Development updates from Portland, Detroit, Nashville, Charlotte, and other cities page 8
AN takes the train to Boston for a studio visit with Mikyoung Kim Design page 18
Kyle Miller diagrams three decades of architecture Projects. What’s next? page 22
Architects design inspiring K–12 and higher education projects across the continent.
Read on page 20.
fifth Exhibit Columbus delivers a range of community-focused design commissions.
On August 16, over 400 people braved the corn sweat to celebrate the opening of the fifth edition of Exhibit Columbus (EC), a self-described “exploration of community, architecture, art, and design that activates the modern legacy of Columbus, Indiana.” The main event took the form of a walking tour, which guided attendees to all 13 of this year’s installations: six by University Design Research Fellowship winners; four from J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize recipients; two community-led projects; and one environmental graphics package by Sing-Sing.
This year, contributors responded to the curators’ theme of Yes And , an invitation borrowed from improv theater that encourages performers to accept and then expand on what another performer has said. For EC, the idea is to affirm the town’s legacy while imagining new futures.
This year’s curatorial partners included Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison of Could Be Design, which participated in the last Exhibit Columbus cycle (Altshuler is also an AN contributor); Mila Lipinski, an architectural associate from Columbus (and a high-school participant in its 2017 cycle) who works at Duvall Decker; Rasul Mowatt, a writer and educator who is currently the department head and a professor at North Carolina State University; Chicagoans Elizabeth Blasius and Jonathan Solomon of Preservation Futures (Blasius is a former continued on page 12
Fall 2025 preview: the buzziest new buildings and renovations in the U.S. and beyond page 60
Editor’s Note Masthead
I was doomscrolling on Instagram recently when I was triggered by the title of a book: Is Architecture Art? Let me settle this once and for all: No. Architecture is not art. An architect is an artist in the same way a Subway employee is a sandwich artist. The descriptor is a gimmick that obscures the true conditions of the work. The affront summoned a choice line from Q-Tip in A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime”: “Rap is not pop / If you call it that, then stop.” OK, fine—architecture can be artful, but so can many other tasks when done with thoughtful attention. Historically, perhaps architects were closer to artists or artisans. These days? Not so much. Surely architecture is its own Thing with its own medium specificity, but rather than the half-century–long quest to establish (and defend) architecture’s so-called autonomy, it feels healthier (and more realistic) to acknowledge how the act of designing buildings is deeply enmeshed within the cultural and economic flows of our society at large. Every time the stock market flutters, someone fires their architect.
The question of “What is architecture?” is a timeless query because of the field’s inspiring endlessness, which makes the collection of responses from our annual readers’ survey so fun (page 8).
Appreciating the changing (even generational) concerns of architects is a worthwhile activity. It’s even useful to draw diagrams to understand these alignments. Charles Jencks did it in 1969, and his “evolutionary” chart made a splash when published in 1970. Its legacy remains compelling enough to power an exhibition, Chronograms of Architecture, and related eflux series. About nine years ago, Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal assembled architecture’s “political compass” to map the moment’s emerging practices. (This was after ZaeraPolo was accused of plagiarism and before his dismissal from Princeton.) In this issue, Kyle Miller stirs the pot with a diagram of the last 30 years of capital-p Projects in the U.S. architecture academe (page 23). Here, time flows from top to bottom and practitioners and offices are grouped by critical affiliations. His hope is that this serves as a conversation starter.
On the spreads that follow Miller’s, read about architects completing hardworking education projects, from Leers Weinzapfel Associates in Cambridge (page 24) across to DLR Group in San Jose (page 26), and VJAA in Toronto (page 28) down to Lake Flato in Houston (page 30).
Ahead of the ASLA conference in New Orleans, which takes place October 10 to 13, witness our annual landscape Focus section, which is seeded with informative case studies, products, and resources: Begin on page 33.
More broadly, this issue engages middles as places of occupation. You can call the in-between liminal space or, more geographically, flyover country. Stephen (Chick) Rabourn reports from Marfa, Texas, on the long journey of restoring Donald Judd’s Architecture Office by SCHAUM Architects (page 14); Anjulie Rao chronicles the pitfalls and promise of working as a landscape architect in the Midwest (page 42); for his story, Sebastián López Cardozo floats on a kayak in the middle of the new mouth of the Don River in Toronto to assess a flood protection and park project by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (page 34); and in the midst of the maelstrom of mind-boggling executive orders coming from the White House, check out the transcript from a roundtable discussion about how to resist (page 66).
In Kearney, Nebraska, Timothy Schuler visits the expanded Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) by BVH Architecture. The ambitious project, a boxy mass-timber addition to a U.S. post office, brings contemporary design to a small Midwestern city. Remember how the topic of museum storage powered projects like MVRDV’s Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen and Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s V&A East Storehouse? BVH now enters the conversation with an art vault that is faced in glass and visually accessible by visitors, a design decision that puts conservation on display. MONA is another example of architects using their skill to give form to “interdependence,” as Schuler describes it. See his review on page 16.
A similar spirit of local can-do was out in full force in Columbus, Indiana, during the opening of Exhibit Columbus. Its highlight was a parade of architecture enthusiasts who marched around downtown to appreciate installations created in dialogue with the town’s rich modernist history. Afterward, the joyous affair was tempered with unfortunate (and avoidable) disagreement over Sarah Aziz’s work, which resulted in its removal. Read about it on page 12.
On the steps in front of I. M. Pei’s Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, Akima Brackeen presented Pool/Side , a rectangular wading pool ringed by a blue-purple bench/plinth. Brackeen brought her research interest in water access to a city full of courtyards and likely the world’s best conversation pit (at the Miller House), so she was thinking about resilience, cultural identity, and exclusion. Her goal was to “reclaim the library as a site of joy, celebration, collectivity, and healing.” If architecture is sculpture plus plumbing, then this is most definitely that. Jack Murphy
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Vol. 23, Issue 6 September 2025
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Corrections
In the July/August issue’s story about model makers, Jenny Tommos was incorrectly described as running the model shop at Diller Scofidio + Renfro. She worked there but did not lead the shop. Also, the Model Makers Guild of New York exists to create community for working architectural model makers, not to attract more people to the profession.
Alligator Alcatraz is a prototype carceral facility that is being replicated across the U.S.
