Exterior image of the Isenberg School of Management

BIG’s copper-and-glass-clad Isenberg School Expansion falls into place

Located on the outskirts of Amherst, Massachusetts is a new expansion for the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management. The building, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in collaboration with architect-of-record Goody Clancy, adds a new 70,000-square-foot study and social space for approximately 150 faculty members and 5,000 students. The massing of the

Construction image of the Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum announces itself with scalloped glass panels

The Denver Art Museum is undergoing a significant expansion and overhaul led by design architect Machado Silvetti and architect-of-record Fentress Architects. The project includes the restoration of Gio Ponti’s glass tile-clad North Building and the construction of an entirely new, elliptical-shaped welcome center defined by a scalloped structural glass curtainwall. The site of the welcome

Detail of a fluted granite facade at 277 Mott Street

Toshiko Mori Architect greets the Lower East Side with CNC-milled granite

Due to be completed in 2019, 277 Mott Street is a seven-story, retail infill project that offers a contemporary vision of contextual development in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Designed by the New York-based Toshiko Mori Architect—whose office is located just a few blocks away—the project features a custom-fabricated CNC-milled dark granite facade with vertical ribbons

Detail of an undulating, crooked facade

3XN’s Olympic House undulates with a parametrically designed glass curtain wall

Positioned adjacent to Lake Geneva and the Parc Louis Borget, the Olympic House is located on the outskirts of Lausanne, Switzerland. Opened in June 2019, the objective of the building’s scheme was to bring the International Olympic Committee‘s hundreds of employees, spread across the city, under one roof. The project—which began as a competition in 2012—was led

Image of project forecourt

Amherst’s New Science Center outperforms with a facade material quintet

In October 2018, Amherst College opened the New Science Center on its historic Massachusetts campus. The new academic building, which replaced an aging science center that was failing to keep up with its contemporary academic needs, is a six-story structure offering a home for six different science departments. Designed by the Boston-based architectural practice Payette with aggressive energy

Details of a vertically banded metal mesh facade

French 2D enlivens a Cambridge parking garage with a graphic-printed mesh facade

The rapid development of urban areas across the country is leading to the reappraisal of the commonly found, and often maligned, parking garage. Boston-based architectural practice French 2D has joined this trend by invigorating a drab parking garage using a mesh facade with dynamic graphics intended to serve as a large-scale artistic canvas as well

Birds eye view of Dune Museum

UCCA Dune Museum burrows into a Chinese beach

On a beach in northern China, light cannons emerge from the tops of a dune, hinting at a structure buried beneath the sand like a lost Courbusian villa. But the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Dune Museum (UCCA Dune) is neither lost nor buried, but carved into the sands of Bohai Bay by the Beijing-based

Congress Square splits past and present with fiberglass-reinforced plastic

Architectural preservation is often cast as a zero-sum game; historic structures are either painstakingly maintained or demolished in favor of contemporary development. Arrowstreet’s Congress Square, a 530,000-square-foot project in Boston’s Financial District, provides an alternative solution for this quandary with the restoration and consolidation of an entire block of historic structures that integrates a contemporary glass addition with a fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP)

SHoP’s Midtown supertall brings terra-cotta and bronze to new heights

Over the last two decades, SHoP Architects has pushed the envelope of facade design, leading a notable shift from predominantly glass-clad skyscrapers to supertalls incorporating a variety of materials. SHoP’s 111 57th Street is currently rising on Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row—a stretch of dizzyingly luxurious towers. The tower stands out with a facade that incorporates three materials: terra-cotta, glass, and bronze ornamental

Harvard updates skin of brutalist campus center for the 21st century

The Greater Boston area is home to a large collection of brutalist structures. Now, with these historic buildings passing their semicentennials, municipalities and institutions are reappraising their original designs and coming up with solutions to adapt them to contemporary needs. Harvard’s Smith Campus Center, a colossal academic building located on Massachusetts Avenue across from Harvard Yard, is an

Fabrics could be the next big thing in facades

Humans have been using fabric to create shelter for thousands of years. If a set of groundbreaking researchers and designers have their way, however, applications of textile-based architectural elements have the potential to play an important role in shaping the future of enclosures as well. Across scales and methods of application, research into the use

Rieder North America

The Rieder Group specialises in the production of solution-oriented, environmentally friendly, and economical concrete products. Inspired by the needs of our customers, Rieder extends the limits of the concrete material beyond its protective function.

NADAAA integrates past and present at Beaver Country Day

The Beaver Country Day School, founded in 1920, is located in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The school completed three major expansions to its campus over the course of its near-century-long existence, and in 2017, NADAAA and facade consultant Studio NYL completed a project to bridge these accretions into a cohesive whole with a comprehensive revamp of the interior and an enclosure

German hotel meets the street with a sintered stone facade

Completed this year, the Flare of Frankfurt is a seven-story, mixed-use project of hotel rooms, residences, and offices located in the center of the German city. The 260,000-square-foot project, designed by German-Iranian architectural practice Hadi Teherani, is clad in three-dimensional slabs of sintered stone. The massing of the complex matches the cornice line of the surrounding historic building stock

Florida garage adds new twist to stainless steel mesh facades

Garages are fairly ubiquitous across Florida—the state has one of the highest car ownership rates in the country—but in recent years, the local typology has received a bit of a revamp. Opened in February 2019, Sarasota’s St. Armands Circle Garage continues this trend with a spiraling stainless steel mesh skin. The $12 million project was designed by Sarasota-based Solstice Planning

UNC Charlotte’s Integrated Design Research Lab imagines an algae-glass curtainwall

On the outskirts of Charlotte, the University of North Carolina’s Integrated Design Research Lab (IDRL) is hard at work researching new tools of building technology. Currently, the team is developing a unitized curtain wall prototype fitted with patterned bands of microalgae capable of filtering polluted air and converting it into a source of renewable energy. The research lab’s

The Gaia House is a 3D-printed prototype made of biodegradable materials

WASP, a 3D printing studio based out of Italy, recently produced a full-scale residential prototype out of soil, rice products, and hydraulic lime. Measuring approximately 320-square-feet in plan, the project was completed in 10 days and was built in the town of Massa Lombarda in the region of Emilia-Romagna. The project, named Gaia House, aims