Edmonton’s Milner Library slices and dices with its Z-bar zinc facade

AZENGAR zinc-clad facade and window wall (Andrew Latreille) The Stanley A. Milner Library opened in late September of 2020 in downtown Edmonton, Canada. As the flagship branch for Edmonton’s public library system, the public was reasonably involved during many stages of design and construction. In fact, well after the project broke ground and install of the

WE3, designed by SPF:a, is the third building to land at the Water’s Edge creativity complex in Playa Vista, California (Mike Kelley)

SPF Architect makes a splash with corrugated metal at Playa Vista’s WE3 tech campus

Designed by Zoltan E. Pali, FAIA, and his Los Angeles-based firm SPF:a, WE3 is a six-story creative workspace in the commercially robust area of Playa Vista, California, colloquially referred to as “Silicon Beach.” It is the third and final building in a pre-existing commercial campus, Water’s Edge, that boasts 160,000 square feet horizontally expressed along

ODA’s cubic condominium complex brings dynamic form to DUMBO at 98 Front Street

  Dumbo, Brooklyn has seen a myriad of new development—mixed-use and residential alike—flood the neighborhood in the past few years. With glistening glass complexes for luxury housing and new odes to its industrial history, the area located between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge is home to bustling activity on the waters of the Hudson River.

Pendry West sets a ripple through Manhattan’s Hudson Yards

A new hotel designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill landed at the beginning of 2021 on West 33rd Street in Manhattan’s still-rising Hudson Yards neighborhood. Pendry Manhattan West tops out at 21 stories and is part of a 5-building master plan that will bring new hospitality and mixed-use buildings to Tenth Avenue, adjacent to Hudson Yards. Wedged between One and Five

Feilden Fowles introduces a high-tech sandstone pavilion to England’s Carlisle Cathedral

In the heart of a cathedral precinct of Northwest England, Feilden Fowles has refurbished a historic gothic Cathedral by extending its 500-year-old dining hall, aptly named the Fratry, to include a new pavilion. While the rectangular form of the new structure is seemingly simple, the red sandstone facade designed by the London-based architecture practice is

Woods Bagot’s Tribeca Rogue comes at the corner from a new angle

Set on a prominent corner of Church and West Broadway in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, 108 Chambers Street is a contemporary reinterpretation of the industrial setting and local architecture it is surrounded by. Unlike other gridded neighborhoods in NYC, Tribeca’s streets are not perfect right angles and speak to an older era of wrought-iron facades and

A slatted scrim system from MBH Architects breathes life into a historic San Francisco district

MBH worked closely with the city to balance the modern detailing of the facade with elements consistent with the historic Kearny/Market/Mason/Sutter conservation district. “Union Square is in many ways a representation of San Francisco itself, with its large and small, tall and short, colorful and quaint buildings, all standing shoulder to shoulder in incredible harmony,”

The Eisenhower Memorial awes with steel mesh and abundant light

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. was completed at the tail end of summer following nearly two decades of contentious debates ranging from budget disputes to the rhetorical broadsides of advocates for traditional civic architecture. The project, led by Gehry Partners, is located on a full-block site on Maryland Avenue just off of the National

COOKFOX’s 25 Park Row joins Lower Manhattan with fluted concrete and dramatic massing

COOKFOX Architects has been busy lately. The New York-based architecture firm has completed or is just wrapping up scores of projects across the city, ranging from twin-towered Ten Grand and One South in Williamsburg to St. John’s Terminal in Tribeca. Central to these projects is a fine-tuned understanding of context and unpretentious design cues that embed the structures within their setting.

Trahan Architects’ 309 Magazine Street infills with monumental steel and poured concrete

Architectural preservation is often a continued struggle between human-made constructs and the inexorable forces of natural phenomena. Nowhere in the United States is this relationship more pronounced than in New Orleans, that polyglottal metropolis at the border of the Mississippi River Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. Located in the Picayune Place neighborhood, Trahan Architects’ under construction 309

Olson Kundig talks kinetic design, new projects, and our Facades+ conference

Leading up to this week’s Facades+ West Conference on Thursday and Friday, AN caught up with its two co-chairs, Blair Payson and Alan Maskin, principals at Olson Kundig in Seattle. In preparation for the at-length discussions on these topics, Payson and Maskin shared some insights of theirs regarding kinetic design, historic architecture, and some interesting upcoming projects. AN: As a leading firm in the kinetic

The Fitzroy harkens back to Old New York with art deco-inspired terra-cotta blocks

A stroll through New York neighborhoods subject to feverish developments, from Downtown Brooklyn to Central Park South, reveals a design trend that has taken root and proliferated citywide: A seismic shift from unobstructed glass curtain walls to facades of ever-greater opacity. The trend is being driven by myriad forces, namely rising performance standards and shifting aesthetic tastes,

Tom Wiscombe Architecture’s Dark Chalet looms over Powder Mountain with black-on-black aluminum composite

A black aeronautic mass is taking shape in Utah’s Wasatch Range. Dubbed the Dark Chalet, the project, designed by Los Angeles-based firm Tom Wiscombe Architecture (TWA), is a private residence perched prominently (and precariously) on Powder Mountain within the under-construction Summit Powder Mountain ski resort. The project is a demonstration of the firm’s characteristic playfulness

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater lets in the light with low-iron glass

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, perched above a waterfall in the forests of southwestern Pennsylvania, presents a complex challenge for its conservators. Unusually among Wright’s works, the seminal 1937 house has been preserved for public viewing with much of its original artwork and furniture intact but the building’s extensive exterior glazing means that its aging interiors have been

Restoration of the Empire State Building’s Art Deco crown nears completion

New York City’s skyline is forever adapting, thrusting ever higher upwards as a jostling amalgam of evolving styles and forms. Although surpassed in height by more recent projects such as SHoP Architect’s 111 57th Street and KPF’s One Vanderbilt, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon’s Empire State Building remains the city’s penultimate skyscraper and icon from the art deco era. The mooring mast,

Fletcher Priest Architects and Arup bring structure to the fore at the Brunel Building

London, as a millennia-old metropolis and the former gravitational center of the world’s first industrialized imperial power, is a city of great juxtapositions in scale and style, a setting all the more pronounced by a labyrinthine network of streets crisscrossed with rail lines and disused canals. The Brunel Building, designed by Fletcher Priest Architects and located in