The highly contested detention center Alligator Alcatraz was built in the Everglades over the span of a week after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis leveraged a 2023 emergency order to expedite its construction. In late August, a judge ordered that Alligator Alcatraz be shut down. But already, it’s being replicated at sites around the country. A version is nearly complete in Fort Bliss, Texas, where Camp East Montana is being readied to hold up to 1,000 people. In addition to contractors like SLSCO LTD. who are constructing these sites, a number of architects have also completed permanent buildings for ICE. ISABELLA SEGALOVICH
Floating Museum’s for Mecca conjures the ghosts of lost architectures in Bronzeville, Chicago
A new 30-foot-tall inflatable artwork in Chicago by Floating Museum, a local collective, evokes the playful bulk of the bouncy houses that punctuate neighborhood block parties. The pneumatic sculpture features scanned and stylized historic photographs of nearly a dozen building facades printed on its fabric membrane. The story and physical memory of the Mecca Flats is the starting point for commemorating this broad collection of buildings that played important roles in the Black experience
in Bronzeville during the first half of the 20th century. JOSEPH ALTSHULER
Toshiko Mori, Tatiana Bilbao, Anne Holtrop, and others shortlisted in Jesus Christ’s Baptism Site museum competition in Bethany, Jordan
To commemorate the upcoming bimillennial anniversary of Jesus Christ’s baptism, a new museum will open in 2030 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site where the baptism took place in modern-day Bethany, Jordan. Malcolm Reading Consultants announced seven international firms that have been shortlisted to design the museum, as part of the competition’s second stage: AAU Anastas, heneghan peng architects, Níall McLaughlin Architects, Studio Anne Holtrop, Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO, Toshiko Mori Architect, and Trahan Architects. DANIEL JONAS ROCHE
Michael Maltzan Architecture to curate installation at Miami’s Bakehouse Arts Complex
To celebrate its fortieth anniversary, Miami’s Bakehouse Arts Complex will open an exhibition, Bakehouse at Forty: Past, Present, Future , this fall. An installation by Michael Maltzan Architecture will foreground the design work the Los Angeles office has been doing with the Miami nonprofit, namely its vision for new affordable housing, and commercial and studio space for the campus. DJR
Mark Cavagnero Associates and IwamotoScott Architecture complete the latest residential project on San Francisco’s Treasure Island
Hawkins, a 178-unit residential project by Mark Cavagnero Associates and IwamotoScott Architecture, adds housing to San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Featuring terraces, a courtyard, and waterfront access, it contributes to the island’s 8,000unit redevelopment plan, with 27 percent designated affordable housing. DJR
AIA responds to Trump’s plans for a new White House ballroom
In the beginning of the beginning of August, President Trump confirmed plans to expand the White House’s event space with a big, beautiful $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom designed in a classical style by Washington, D.C.–based McCrery Architects. In response, on August 5, the AIA issued formal recommendations to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, an advisory group established in 1964 and charged with the preservation of the White House. In its letter, the AIA emphasized that “this is more than an addition to a building. It is a transformation to an irreplaceable symbol of our democracy—guided by a process that is preservationfirst, performance-driven, and accountable to the public.” DJR
↑ Robert Mondavi Winery’s Napa Valley campus was designed by Cliff May; it first opened in 1966. Now, Aidlin Darling Design and Surfacedesign are reimagining the iconic winery. The architects have been tasked with ensuring that the winery’s physical presence reflects the client’s business and viticultural philosophy. The vision is at the intersection of hospitality, innovation, and land stewardship. DJR
↑ Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park was named after the former New York mayor who helped broker the 1979 master plan for Battery Park City. In 1996, Machado Silvetti, OLIN, and Lynden B. Miller designed the park synonymous with panoramic views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. As part of a major infrastructure program to insulate Lower Manhattan from rising sea levels, AECOM reengineered the 3.5-acre park with flood mitigation strategies, and Thomas Phifer and Partners designed a new pavilion there, slated to open in the next few months. DJR
Tesla Diner indulges in the whims of its fan base at the expense of the neighborhood
The newly opened Tesla Diner in Hollywood, designed by Stantec, blends a retro-futuristic diner, drive-in theater, and EV charging hub to cater to Tesla drivers. While offering a novel charging experience, it draws criticism for neighborhood disruption—blaring LED screens, obstructed views, heavy security, and disregard for local context. Critics argue its “green capitalism” aesthetic masks exclusionary design, prioritizing spectacle and brand image over community needs or genuine sustainability. SHANE REINER-ROTH
HNI to acquire Steelcase in $2.2 billion deal between U.S. workplace furnishing providers
HNI, an Iowa-based workplace furniture provider and residential building product manufacturer, is set to acquire Steelcase, a Michigan-based manufacturer of office, hospital, and classroom furniture. The terms dictate that
HNI shareholders will own 64 percent of the “combined company” and Steelcase shareholders will own 36 percent, as part of the $2.2 billion deal. DJR
Helmut Swiczinsky, Coop Himmelb(l)au cofounder who pioneered deconstructivism, dies at 81
Helmut Swiczinsky, cofounder of the architectural firm Coop Himmelb(l)au alongside Wolf D. Prix and Michael Holzer, died on July 29 after a long illness. Known for his teaching, writings, and role in shaping deconstructivism, Swiczinsky was part of the radical “Sixty-Eighters,” whose 1968 student uprisings in Europe inspired experimental architecture collectives like Archigram, Superstudio, and Ant Farm. DJR Sage & Coombe completes historically sensitive and sustainable library renovation in New Jersey
Brooklyn-based Sage & Coombe Architects revitalized the 70-year-old Maplewood
Memorial Library in New Jersey, expanding it by 33 percent while preserving its historic masonry shell and enhancing links to Maplewood Memorial Park.
The LEED Gold–certified design features modern accessibility, sustainable systems, flood protection, community spaces, and a warm “treehouse” interior, reestablishing the library as a vibrant civic hub. JOSH NILAND
A committee proposes scheme to reuse Kenzo Tange’s modernist arena in Japan, possibly saving it from demolition
In 2023, when the local government in Takamatsu, Japan, announced that Kenzo Tange’s Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium would be demolished, the decision seemed set in stone. Now, however, the Former Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium Regeneration Committee, led by architect Shigeru Aoki, has proposed a new foundation. On July 23, the regeneration committee asked to purchase the building from the prefecture so it could instead be repurposed.
JULY WINTERS
EPA looks to rescind regulations on greenhouse gas emissions
On his first day back, President Trump directed the EPA to review the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which deems greenhouse gases a public health threat. EPA head Lee Zeldin has now proposed rescinding it altogether, which would repeal all federal greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, engines, factories, and power plants, shifting regulation to states. The administration cites $54 billion in annual savings; critics warn of severe climate costs. The proposal faces review, public comment, and likely court challenges.
KRISTINE KLEIN
Colorado governor nixes proposal for new pedestrian walkway designed by Studio Gang in downtown Denver
In May, Colorado governor Jared Polis and state officials shared visuals of the Colorado 150 Pedestrian Walkway, an elevated pathway designed by Studio Gang that would splay out on the lawn and cross the road in front of the state capitol building. After the renderings were released and cost estimates shared, opposition to the project mounted. Now, following a public survey, the bridge is no longer part of the city’s 150th-anniversary plans. KK
As landslides continue in Rancho Palos Verdes, local officials consider a flat-out ban on new construction
Rancho Palos Verdes, facing ongoing Portuguese Bend landslides, is considering a permanent ban on new construction, replacing a temporary moratorium set to expire in 2025. The proposal would halt new builds, additions, and accessory structures, while allowing repairs on existing footprints. Supporters cite public safety; opponents fear property devaluation, overreach, and inclusion of lowerrisk areas. Forty homes are already uninhabitable. JW
How will PBS and NPR cuts impact public discourse about architecture? Ken and Ric Burns, Paul Goldberger, and James Sanders weigh in (online)
PBS, long a hub for educational and cultural programming, including major works on architecture, faces a 15 percent budget cut after Congress, following President Trump’s direction, pulled $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Critics warn the move will harm rural stations and
public access to local news, education, and the arts. Supporters of PBS argue it is vital “social infrastructure” fostering civic engagement, empathy, and cultural understanding. DJR
PAU breaks ground on Innovative Urban Village in East New York, Brooklyn
Innovative Urban Village is a forthcoming community in East New York, Brooklyn, designed by Practice for Architecture and Urbanism that promises 2,000 deeply affordable homes spread across 10 new buildings. The neighborhood—which will include housing, shops, and a trade school—will rise on the site of a parking lot, not far from Jamaica Bay. DJR
California Forever CEO Jan Sramek shares plans to bring a high-tech manufacturing plant to the speculative Silicon Valley city
California Forever, a proposed city for 400,000 north of Silicon Valley, debuted in 2023 but hit delays last July after backlash over public subsidy plans. Founder Jan Sramek has since shifted focus, unveiling Solano Foundry, a 2,100-acre, 40-million-square-foot advanced manufacturing park on the same site. The facility, to be leased by JLL, marks a reimagining of the controversial East Solano Plan. DJR
Presidio Tunnel Tops by Field Operations gets an expansion, increasing access to the San Francisco park
Presidio Tunnel Tops, a 14-acre elevated park in San Francisco by Field Operations, has welcomed over 5 million visitors since it opened three years ago. With the recent addition of Outpost Meadow, the park has expanded another 1.5 acres. JW
Is the Trump administration weaponizing a Washington, D.C. building renovation to oust Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell?
