Gothic revival facade at Vanderbilt University “sprinkles” the past with modern efficiency

While gothic revival architecture can be found on nearly any campus, rarely are these traditional exteriors extolled for their energy efficiency. However, the residential E. Bronson Ingram College building showcases the historic character of the treasured Vanderbilt University campus while also achieving LEED Gold. Located in Nashville, the campus holds an eclectic blend of late

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

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,

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,

Installation of travertine panels at BIG’s twisting ‘The XI’ partially complete

Manhattan’s Far West Side is no stranger to development. Since the construction of the High Line in 2009, this Hudson River-bordered stretch of New York has undergone a feverish spate of construction, ultimately culminating with the city’s very own Dubai-on-the-Hudson (also known as Hudson Yards). However, just south of that sky-high cluster of glazed stalagmites, projects such

PLP Architecture stitches together past and present with a stone-faced precast facade

The City of London, the historic core and central business district of the metropolitan region, is a high-density patchwork of contradictory architectural styles dating from across centuries. 4 Cannon Street, a corporate headquarters designed by London’s PLP Architecture, recently joined this eclectic scene and succeeds in establishing a fine balance between past and present with articulated reddish-brown sandstone panels

Wheeler Kearns Architects blends architectural heritage and religious symbolism at the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School

Constructed in Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood just a few blocks west of Lake Michigan, the expansion of the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day primary school cuts a fine figure. The project, completed in 2019 and designed by Chicago firm Wheeler Kearns Architects, features a veil of light-beige brick draped over a rectangular volume and studded with vertically-oriented ribbons of glazing.

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 Sauerland Museum expansion staggers upward with travertine

Arnsberg is a small German city located northeast of the Cologne metropolitan region. The city is centered on the Ruhr and is surrounded by protected forested land, and largely survived the damage inflicted on other German cities during World War 2. Arising from this historical context is the Sauerland Museum expansion, one of the city’s most significant

A Norwegian town hall nestles into its surroundings with Jura limestone

Constructed in the heart of Bodø, Norway, a new town hall designed by Atelier Lorentzen Langkilde (ALL) delivers a contemporary interpretation of masonry to weave together an integrated civic center. ALL was awarded the 130,000-square-foot project following an international competition in 2013 and opened the renewed town hall in 2019. The result is a compelling gesture of shifting mass according

Thomas Phifer and Partners’s Glenstone Museum rises from the landscape with subtle monumental tectonics

With an extensive private collection of contemporary art ranging from the large-scale sculptural work of Michael Heizer to the oil-on-canvas abstracts of Mark Rothko, the new Glenstone Museum addition—opened in Fall 2018 and located in suburban Potomac, Maryland, just 15 miles from the city center of Washington, D.C.—is a testament to the role of placemaking as a

UN Studio enlivens a storefront in Amsterdam with flowing glass

Completed in December 2019, The Looking Glass is a four-story mixed-use renovation for developer Warenar Real Estate that offers a thoughtful solution for merging contemporary design within the centuries-old Museum Quarter of Amsterdam. Designed by Dutch architectural practice UN Studio, the approach addresses both the contextual and use demands of the site with finely curved glass panels and well-crafted

Glass panels with the sky reflected

REX and Front’s 2050 M Street stands lightly with fluted glass

Set to open in mid-March, 2050 M Street is a novel commercial project located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. REX, an architecture and design firm based in New York, is the design architect for the project. In contrast to the imposing massing of Beaux-Arts, Brutalist, and droll mid-century Miesian bootlegs that dominate the capital,

Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects’ Centrale nods to the Jazz Age with chevrons of terra-cotta

Midtown East is a competitive Manhattan neighborhood to design a new tower; the skyline is crowded with an assembly of jostling skyscrapers and landmarks constructed over the last century. Completed in 2019, The Centrale is an 803-foot-tall residential tower designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and developed by Ceruzzi Properties. The building strikes a middle ground between the

The Naturalis Biodiversity Center boldly stands out with red travertine and concrete

The Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, houses one of the world’s largest collections of zoological specimens and geological samples—counting over half-a-million for the latter. Beginning in 2015, Rotterdam-based architectural practice Neutelings Riedijk Architects led a significant expansion of the facility to accommodate the merger of the Zoological Museum and National Herbarium into the Biodiversity Center. The

Bonetti/Kozerski’s Pace Gallery rises over the Chelsea scene with volcanic stone and foamed aluminum

New York’s leading art galleries are in a figurative arms race; buildings upwards and outwards to accommodate museum-sized curatorial ambitions. In September, the Pace Gallery, led by Marc and Arne Glimcher, joined the fray with the opening of its new 75,000-square-foot gallery in West Chelsea. The project, designed by Bonetti/Kozerksi Architecture with facade consultancy by Studio NYL, is

A sketch from the upcoming Facades+ Transitions Detailing Workshop

Architects and engineers will hone their skills during Facades+ L.A.’s Transitions Detailing Workshop

Facades+ Los Angeles, taking place on November 14 & 15, is a two-day conference hosted annually by The Architect’s Newspaper that highlights the region’s most prestigious projects and advancements in facade technology. The second day of the conference is devoted to eight workshops that will provide a unique opportunity to dive into in-depth dialogues and tutorials with