Kliment Halsband Architects blends past and present at Friends Seminary

Facadism, the act of retaining a historic facade whilst fundamentally adapting a structure’s interior, is often maligned by preservationists as relegating historic architecture to urban set pieces. Lost in such orthodox pedagogy is recognition of the functional demands of the client and the pragmatic reality that buildings evolve over time. Kliment Halsband Architects (KHA), a New

A closer look at the ETFE skin of DS+R and The Rockwell Group’s Bloomberg Building

Hudson Yards, the mega-development reshaping Manhattan’s Far West Side, needs little introduction; it has been both praised and vilified for its gigantic scale and contentious urban ethos. Regardless of the controversy surrounding it, the project showcases some ambitious engineering. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) with Rockwell Group, The Bloomberg Building’s versatile ETFE cladding and mobile shell

MANICA’s Chase Center references San Francisco’s Mission Bay with a sail-like aluminum facade

The Chase Center, the new home for the Golden State Warriors, stands prominently in Mission Bay, San Francisco, and joins a nationwide shift from stadium and arena as standalone monoliths surrounded by acres of asphalt parking lots to those embedded within dense urban frameworks. The 11-acre project, designed by Kansas City’s MANICA Architecture, opened in the Fall

A new class of U.S. towers celebrate structural lines while pushing technological boundaries

When 875 North Michigan Avenue, formerly the John Hancock Center, opened on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile in 1969, it signaled a departure from the all-too-prevalent trabeated Miesian skyscraper. Its subtly tapered 100-story form and iconic X-frame structure, designed and engineered by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan, respectively, demonstrated that beauty and structural performance need

Gensler’s Cadillac House Shanghai propels forward with an angled steel facade

Over the last two decades, as the ownership of American and European-produced cars has proliferated in China, car manufacturers have pushed to establish a prestigious presence in the country in the form of showrooms and high-designed office parks. Designed by Gensler, The Cadillac House Shanghai is an exemplar of this trend and joins the scene with a

An innovative GFRP facade is a big part of the magic of the Lucas Museum

The form of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is suggestive and shape-shifting, not unlike the popular media to which the nascent institution is dedicated. Under construction since 2018, the curvilinear 290,000-square-foot museum is beginning to animate the entire western edge of Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, a 160-acre park opposite the University of Southern California. The project, which

Facade engineers discuss the trend of custom repetitive manufacturing

Computer-aided manufacturing has revolutionized the field of facade production over the last decade. Dana K. Gulling, author of Manufacturing Architecture, describes the overall trend as one of “custom repetitive manufacturing,” which reestablishes a level of customizability in industrial processes and facilitates fruitful collaboration between architects, facade engineers, and manufacturers from the design-assist phase to completion. To

Snøhetta’s book repository at Temple University tips its glazed hat to older campus buildings

In designing the Charles Library at Temple University in North Philadelphia, Snøhetta wanted to make a contemporary statement that would integrate harmoniously into the pedestrian core of a leafy, architecturally diverse urban campus that is still largely defined by historic stone masonry edifices. The resulting building, a research library clad in stone, wood, and glass and topped with one of Philadelphia’s largest

The Dearborn Residence infills Chicago’s South Loop with brick and terra-cotta

Chicago’s Printers Row, located in the South Loop neighborhood, is home to a large collection of former warehouses and factory lofts built at the turn of the century. Built of steel-frame construction and wrapped in richly detailed brick, terra-cotta, and stone, the area is one of many zealously protected historic districts in the city. The challenge

BIG and LEO A DALY’s The Heights stacks and twist brick volumes outside of D.C.

The Heights, located in Arlington, Virginia just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., is a new academic campus that complements the relatively low-slung and conservative architecture of the context, and offers an compelling approach to public space. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in collaboration with architect of record LEO A DALY, The Heights consists

ODA’s 420 Kent leans towards the New York skyline with cantilevered massing and reflective glass

From South Williamsburg to Long Island City, the formerly industrial waterfront of Brooklyn and Queens is undergoing an exhaustive spree of development delivering thousands of residential and commercial units. 420 Kent, a project developed by Spitzer Enterprises and designed by New York-based architecture firm ODA, continues that trend with three mixed-use towers that establish a

Hickok Cole retrofits a former YMCA in Washington, D.C., with handcrafted copper shingles

Located in Washington, D.C.‘s centrally located and historic DuPont Circle neighborhood, 1701 Rhode Island Avenue serves as a demonstration of the aesthetic and performative impact of retrofit strategies. The project, designed by local architecture and interior design firm Hickok Cole, is an extensive overhaul of a 40-year-old former YMCA facility into a LEED Platinum Class

Rossetti lets light into the Henry Ford Detroit Pistons Performance Center with sawtooth glazing

Detroit is undergoing something of a revival; the center of the city is registering consistent population growth and with it has come a spate of high-profile building projects including SmithGroup’s Little Caesars Headquarters and SHoP Architects’ Hudson Site tower. Rossetti, a Detroit-based firm with an expertise in sports and entertainment venues and a local and national footprint, has continued this

Cullinan Studio and Toby Paterson shroud the Bunhill 2 Energy Centre with historically-inspired perforated aluminum panels

With its first electrified underground railway constructed in 1890, London can boast the world’s oldest metropolitan transport system in the world. Snaking across the capital city, the labyrinthine network, like that of any underground system, relies on massive ventilation systems to extract warm air from below. The Bunhill 2 Energy Centre, designed by Cullinan Studio in collaboration with McGurk Architects and