The Trump administration’s new appointees to the National Capital Planning Commission are using cost overruns in the $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve’s Marriner S. Eccles Building to pressure Fed Chair Jerome Powell to resign. Critics allege the project, approved in 2021, is overly extravagant. Powell, at odds with Trump over tariffs and interest rates, denies wrongdoing, while Democrats move to limit the NCPC’s authority over D.C. property. In July, Trump showed House Republicans a draft letter firing Powell, polling support, but he hasn’t acted yet. Meanwhile, Trump tapped Stephen Miran to serve as a Federal Reserve governor and put more pressure on Powell. DJR
The amount of federal funding U.S. Department of Transportation secretary Sean Duffy rescinded from California’s high-speed rail program. Construction crews have begun the track-laying phase on the 171-mile endeavor. Already, 50 major railway structures and over 60 miles of guideway have been built for the project. DJR
MANICA and TVS to design new Oklahoma City Thunder arena
Coming off its recent NBA championship win, the Oklahoma City Thunder shared renderings for a new arena. The 750,000-square-foot facility will be built downtown on the site of the former convention center. The team has tapped two firms with a long roster of sports projects: MANICA will serve as design architect and TVS as the architect of record. The new arena is expected to complete in 2028. KK
↓ Another building has been completed at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, this time by local practice Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects and OSD. The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine opened its doors to its inaugural class of 48 medical students in July. The building’s striking design was largely informed by Ozark geology, most notably its rocks, mountainous terrain, and verdant landscapes. DJR
Developer Hines looks to bring the West Coast’s tallest skyscraper to San Francisco
Developer Hines has submitted an updated proposal to replace the former PG&E headquarters at 77 Beale Street. The new 76-story tower would introduce 1.65 million square feet of office space, enhancing the area alongside the recent $250 million renovation of the Transamerica Pyramid, led by Foster + Partners. Standing at 1,225 feet, the skyscraper would be just 25 feet shorter than the Empire State Building and would become the tallest building on the West Coast. JW
Arizona wildfire destroys historic Grand Canyon Lodge, among other structures
In mid-July, the Grand Canyon Lodge on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim—a National Historic Landmark—was among at least fifty structures consumed by a wildfire, including administrative and visitor facilities along with a waste treatment plant and gas station. Amid the spread of the Dragon Bravo Fire, the Grand Canyon’s North Rim is now closed until further notice. JW
Eames Institute focuses on legacy with new art and design museum, Lars Müller Publishers acquisition, and Eames House reopening
In recent years, the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity and the Eames family descendants have actively preserved the legacy of Ray and Charles Eames. Their initiatives include reopening the Eames House, unveiling a new Institute office, and acquiring Lars Müller Publishers. In August, the Institute announced plans for an art and design museum at the former
Birkenstock campus in Novato, California. Renowned firms Herzog & de Meuron and EHDD will lead the adaptive reuse of the warehouse and office buildings, transforming the site into a vibrant, multicultural space for exhibitions, workshops, retail, and showcasing the extensive Eames collection and archive. KK
SWA/Balsley and ParkerRodriguez transform a hazardous Washington, D.C., intersection into a new public space
The once-controversial intersection of Florida Avenue, New York Avenue, and First Street Northeast in Washington, D.C.— formerly home to a Wendy’s— was acquired by the city through eminent domain. The 1-acre section of roadway has been made into a new, vibrant urban living room designed by SWA/ Balsley and ParkerRodriguez.
DJR Get the full stories and daily news updates at archpaper.com.
Keep an eye on these new and upcoming developments with high-profile architects and flashy anchor tenants.
Across the country, city dwellers look forward to new places to live, work, and play, but a wellcrafted master plan can’t survive on buzz alone. The success of urban development relies on the promise of long-term economic benefits, which justifies the investment necessary to bring architects’ visions to life. Here, AN looks at major developments across North America.
Portland, Oregon
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and ZGF’s master plan for the new OMSI District received an additional $5 million in funding and approval to begin phase one of construction this year. The project includes 24 acres of transit-oriented, mixed-use development, and partnerships with Indigenous communities through the creation of the Center for Tribal Nations, designed by the Indigenous-led Earthwise Design, and a waterfront education park. The plan includes up to 1,200 new housing units, with at least 20 percent reserved for low-income families.
All this is in addition to a bevy of new public libraries funded by a $387 million bond passed in 2020 by Multnomah County. The funds have supported renovated and new libraries designed by firms like Bora, Colloqate, Holst Architecture, and LEVER Architecture.
Anchored by the region’s first four-year medical school, designed with Buro Happold as advisers, the Pearl district is a $1.5 billion mixed-use development. The project is the result of a public–private partnership led by Atrium Health and Wexford Science & Technology and includes design by CO Architects and Ayers Saint Gross. Alongside the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Charlotte campus, plans for the Pearl include retail, office, and residential space with an outdoor plaza. Elsewhere in Charlotte, the Bowl at Ballantyne is being developed by Northwood Investors, which tapped LandDesign, Sasaki, and Cooper Carry to design up to 1,000 multifamily units, 200 hotel rooms, and 4.5 million square feet of office space.
Balling with a Budget San Antonio
The San Antonio Spurs’ new arena will serve as the anchor for Project Marvel and comes with a $500 million investment from the NBA team toward a multibillion-dollar plan for a sports and entertainment district downtown. The funding was a large stepping stone for Project Marvel, but public pushback may put the project in jeopardy. If it moves forward, it will encompass the expansion of the Henry B. González Convention Center, improvements to the Alamodome, and a retrofitting of the former John H. Wood Jr. Federal Courthouse into a concert venue that could seat between four thousand and five thousand people. With the Spurs’ lease with Bexar County ending in 2032, the pressure is on to begin construction to dissuade the team from moving.
All Aboard
Philadelphia
Last year, SOM and Amtrak began work on a revitalization of the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station. The $550 million renovation, coordinated in partnership with Plenary Infrastructure,
Gilbane Building, Vantage Airport Group, and Johnson Controls, will modernize and expand the station—improving its underlying infrastructure while creating more retail space. SOM, OLIN, and Parsons Brinkerhoff also created a master plan for the area surrounding the station as part of an ongoing development site for what has been dubbed the 30th Street Station District. Temple University and SGA have staked their claim on the nearby North Station District, with Essence Development tapped to join the mixed-use project on Amtrak property.
Ford Motor Company’s purchase of Michigan Central Station meant more than just revitalizing the Beaux Arts building. PAU, Buro Happold, and Ford created a master plan for the Michigan Central innovation district, encompassing the 30-acre site that includes a mobility hub, retail, public plazas, and 1.2 million square feet of commercial space. In its first year, Michigan Central Station has welcomed Ford employees, Google Code Next, and over 100 start-ups. Out front, Roosevelt Park received a $6 million upgrade with Mikyoung Kim Design, Woods and Watts, and OHM Advisors. Joe Louis Greenway, a landscape project by SmithGroup, will link the campus to neighborhoods throughout Detroit. Elsewhere, in Brush Park, six architecture firms, including Merge Architects and Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, recently completed buildings for Bedrock’s 8.4-acre City Modern development. It sports 450 new residences and retail spread across 20 new buildings.
Woodbine Entertainment, the owner of Woodbine Racetrack, recently announced a $170 million investment in a Metrolinx GO Station for the track. The new transit hub is ushering in an expansive development of 684 acres to create an urban center surrounding the horse-racing venue. SWA is leading the early work for the development of the master plan, which will set the stage for building on the largest undeveloped tract within Toronto. In other news, architecture and urbanism practice Allies and Morrison just opened a new studio in Toronto after working in Canada for almost a decade.
Nashville
Amazon Nashville and Pinnacle Financial Partners headquarters were some of the first buildings to be completed at the 19-acre Nashville Yards, headed by owner and developer Southwest Value Partners. Pinnacle will take up 10,000 square feet of retail space within Amazon Nashville’s two office towers. A new entertainment complex, Hooky Nashville Yards, was recently announced for the Creative Artists Agency’s midrise office and entertainment building. The complex will include a 12-screen movie facility, dining options, bowling, and video games. Entertainment offerings at the development also include The Pinnacle, a 4,500-capacity music venue brokered by AEG. JW
We asked you, dear readers, this question during our 2025 reader survey. Here are the most poetic, insightful, and wittiest of the 700-plus responses.
