The Architect's Newspaper July/August 2025
LACMA; Mecanoo and Marvel at Jacob’s Pillow; USPS turns 250; and more news page 6
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Bench Architecture designs a new concrete loft building in Bushwick page 10
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AN visits the U.S. office of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris in Oklahoma City page 14
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Lane Rick illustrates a puzzle in homage to a now-demolished modular utopian icon page 62
8 Open: Retail Reimagined 12 Development Roundup 61 Happenings 65 Sketchbook: Michael Malone 66 Comic: Amelyn Ng
Blessed Are the Model Makers Waterfront Living Train to Plane in Gowanus?
L.A.’s $900 million transit center at LAX is a win. Read on page 21.
A detailed look at New York’s community of independent and in-house fabricators. Read on page 16.
CHRISTOPHER PAYNE/ESTO
“He’s the keeper of the dream,” says an off-camera voice, introducing the man with the plan to reinvent Gowanus. “He’s the visionary who, for 30 years, has been leading the community efforts to make beneficial change in this place.” Some two decades before politician Brad Lander set out to reinvent the noxious Brooklyn neighborhood, a vocal resident named Buddy Scotto campaigned for the very same, his efforts chronicled in Allison Prete’s prescient 1999 documentary Lavender Lake (the title replicating the waterway’s nickname, for its oil-slicked surface.) Long ripe for redevelopment, the low-lying industrial area was still a sparsely populated artist enclave back then, when Lander was cutting his teeth with the Fifth Avenue Committee. Years later, as a city councilmember, the recent mayoral hopeful would spearhead the successful albeit controversial rezoning that is now briskly reshaping the neighborhood. The construction of new housing is continued on page 11
JASON O’REAR
VOLCANIC ESCAPES LAKE TEXCOCO ECOLOGICAL PARK Lobbies Are for Everyone!
Basalt Architects delivers ecoresorts in Iceland. Read on page 24.
Iñaki Echeverria leads a large-scale project in Mexico that stores stormwater, supports biodiversity, and adds recreation. Read on page 26.
GIORGIO POSSENTI
LUIS GORDOA
Everyone uses lobbies but almost always as a passage to somewhere else. You’re on the way to your own apartment or someone else’s; you’re off to work or to an appointment. There’s a sort of inchoate social norm that lobbies are a place where you don’t belong unless a social or business transaction awaits. This is incorrect: Lobbies are for everyone! You might not be able to get farther into the building, but the interior entrance area, usually accessible, gives you a good whiff of what’s around the corner. Why explore lobbies? They are the concentrated charm offensive in a building. No one would put all of the marble or chrome in their home into a foyer; many towers do. Lobbies are often the sole interior space in a high-rise where architects can have any fun at all. Every other floor tends to be the same thing or barely detailed from the start. My personal gawking habit ramped up during those tedious COVID-19 months, when I reached a certain explorer’s frustration with a New York continued on page 64
Glass Reflections on glazing. Plus resources. Read on page 31.
EMA PETER
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