to design a rowing club for young people at an inner-city wetland park in Shanghai. The park is located in the Pudong district planned by Arte Charpentier in 1999 and ends an urban development axis that begins in the Lujiazui financial... Eduard Kögel

Anonymous Hall is the new name for Dartmouth College's former Dana Biomedical Library, which was stripped down to its steel-and-concrete frame and transformed by Leers Weinzapfel Associates into a sleek four-story building wrapped in terra cotta and glass. The architects answered a few... Leers Weinzapfel Associates

On March 20, Louis Vuitton opened its transformed Ginza Naminki store in Tokyo, where Jun Aoki has wrapped the building in wavy dichroic glass and Peter Marino has designed the interiors.  John Hill

Es Devlin's Forest of Us, made of mirrored surfaces that echo natural structures, is one of the immersive artworks that visitors will encounter next month when Superblue Miami, a new experiential art center located in a former industrial building in the city's Allapattah neighborhood,... John Hill

Barcelona's Miralles Tagliabue EMBT has been selected to design the Shenzhen Conservatory of Music, one of ten new cultural landmarks being funded by the Shenzhen Municipal Government for sites in and around the Chinese metropolis.  John Hill

Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America opened in late February at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Curated by MoMA's Sean Anderson and Columbia University's Mabel O. Wilson, the exhibition explores "how people have mobilized Black cultural spaces, forms,... John Hill

Nearly one year after Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs abandoned plans for a mixed-use "smart neighborhood" on twelve acres of Toronto's Quayside, Waterfront Toronto has launched a competition to find a development partner for the site.

This aptly named townhouse stands out from its neighbors in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood by way of a bold color choice. The same blue covers the rear elevation that faces a minimalist patio in concrete and corrugated metal, while the interior spaces are bright and white. LOT office for... LOT office for architecture