Creating space for a community to live in & thrive for generations.
Forms brought together in light and darkness
Architecture is anything that circumscribes the hearth.
Architecture is a way of humans solving our needs to live securely, safely, and comfortably by keeping ourselves from the harshness and harms (dangerous climate) of our environment (aka Earth).
Whatever the architect says it is…
Thinking about making buildings. May sound oversimplistic, but that’s it!
Creatively imagined built spaces and sculptural edifices to solve problems and stir the soul.
Architecture, to me, is making order and beauty out of chaos, so that we as humans can live comfortably, restfully, and at peace with one another.
It is the art and technique of designing and building and, at its best, is an expression of our ethics and our values.
The Art of Space
Haha, great question. Short answer: everything. But where is the good architecture?!
The art and science to endeavor to better the built environment for current and future generations in view of the multiple challenges it faces
An intentional scaffold for human life to unfold
Design, Bitches!
Es un arte en movimiento �� �� , es un espacio infinito y habitable con una sensación que se transforma
Architecture and interior design work together to produce a more meaningful experience for the end users. Architecture should also be contextual, relevant, inclusive, community-based, and collaborative.
Imagination turned into reality for better living
The practice of architecture is an ever-evolving intellectual discipline that explores not just the built form but also the values, meanings, and culture behind design, beginning with concepts, philosophies, and context.
What I do
Architecture is life.
From a camo’d cave to earthen roofed condos
The creation of new spaces and places that should be fully inclusive, welcoming, and usable by all potential users, without the need for adaptation or special features (like ramps, platform, lifts, etc.)
Solving problems
That which dignifies human enjoyment of life
Architecture is like pornography. You know it when you see it.
I am reading Vitruvius again. Do you know he proposes architects, along with everything else, need to know about music? That they are able to tune stringed instruments? Well, it’s true. I am a terrible musician. I sing off-key. I don’t even understand what a “key” is. Does this make me a bad architect? Vitruvius would say YES. Don’t tell the Architectural Review Board.
Cultural interventions in our communities that teach us to be healthier, more equitable, and responsible environmentally
Architecture ranges from humble shelters to monumental public spaces, and from minimal cabins to futuristic megastructures. It spans everything from ancient ruins to modern smart buildings.
Balancing art, function, inspiration, materials, and budget to create built environments that advance the state of human civilization.
Painting with light; really big Legos
Art that you live in
From 50 BCE: Utilitatis, Firmitatis, Venustatis plus “on time and at the right price.”
The built environment in which we live. Interior and exterior, living and stationary. It can be boring or can excite the senses (preferred). It has purpose.
A better question would be to ask what isn’t architecture.
The heart and soul of what we are as a civilization. The canvas upon which we paint our lives.
How you design something that fits into the surrounding environment. I am a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright.
When art means engineering and they build something that history will remember forever
Robert Venturi posits that the wall is more than just a barrier or a structural element. It is the spatial record of the complex interplay between interior program and exterior context. The wall becomes the site where the inherent complexities and contradictions of life and the building’s function are resolved and expressed architecturally.
The creative design of space used to shape and contribute to people’s lives
The resolution of forces and energies in the designed environment. The intent shaping the designs and the experience of those using the environment.
The careful design, consideration, and stewardship of the built environment that positively impacts the ecological and social conditions of all beings. (All else is or will soon be garbage that will need to be reconsidered someday by thoughtful architects.)
BEFORE
BŌK Modern’s integrated metal systems bring new life to existing buildings. Their precision-engineered stair and balcony guardrails retrofit seamlessly into current structures, delivering durability, enhanced performance, and minimal disruption—all while meeting code requirements.
ARCHITECT : Pyatok | GC: Nibbi Brothers BOKMODERN.COM | info@bokmodern.com
Playful accents do more than add decorative character. They can also create inclusive, empowering, and efficient spaces, as in these glimmering new projects.
Stories by Gin
For a 463-square-foot ice cream shop, Kilogram Studio was tasked with translating the Scooped By Demetres brand’s identity without displaying its product. Instead, the design team focused on Scooped’s warmth, form, and texture. For the former, coral micro-cement, terra-cotta hues, and a red-orange floor, laid in a staggered pattern, create an immediately inviting space. The service counter is the shop’s central focus, where staggered metal panels feature perforations, as if scoops were taken out of them; the plates also serve as cone holders. Behind, a fluted mirror wall integrates the pint merchandise freezer and conceals the back of house. The textured wall reflects the light and the brand via a signature, delicate, and proprietary pattern on its waffle cones. These tripartite components make up the backbone of the ice cream shop as well as a purposeful yet lighthearted interior.
Pier 58, Waterfront Park by Field Operations Pier 58, Seattle, Washington 98101
Downtown Seattle’s piers were originally constructed in deep water several feet out from the natural shoreline to accommodate industrial use. Over the years, the shoreline was filled in to bridge the gap between the city and piers, but this intervention obstructed salmon migration paths. Field Operations has worked to revitalize the area via the Waterfront Park project, which includes the rejuvenated Pier 58. Located between the Seattle Aquarium and Seattle Great Wheel, the pier comprises three zones: an open plaza, a great lawn with the restored 1974 Waterfront Fountain by James FitzGerald and Margaret Tomkins Fountain, and a marine-themed playground. The playground, designed in collaboration with Earthscape, takes the shape of an 18-foot jellyfish. Wooden tentacles act as climbing devices or slides, surrounded by kelp-like poles. Crucially, the plan also integrates an opening between the pier and seawall to allow natural light to reach the salmon corridor below.
An unassuming arched doorway marks the entry to ALBA, a new Los Angeles location of a popular coastal Italian New York restaurant. It leads to a barrel-vaulted corridor whose compactness gives the impression that a dark, windowless dining area lies beyond—but it’s a trick. GRT Architects created an element of surprise so that the transition opens to a courtyard with wood built-ins and plantings. Arched niches are finished with bright and buoyant murals by StudioPROBA. A yellow and white scalloped ceiling drips with aluminum chains that disguise the air vents, a nod to the parasol ceiling in the Manhattan flagship. Seating continues outdoors over cobblestone pavers and surrounded by plaster walls, trellised to train climbing plants. A striped fabric roof adds a beachy touch while serving as protection in case of inclement weather. Finished with ivory leather upholstery, sandy terrazzo, and chrome-framed Cesca chairs, ALBA is a feast of color and coastal chic.
1500 1st Street, Suite 120, Napa, California 94559
The white box gallery gets a playful, geometric twist. Craig Steely Architecture used shapes and custom-designed furniture to divvy up the 4,500-square-foot indoor–outdoor space of this minimalist gallery and wine-tasting room in downtown Napa, which combines wines from a Russian River standout label and art curated by gallerist Serge Sorokko. The most prominent feature: large floor-to-ceiling circle walls that break up the main gallery space. But the lively elements are more than decorative—they offer more surface area to hang and display art. The circle walls can also rotate on their axes to create new configurations in tandem with the exhibitions. They fall alongside curving black benches with built-in tables and a semicircular bar and host counter, all united by a sleek, shiny finish. The effect enlivens the typical gallery typology without losing elegance and sophistication to moments of play.
Kindred Stories is a bookstore and community space celebrating Black authors. It’s located on the ground floor of the historic El Dorado Ballroom, the 1939 venue that hosted B. B. King, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, and Ray Charles. Gin Design Group aptly looked to the building’s history and spirit for the design of the retailer. The space unravels through bold color blocking. Bright green millwork defines one section of books, while deep blue and Merlot designate other zones. The colors are unified with a custom wallpaper, “A Garden for Kindred,” by artist Tay Butler. The blue wallpaper clads the space, depicting portraits of Black authors and icons, interspersed with polka dots and vintage flowers. The lively touches are grounded by naturally stained white oak and cork. The latter makes up a stage to host community events. Portable plush furniture and built-in banquettes divide the shelving and event area.
