Approached from an oblique angle, a facade of opaque and transparent glass at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s (UWM) new Chemistry Building appears to defy its own physicality. Windows look as if extending past their edges. Reflective elements register sometimes as transparent, other times as solid. Vertical fins lining stacked, undulating surfaces suggest an ephemeral field of continuities. An
Torqued beside the rail lines at Dybbølsbro Station, the Kaktus Towers cut serrated profiles against the Copenhagen sky. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the seemingly—but not quite—twisted micro-living towers mark the edge of Vesterbro, a former industrial zone now undergoing a new wave of development. Rising from an elevated green plateau—about 65 feet above the street,
In 2004, the Seattle Central Library turned heads with its continuous skin that wrapped programmatic elements into an iconic, irregular whole. Two decades since and halfway around the world, OMA has employed a similar premise for the JOMOO Headquarters tower in Xiamen, a coastal city undergoing high-density urbanization in southeastern China. Yet where the acclaimed library in Seattle is transparent
On September 12, the Facades+ conference series will be held in Chicago at the voco Chicago Downtown. The event offers a full day of programming developed in collaboration with SmithGroup principals Matt Dumich, Coty Sandberg, and Jason Smith. Attendees are also encouraged to visit the Methods + Materials gallery, which features 22 exhibiting building product companies.
The Miller Hull Partnership designed the new U.S. Consulate General in Guadalajara, Mexico. The brief called for a ground-up structure to support American diplomacy while welcoming both Mexican and U.S. citizens in the state of Jalisco. The building’s facade is particularly striking, clad in a curtain wall of proprietary ballistic glass that invites employees and visitors
This fall, AN’s Facades+ conference series will take place in five North American cities. In each city attendees will have the opportunity to tune into presentations on facade design for a range of building typologies from airports to retail shops to commercial developments, among other roundtable discussions and talks. This year marks the event’s 13th anniversary.
Since its founding in 1896, the International Association of Iron Workers (IW) has trained and represented the skilled labor force behind buildings, infrastructure, shipbuilding, and metal fabrication across the U.S. and Canada. Last year, in Broadview, Illinois—just 12 miles west of downtown Chicago, the 19th-century testing ground of steel-frame construction—Ironworkers Local 63 opened a new training
In the City of Glass, tall towers have tended to look alike. The homogenized skyline of Vancouver, British Columbia emerged during a construction boom in the 1990s. As Canada’s most expensive city rezones to increase density in the face of a worsening housing crisis, the skyline’s once implacable uniformity has begun to change, largely at
In Boston’s Kendall Square, where dense research programs and repetitive building types define much of the streetscape, the facade of the Ragon Institute manages to make a statement. After years spread across multiple campuses, the institute—dedicated to advancing immunology and vaccine research—now occupies a unified biomedical research center, bringing together scientists from Harvard, MIT, and Mass General Brigham. Designed by Payette, the new facility features an eye-catching facade of tapered aluminum fins that create variation and depth while enhancing energy performance. Integrated with a high-efficiency, unitized curtain wall system, the fins filter light, shape views, and hide mechanical equipment. Their variation in spacing and profile, driven by internal programs and solar exposure, brings a shifting sense of enclosure to the uniform glass between them; depending on the angle, the building appears as solid, transparent, or somewhere between.
Today, we might think of sewage containment as a problem of the 19th century, when urban areas developed robust infrastructure to properly collect and dispose of human waste. However, in Arklow, a coastal town on Ireland’s eastern seaboard, this problem was never fully addressed. For close to a century, the municipality pumped raw sewage directly into the River Avoca, where it traveled out to the Irish Sea, severely contaminating the water and nearby beaches.
For those who don’t know, there are actually two North American cities named Vancouver. The lesser-known Vancouver is in Washington State, along the Columbia River, a large, navigable waterway that forms the border with Oregon. The city began its life as a colonial fur trading outpost, and maintains a busy commercial port to this day because of
Like many postindustrial port cities, Baltimore has long struggled to reclaim its waterfront, which is interrupted and obscured by a series of derelict sites once devoted to shipping and manufacturing. One of the largest redevelopment projects addressing this underutilized space is an effort to remake Harbor Point, a 27-acre promontory that juts out into the Patapsco River.