Moogie Pilates by THOUGHTBARN 4300 Speedway, Suite 105, Austin, Texas 78751
Lively colors and retro curves define a Pilates studio in Austin. The 1,600-square-foot space in a converted post office building opens with a fluted, coral-colored wall that transitions into a reception desk. Across from it, a waiting area is distinguished by a green carpet and furnished with blue details, from slim locker-style storage to a minimalist bench. The area opens into the main studio, where rounded mirrors reflect the bright coral wall back into the otherwise white and neutral space. In the hallway, light pink continues the diverse colorful palette, brightened by a cove where a skylight allows natural light into an otherwise dark hall. In the bathroom, local firm THOUGHTBARN made another contrast: Bright blue tiles clad the room. But nothing is too rectilinear here: The bathroom is finished with a wavy, irregular-shaped mirror, a small detail that ties the design back to its entry space. KELLY PAU
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continued from cover Midwest editor of AN); and Too Black, an Indianapolis-based poet, scholar, organizer, and filmmaker.
On the evening before the walking tour, a welcome reception at the Inn at Irwin Gardens (the original home of the Irwin family) gathered participants, curators, board members, donors, special guests, press, and media. A sense of excitement and anticipation hung in the air, in addition to the humidity. Mark Elwood, board of directors chair of the Landmark Columbus Foundation (LCF), compared it to the Olympics: You train for two years and then you get two weeks to perform. Later, the party migrated to the top of a downtown parking garage to witness the debut of Joy Riding by Studio Barnes, a speaker assembly inspired by the Midwest’s car culture.
The six University Design Research Fellowship projects were Inside Out by Chandler Ahrens, Constance Vale, and Kelley Van Dyck Murphy from Washington University, a tower made of model interiors from the town’s well-known buildings, populated by Girard-like dolls made by local youth; Pool/Side by Akima Brackeen from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which installed a shallow wading pool set within a purple plinth in front of I. M. Pei’s Cleo Rogers Memorial Library; The Steel Horsie by Andrew Fu, Aaron Goldstein, and Aleksandr Mergold from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a demountable space frame of signpost extrusions anchored by blocks of recyclable scrap metal; Apart, Together by Michael Jefferson and Suzanne Lettieri of the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, a lenticular sign with chroma-keyed colors that came alive through an augmented-reality app programmed with films and local archival footage; PUBLIC/SCHOOL/GROUNDS by César Lopez, Jess Myers, Amelyn Ng, and Germán Pallares-Avitia of the University of Virginia School of Architecture, Syracuse University School of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP, and Rhode Island School of Design, respectively, who created a playscape inspired by school buildings and lined with custom carpets as an outdoor classroom; and A View of the World from Indiana by Sarah Aziz from the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning, which sported a dozen bathtub Madonnas adorned with sculptures of Midwestern architects under a crane-supported banner that read NOTHING TO SEE HERE.
This year’s show involved some controversy. Aziz’s piece, installed on the lawn of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, which includes a K–8 school, was removed after the opening weekend. Aziz told AN that she “wasn’t provided a clear reason and had several false accusations hurled at [her.]” Some of the wooden figures, carved by artist Steve Carner, were nude. Aziz offered to cover their privates with cloth, but this upset Carner, who limited the display time of his artworks to three weeks. (Originally the shrines were meant to be populated by models of prominent buildings from the twelve states that make up the Midwest, but in early July, Aziz decided to include the sculptures instead.) Aziz said these changes were approved by all parties, while LCF executive director Richard McCoy said Solomon and LCF worked with Aziz to review the new concept “to make the entire piece suitable for public display.” He noted that “additions and changes were ongoing through the installation process, some of which were neither understood nor approved.” St. Peter’s reviewed the work during installation and allowed it “to be on their property” for the weekend. The banner was only flown during the opening days. Afterwards, the church complained, and EC directed Aziz to take down the entire installation. McCoy noted that the “request was not specific
to the sculpture but the totality of the installation.” EC’s press release stated that the work was “removed due to Sarah Aziz’s late and unapproved changes to the concept and its resulting on-site execution. As installed, the work did not meet Exhibit Columbus’s high standards.”
Aziz said the church was supportive during the project’s realization, but apparently this was not the case internally: In an email newsletter sent after the opening, St. Peter’s wrote, “the outcome of this partnership was not what we had hoped for, and it left us very disappointed.” Aziz said the fragile grottoes were damaged when they were relocated to a “garden opposite the church” where they will be on view.
See below for images and descriptions of the four Miller Prize installations. JM
The Irwin Block was a prominent Victorian building downtown; it burned down in December 2022, leaving a vacant lot. AD—WO responded with the elliptical design of a pavilion consisting of tripod-like columns that anchor cabling with bamboo shades surrounded by planted berms. Speaking to the crowd, AD—WO cofounder Emanuel Admassu connected the idea of an ellipsis—the three dots that signal an absence—to the geometry of an ellipse. AD— WO cofounder Jen Wood discussed thinking “about fire as a disruptive force, but also a force of repair, restoration, and resilience.” To that end, the surrounding berms have been landscaped with native plant species.
→ Lift by Studio Cooke John
In the sunken court of First Christian Church, Studio Cooke John founder Nina Cooke John translated the grid of Eliel Saarinen’s facade to the ground and made it inhabitable through a series of frames. These portals are enlivened with the pageantry of large fabric banners inspired by kites. The tall pieces can be seen from the street above and might draw curious passersby. Cooke John anticipated their use as a hang-out space and saw it as the realization of a desire to let everyone in Columbus and beyond know that this congregation is a “living, breathing, and welcoming community.”
→ Accessing Nostalgia by Adaptive Operations
Charlie Vinz leads the Chicago-based office Adaptive Operations with a focus on adaptive reuse. Here, at the Crump Theatre, Indiana’s oldest known theater still in operation, Vinz has repurposed metal siding as the roof for a woodframed canopy. Underneath, the earliest wall of this historic building, which dates from 1871, is now on display. On the facade of the theater, 130 silhouettes of Columbus residents who have helped maintain the building are displayed in the shape of an arched window that was originally there in the early 20th century. Vinz said he was thinking about the traps of nostalgia when engaging in progressive preservation.
→ Joy Riding by Studio Barnes
Constructed by Matchless Builds, Barnes’s trunk-like sound system is interactive: The piece is Bluetooth enabled, so visitors can connect and play their own music during designated hours. Barnes told the crowd he was inspired by “the feeling you got when you first passed your driver’s test, got your license, and told your parents, ‘I’m leaving, and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.’ And then you blast the music really, really loud, and you’re doing everything with your friends.” Barnes thanked the city of Columbus “for allowing us to break all of your rules, because there are a lot of rules.”
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SCHAUM Architects restores Donald Judd’s Architecture Office in Marfa, Texas.
Was Donald Judd an architect? At a 1989 workshop about the relationship between art and architecture with Frank O. Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, César Pelli, Jean-Louis Cohen, and other heavy hitters of the day, Judd introduced himself as an “uncertified but active architect.” We ought to take him at his word: At the time, Judd was already established as an artist, critic, and founder of The Chinati Foundation and directly involved with projects like Bahnhof Basel/Peter Merian Haus in Switzerland, the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, and various competition entries with Italian architect Lauretta Vinciarelli. Given his abilities, it is painful to imagine what Judd might have realized later in life had he not died in 1994 at age 65 from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Judd’s most lasting architectural legacy, however, is arguably located in Marfa, Texas, where he purchased a clutch of commercial buildings that he renovated to suit his personal and professional needs. These efforts were sensitive to the organization and craftsmanship of the originals while stripping down the interiors to expose the structural systems and internal volumes, creating master classes in adaptive reuse long before it was prioritized in architectural practice. Most interiors were hidden behind adobe walls or curtained windows. The space he dedicated to his architecture work, however, was located on a prominent downtown corner. Under Judd Foundation’s care, it has long been shuttered and remained somewhat of a mystery to casual observers. The only real clue as to its contents were vinyl letters on the storefront glass that read: “Clarence Judd, Architecture.” (Clarence is Judd’s middle name.)
Now, after nearly a decade of planning and $3.3 million in restoration work led by Troy Schaum, principal of SCHAUM Architects, Judd’s Architecture Office will open to the public in September.
The ground-floor office contains architectural drawings and models installed among Judd’s own furniture. An upstairs apartment, appointed with six paintings by John Chamberlain and furniture by Alvar Aalto as well as Judd, all permanently installed, will be accessible. (It will also be made available for visiting scholars and researchers.) Other ground-floor spaces will be used by Judd Foundation for public-facing and
institutional functions. The Architecture Office, and other buildings occupied by Judd, are managed by Judd Foundation, which is a separate entity from The Chinati Foundation, a museum founded by Judd in 1986. Judd’s downtown buildings, in addition to other structures that establish the town’s historic mercantile vernacular, were a major reason for the creation of the Central Marfa Historic District in 2022.
“The restoration of the Architecture Office simultaneously embraces challenges of sustainability in the desert climate, the history of Marfa, and Donald Judd’s work,” Schaum told AN . “Through the phases of the work, the building was meticulously restored brick by brick but also reexamined holistically to incorporate Judd’s interventions for the building with practices embedded in Marfa’s historic urban fabric.”
Formerly known as the Glascock Building and built in the heyday of Marfa’s ranching economy in 1907, the 2-story, 5,000-squarefoot building housed various businesses over the decades, and locals still remember buying magazines and candy there as children. Judd bought it in 1990. He then sandblasted the paint off the brick and removed the interior plaster on the east wall of the architecture office, on which he then hung architectural drawings.
After the renovation of 101 Spring Street in New York City by ARO was completed in
2013, Judd Foundation, led by Judd’s children Rainer and Flavin, turned its attention to the Marfa properties. It hired Schaum, then of SCHAUM/SHIEH and new to the faculty at Rice University, to comprehensively document all the buildings to assess both their physical needs and those of Judd Foundation as an institution.
Judd Foundation identified six major restoration projects and began with the Architecture Office, both for its prominent location downtown and its dilapidated condition. It was also an opportunity to see what could be accomplished in Marfa using local tradespeople, as Judd had. Exterior work began in 2018, repairing and repointing the brickwork and replicating the historic double-hung windows, degraded beyond repair and long boarded up, now with insulated glazing instead of single-pane sheets of glass.
A full-scale interior restoration followed, with Schaum working closely with the Texas Historical Commission and Method Building Company of Marfa. But in June 2021, as the project was nearing completion, fire destroyed all of the Architecture Office but the structural brick envelope, triggering emergency structural shoring and a fouryear delay. Fortunately, the spaces had not been reinstalled at that time, so none of Judd’s original materials or furniture were lost, and, according to Schaum, since the documentation was thorough about fabricators and sourcing, the team was well prepared for the reconstruction effort.
A distinguished architect in his own right, Schaum embraced the complexity of preserving buildings Judd had stripped down to their essential elements and materials while avoiding climate control systems, making the preservation of sensitive
artworks and architectural drawings an ongoing challenge. In the interim, he also led the restoration of the Chamberlain Building, across Highland Street from the Architecture Office, and is currently in the planning phases for work on the artillery sheds at the Chinati Foundation, which house Judd’s celebrated 100 untitled works in mill aluminum
“The nice thing about working in the legacy of Donald Judd and the work at the Judd Foundation in Marfa,” Schaum reflected, “is they like to look at things comprehensively down to the essential elements and first principles of the work, whether it’s artwork or architecture or furniture.”
While forced-air mechanical systems were avoided, hidden passive ventilation systems and enhanced envelope control were used wherever possible without affecting aesthetic or historic character. Solar panels are tucked behind the parapet on the roof, for example.
The exception to this light touch, however, is an exterior awning that wraps the west and south elevations of the building. Modeled on historic photos—but intentionally nonhistoric in its design by way of the historic commission’s requirements—the new awning is an essential new element. It will shade the extensive storefront glazing, which reduces the necessity of interior shades during the day and allows for a sense of visual openness. It’s also a civic gesture that invites pedestrian traffic and offers respite from the intensity of the high-desert sun. This urban gesture is significant for Judd Foundation. The Architecture Office’s extensive glazing, Schaum noted, connects the interior with the street in a way that no other Judd building does. This exposure feels somehow long overdue.
Judd was meticulous, a quality that can be seen in his writing, artworks, and building restorations. He was sensitive to objects
and their context and to the wider natural landscapes within which people live and where culture is created. The Architecture Office offers a chance for visitors to understand Judd’s architectural engagements, which are an underappreciated part of his creative ambitions. Thirty years after Judd’s death, his legacy in Far West Texas continues to reveal and sustain itself.
Judd Foundation will celebrate the opening of the Architecture Office on September 20.
Stephen (Chick) Rabourn is an architect in Marfa, Texas.
The Museum of Nebraska Art’s new mass timber addition by BVH Architecture treats Kearney as part of a much larger and interconnected world, like its collection.
BVH Architecture’s design for a new, 16,000-square-foot addition to the Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA), an institution dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of work by artists who “were born, lived, trained, or worked” in Nebraska, reinforces (inadvertently, in some cases) this sense of Kearney as a crossroads, a relatively small and remote community that is nonetheless inextricably linked to the broader world.
downtown Kearney. It was an important step but an awkward fit, with narrow rooms and carpeted walls and a grand but imposing architectural presence.
Since the city’s founding in 1871, things have flowed in and out of Kearney, Nebraska. Located on the Platte River near the center of the state (and the geographic center of the continental United States), Kearney formed at the junction of two railroads, which linked it to Chicago in the east and Sacramento in the west. Today, the city of 30,000 is a popular pit stop for both eastand westbound travelers on Interstate 80 and for migrating sandhill cranes, which travel a perpendicular path along the Central Flyway, drawing tens of thousands of people to the area each spring.
As MONA curator Karissa Johnson told AN while showing off an exhibition of song quilts that interpolate traditional Russian and American folk songs, “Not every show [here] is about Nebraska. When we’re working with artists, the shows are about whatever they’re thinking about, and that’s not always ‘home.’”
MONA’s history dates to 1976, when a group of faculty members at Kearney State College—now the University of Nebraska at Kearney—assembled a small collection of art by Nebraska artists. “To garner support, they took it on the road,” Johnson said. “They traveled it to all these communities across the state, and that’s what got the buy-in [for MONA].” In 1986, the collection moved into its first permanent home, a former U.S. post office building completed in 1911 and located at the northern edge of
Informed by a 2015 strategic plan and subsequent consultation with New York–based MAASS, the new $38.5 million addition accompanied a full renovation of the 1911 post office building. The project vastly increases the museum’s exhibition, education, and art storage space while forging a new civic identity for a full city block of downtown Kearney. Clad in copper-tinged gray zinc panels and set on a plinth that raises the structure closer to the level of the existing post office, the 2-story building responds to the museum’s priorities of transparency and curatorial flexibility. Strategically placed fenestration brings in natural light and creates visual interest from the street, while a pair of prominently placed glazed entrances establish a more welcoming arrival sequence and deposit visitors at the main lobby.
Just off the main entrance, a new community space, designed to host school groups and art classes, migrates the museum’s education programs from the basement of the post office building to a flexible and lightfilled art studio. “A lot of public schools are
losing their arts funding—[some] don’t even have dedicated art teachers—so we are being asked to step in and fill that gap,” Johnson explained. What the basement is used for is visible art storage, where a viewing area increases the amount of art on display and also gives visitors a glimpse of how the museum works. Initially, BVH designed the visible storage vault as a 2-story, transparent tower that would have occupied the central area where the retail space is located. “You could walk all the way around it, and you’d be able to look down into the basement and see the art and the curators,” said Mark Bacon, a principal at BVH Architecture. Budget constraints and concerns about the amount of daylight the art would receive led the team to scale back, but the commitment remained. “Even with doubling our gallery space, we can still only show a small percentage of the work that we have,” Johnson noted.