On July 22, the Facades+ conference series will be held in Kansas City at the Kansas City Marriott. The event offers a full day of programming developed in collaboration with BNIM principals Joyce Raybuck and James Pfeiffer. Attendees are also encouraged to visit the Methods + Materials gallery, which features 18 exhibiting building product companies.
To the northwest of Downtown Nashville and the Tennessee State Capitol sits Germantown, a formerly working class enclave with a large stock of historic masonry architecture. Though the neighborhood is situated along the Cumberland River, visitors might hardly notice, as a freight line and series of industrial buildings severed Germantown’s residential districts from the waterfront long ago.
AN’s Facades+ conference series has traveled to cities across North America for 13 years, highlighting developments in building envelope design through engaging presentations from industry-leading professionals. AN Senior Program Associate Trevor Schillaci works on up to 15 of these conferences annually, and has noticed a thing or two about what is trending. For 2025, he has pinpointed aesthetic fads,
One aspect of Milan that makes it an enjoyable city is the scale of its seemingly endless blocks of midrise apartment buildings, many of which were built as infill after the city was heavily bombed during World War II. Ranging from 5 to 8 stories in height, the residential units are typically pressed against the front facade,
In the human cardiovascular system blood, oxygen, and the heart can’t function without one another. At LifeServe Blood Center, a laboratory and blood donation center in Iowa, the building’s integrated design operates the same way: If you take away any component, it doesn’t work as it should. BNIM Architects designed the facility in Johnston, Iowa, to account for privacy, where needed, while also delivering a building that puts its life-saving vocation front and center.
Mass timber construction is gradually taking hold on the East Coast. Following D2 Groups’ completion of a timber office building just outside of Philadelphia, Lake Flato—an award-winning practice based in Texas—has delivered the first such project within city limits at the University of Pennsylvania. The new building is designed for Penn Engineering’s growing data science and artificial intelligence program, delivering sleek
KWK Promes, a Polish firm known for its austere and modern residential work, has demonstrated a capacity for humor and kitsch with its latest project. Tasked with designing a new facility for a pipe distribution company in Gliwice, Poland, the firm’s approach evokes the postmodern principles of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas.
The University of Arkansas is expanding its campus south into the surrounding college town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, to accommodate new programs and a growing student population. Along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a block-sized development known as the Windgate Arts and Design District is taking shape, providing much-needed facilities for the school’s art department. This new academic district is
In the Exchange District, the post-industrial core of Downtown Winnipeg, local practice 5468796 Architecture has revived the James Avenue Pumping Station, a facility that once moved water across the city. Maintaining the station’s now dormant machinery, the firm suspended office space and a restaurant from a platform within the historic structure, while also adding two new apartment buildings to the
A new facility for retail giant Shinsegae marks the first completed project in South Korea for Robert A. M. Stern Architects (RAMSA). Located in the heart of Seoul, the new building serves as a training center for the corporations employees and also features office space, ground floor retail, and a large auditorium. The structure’s exterior is wrapped in complex brick bond
“Architecture is frozen music,” a quotation attributed to Goethe, might be one of the profession’s worst cliches. However, at a new school in Upper Manhattan, the analogy applies literally. Building above an existing parking garage, GLUCK+, a New York City–based practice, has created an 8-story tower to house the WHIN Music Community Charter School. To reflect the centrality of
Facelift may be the appropriate term for a recent expansion to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where a 58,000-square-foot addition has transformed the exterior of the institution. Designed by DLR Group, the project adds new exhibition space as well as two acres of landscaping around the perimeter of the building. Previously housed within an inconspicuous brick structure, the museum’s new facade is a radical departure, featuring large spans of glazing and a sweeping glass-fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC) roofline that was inspired by the region’s geology.