Despite the limitations of the existing post office building, a core concern of the museum’s board was that the addition would relegate the existing structure to secondary, back-of-house uses, diminishing its importance and public role. “They wanted that building to still have meaning and a place within the institution,” Bacon shared. “One of the directives was not to abandon
the existing building, which I thought was really great foresight.” As an act of deference, BVH Architecture pushed the new building back from the street. “The buildings are the same height, but because [the addition is] pushed back, it makes it feel smaller,” Bacon said.
Inside, the line separating the two buildings is completely blurred. Visually, the new lobby space flows seamlessly into the post office building due to a custom, illuminated wood soffit inspired by the geometries of origami cranes that extends from the retail space into what museum staffers call the Link, a long, linear space that connects the new addition with the 1911 building. While contemporary, white-walled gallery spaces on the first and second floors of the new building provide a contemporary museum environment and the desired curatorial flexibility, the post office building is integrated into the visitor experience through the creation of three unique gallery spaces—including one for kids—and a public reading room.
The building’s mass timber structure is characterized by a series of doublings: The CLT floor slabs feature a double cantilever, which avoids the need for columns at the entrances and between the new and old buildings. In the second floor gallery spaces,
double glulam beams are structurally redundant but provide a trough for lighting and electrical conduit. Similarly, the white walls of the gallery float inside the timber structure, creating a void where the architects placed the building systems.
Bacon said that mass timber was an obvious choice, that the use of wood not only lowered the building’s carbon footprint but also connected back to the area’s vernacular architecture. “It’s a familiar agrarian material,” Bacon said. “We wanted to take what can be a white box and bring in something that was softer and warmer.”
The decision may feel less obvious to Nebraskans, and Kearney natives in particular. The dominant architectural material in Kearney is brick; it characterizes everything from the elegant industrial buildings that line the city’s active rail yard to the paving of downtown’s Central Avenue. Locals even refer to downtown Kearney as “the bricks.”
In fact, BVH Architecture had to apply for a variance because of a local ordinance that mandates that the facades of buildings in downtown Kearney be brick. The architects succeeded by arguing that a brick facade would not be distinct enough from the post office building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Just as notably, Nebraska has had a strange and historically fraught relationship with timber. For decades, federal policy incentivized the planting of trees in plains states like Nebraska, which were seen as barren. In 1902, in a doomed effort to establish a timber industry in the state, the U.S. Forest Service planted an experimental pine forest in the Nebraska Sandhills, north of Kearney, displacing the native grassland ecosystem with plantations of ponderosa pine—a folly that is the subject of Dana Fritz’s Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape, which documents the present-day maintenance of the unnatural forest.
Mass timber may be an appropriate choice at MONA, but not because it is reflective of its cultural context. It feels appropriate because it connects to trends outside of Kearney and beyond Nebraska. The use of mass timber and the inclusion of visible storage space represents an awareness by the architects of global concerns such as carbon emissions and universal access, as well as an active, engaged interest in contemporary materials, buildings systems, and technologies. It represents what Kearney, and MONA in particular, has always represented: interdependence.
Though in some ways geographically isolated, Kearney is not and has never been
an island. Embedded in the MONA’s collection, and in the architecture of its new gallery spaces, is a recognition of the broader world—and a window through which to see it.
Timothy A. Schuler is a journalist and design critic whose work has appeared in Metropolis, Monocle, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Bloomberg CityLab, and Places Journal, among other outlets. He lives in Manhattan, Kansas.
Below: The new and existing buildings are the same height, but the addition is set further
Bottom left: The mass timber structure is left exposed in white-walled gallery spaces.
Bottom right: Artworks in open storage are on display behind glass walls.
At Mikyoung Kim Design, landscape architects operate at the intersection of ecological restoration and public health, with an emphasis on neurodiversity.
Mikyoung Kim founded her eponymous landscape architecture office in 1994. Today, the Boston firm she helms is located near the Back Bay Fens, a link in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, among the greatest examples of landscape urbanism in the U.S. Since its inception, Mikyoung Kim Design has added even more leisure space to Boston’s already picturesque public realm with a contemporary twist, such as transformative contributions to Boston Children’s Hospital, Northeastern University, and Harvard Medical Center. But the firm has projects all over—in New York, Detroit, Miami, Chicago, Virginia, and North Carolina, and farther afield in Seoul, South Korea, and Tangier, Morocco. Many of its clients are universities and hospitals. The Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise positions itself at the intersection of ecological restoration, design research, and public health, with an emphasis on neurodiversity. An internal research group at Mikyoung Kim Design focuses on urban noise pollution, or “din,” and its correlation to cardiovascular disease and mental illness.
“Noise” is a recurrent theme for Kim. A talented pianist, she went from high school to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, one of the world’s most competitive conservatories. That was until tendinitis affected her left arm, stunting Kim’s music career. She shifted gears and studied landscape architecture and public art at Harvard GSD and MIT. After grad school, she spent many years as a full-time faculty member at RISD. Since then, Kim has built a genre-defying practice at the nexus of her multivalent interests of sound, public art, ecology, health, and more. “When I first started studying landscape architecture, I was admittedly not very good at it,” she told AN , looking back upon her journey. “It felt very rigid, as though certain important facets were being left out of the conversation. Sound is so important to how we perceive and experience space. COVID-19 was a turning point. I remember getting lots of inquiries from university and hospital clients who wanted to learn more about our research on the healing effects of landscape design. I was getting many phone calls where people would ask: ‘What do you know?’”
Texas Medical Center Helix Park, 2023
The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is a sprawling campus in Houston planned by Elkus Manfredi Architects. It has a total 6.5 million square feet of institutional and commercial research, hotel, conference center, apartment, and restaurant space. In 2023, Mikyoung Kim Design completed TMC Helix Park, a public facility that offers a variety of programming for passive recreation and contemplation. The park is in
a floodplain along Brays Bayou; it was built to manage a 200-year storm by creating a “sitewide sponge” that alleviates flash flooding, with the site raised 5 feet above the floodplain. It has over 650 trees and is passively cooled by heat-reflecting pathways. Waterfall benches and streams abound.
Wellesley College is sited on a 500-acre campus in suburban Boston originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., in the early 20th century. Architecturally speaking, the college is stately, a hodgepodge of Gothic Revival buildings familiar to folks in New England that run up against newer ones by SOM, Rafael Moneo, and other firms. A master plan for Wellesley Science Hill by Mikyoung Kim Design was just
completed, transforming 47 acres of the campus and its accompanying Wellesley Botanic Garden. The plan helps insulate the botanic garden’s plant collection from increased storm surges and global warming thanks to an ingenious hydroponic system. “Universities are like people,” Kim says. “Each one is different.”
Boston Children’s Hospital Green Master Plan, 2023
Access to nature is scientifically proven to bolster medical recovery, which drives Mikyoung Kim Design’s interest in working with hospital clients. Another built project that fits this bill was a “green master plan” for Boston Children’s Hospital, also completed in 2023. Elkus Manfredi Architects was again the project architect, together with Shepley Bulfinch. The design ultimately delivered four new open-air gardens,
three interior winter gardens, and a redesigned main hospital entry to the campus. “In each garden we provided a variety of spaces, from intimate nooks to more open terraces,” Kim said. “A layering of natural materials frames each of these distinct zones, from stone benches to evergreen microforest and butterfly gardens; each of these contemplative spaces are surrounded by nature.”
How can the Village of Bal Harbour, Florida, unify and update its public spaces? Today, Mikyoung Kim Design is working with Bal Harbour Village officials to better connect pedestrians with its oceanfront, adding more space for outdoor dining, performances, and public gatherings. Together with Cadence, a local studio, Mikyoung Kim Design envisions a tiled promenade featuring a “kaleidoscopic stone
mosaic,” as the studio described it, that begins at an existing busy avenue and extends out to a jetty that hugs the sea. The mosaic is meant to mimic the water’s palette of hues, in line with Mikyoung Kim Design’s philosophy of being at the intersection of ecological restoration and public art. Removed from vehicular traffic, the space will serve both pedestrians and cyclists. DJR
As August ends and September sweeps in, we turn our attention to spaces of learning in both the K–12 and higher education markets. Here, news editor Daniel Jonas Roche assesses interior improvements at the Harvard Science Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Leers Weinzapfel Associates (page 24); former managing editor Richard Martin appreciates DLR Group’s new student center for Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California (page 26); Alex Bozikovic ventures out to visit a boathouse in Toronto for the Upper Canada College by VJAA (page 28); and executive editor Jack Murphy surveys a new K–12 complex designed by Lake Flato for the Awty International School in Houston (page 30). But first: Read what leading deans are looking forward to during the Fall 2025 academic semester, and don’t miss Kyle Miller’s assessment of the last 30 years of intellectual projects in architecture.
I’m eager to keep us focused on what matters most: confronting climate change and advancing social justice in the built environment. The current wave of political posturing—meant to distract—will pass. What endures is our educational mission, rooted in equity, sustainability, and resilience. The classroom is a powerful place to teach transformation. By holding fast to these values, we give students the clarity and courage to lead with vision and purpose, even in uncertain times.
ROBERT ALEXANDER GONZÁLEZ, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico
Here’s what we’re optimistic about at Spitzer. Yes, challenges are all around us, but we’re thriving uptown. Enrollment is robust—the studios are full—and we’re building community and fostering wellness to retain students. City Labs are up and running at Spitzer, with the brand-new, state-of-the-art Robotics Lab being the crown jewel of the research ensemble. The Atrium Gallery reopens on September 15, featuring Work in Progress, a faculty exhibit curated by professors Nandini Bagchee and Pedro Cruz Cruz. And I am cohosting rePURPOSE, the Sciame Lecture Series, with Adi ShamirBaron, which starts on September 11.
MARTA GUTMAN, Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
In the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, bringing together research and design is part of our DNA. This synthesis is foundational to what drives us as an institution. As we begin a new academic year, I’m excited for the discoveries—and the questions— that will emerge from our work, from yearlong research studios on climate, technology, and housing to the bold policy innovations from UCLA cityLAB. I am profoundly inspired and optimistic about the ways we, as designers and academics, bring together diverse knowledge and ideas to reveal new possibilities for a better future.
MARIANA IBAÑEZ, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design
I am optimistic about our fantastic new faculty hires, who will enrich the expertise, backgrounds, and pedagogies of our school. We are excited to critically engage AI with our newly appointed Kavita and Krishna Bharat Professor, a position focused on AI and design. (Stay tuned to see who we hired!) Two other hires, Rayshad Dorsey and Alaa Suliman Hamid, will also introduce our students to alternative ways to work with communities and think about spatial justice.
AKI ISHIDA, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis
Among the most enduring aspects of Mies van der Rohe’s legacy at IIT is our critical engagement with building technology as a central focus of the design curriculum. This fall, we are excited about inaugurating a new, sustainability-based, technology research enterprise (located in our 14,000-square-foot, 50-foot-high fabrication center) that we believe can transform IIT’s programs as much as our home, S. R. Crown Hall, did when it opened 69 years ago.
REED
KROLOFF,
IIT College of Architecture
TSOA is exploring partnerships with a constellation of places rooted in communal and creative experimentation, taking the form of interactive workshops, course collaborations, and design-build initiatives. I am most excited to see how these projects can generate fresh critical perspectives on architectural knowledge as a reflection of its social, economic, and environmental infrastructures, helping us imagine transformative responses to the unprecedented pressures they face at this moment.
STEPHANIE LIN,
The School of Architecture
As the Fall 2025 academic calendar begins, architecture deans from across the U.S. respond to a timeless question: What challenge/topic are you looking forward to engaging with at your school during the fall semester?
In a time of increased divisions, I am most excited about finding ways to open our doors—both literally and figuratively—to the public and to the world. Our academic programs, exhibitions, and events are not just for our students and faculty; they are invitations for dialogue with the broader community. By engaging diverse audiences in these discussions, we can elevate our disciplinary discourse while making architecture more responsive, inclusive, and impactful.
IGOR MARJANOVIĆ, Rice School of Architecture
Over the past four years, Taubman College has successfully launched a new bachelor of science degree in urban technology and an undergraduate minor in real estate. Now we are scoping a new graduate degree and evolving our academic offerings to reflect emergent needs and opportunities at a time of accelerating change.
JONATHAN MASSEY, University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
The Pratt Institute School of Architecture celebrated its 70th anniversary this past academic year with events and two exhibitions: one about recent student work and the other about our history. This coming year, we are building on the excitement around this work to host programs that look at the role of our fields in shaping the public sphere and to support faculty and students as they continue to tackle the challenges communities are facing, such as dealing with the climate and housing crises.
QUILIAN RIANO, Pratt Institute School of Architecture
Architects and academics both traffic in futures—a future world and future graduates who will impact our world. We constantly prototype our way to a better future by debating, designing, and drawing it up. We do so creatively, critically, and collectively. While we live in challenging times—unprecedented, unfathomable times—architects and academics remain committed to pointing forward. September is a time for new students, new classes, new notebooks, new pens, and hope.
SARAH M. WHITING, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
With several building and infrastructure projects underway, I’m looking forward to engaging in conversations about our physical environment. How do we recognize and honor our beautiful, historic buildings while projecting a forward vision for teaching and studio environments? How do our spaces prioritize community and collaboration? What is our contribution and relationship to the larger University of Texas campus landscape and to the greater city of Austin?
HEATHER WOOFTER, University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture
I’m optimistic that our faculty and students will continue to be change agents for the built environment— expanding knowledge and inquiry in ways that surprise, astonish, and meaningfully address environmental, social, and cultural challenges...in the present and the future.
MEEJIN YOON, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University
For the past thirty years, critical architectural practice and architectural education at academic institutions in the United States have explored the generative capacity of an ever-expanding set of (digital) design techniques. This work, initially motivated by the introduction of computers into design studios and sponsored by theoretical frameworks from fields outside of architecture, aimed to produce novel formal, spatial, and material qualities and effects. Occasionally, sustained development of design techniques escaped academia and influenced professional practice. For example, the interest in single surface geometries and continuous surfaces explored by architects such as Neil Denari, UNStudio, and Diller + Scofidio in the 1990s materialized in projects completed by their offices in the 2000s.
In recent years, however, architects seem less concerned with extending academic pursuits into practice and have increasingly (and almost exclusively) embraced their roles as stewards of the built environment, expanding their purview to include political and social dimensions. Engagement with these issues is no longer optional—it is essential. Yet, the depth and sincerity of this engagement vary widely. Some architectural practices demonstrate genuine transformation, while others adopt the language of change without meaningfully altering their core operations.
This raises a critical question: What role can architectural education play in shaping an evolving professional landscape? Additionally, how impactful are the increasingly insular efforts of academic architects in the United States? Can students truly carry forward the ideals of positive change promoted in school into practicing within the built environment? And what becomes of the past three decades of experimentation in form, space, and material—much of it catalyzed using digital tools in design, fabrication, and representation in both education and practice?
To answer some of the questions posed above and trace a lineage of ideas in architectural design and education, it’s worthwhile to link academic architects and critical practices to one another and speculate on the potential for new, networked academic design communities to advance shared affinities for novel architectural propositions. One objective of the diagram that accompanies this text is to make these existing and potential networks clear, and the overall underlying ambition of tracing lineage is to reassert academia as an incubator of the future of the discipline and practice, a persistent objective of architectural education since architectural degrees were first offered in the U.S. over 150 years ago.
It’s important to begin by acknowledging that higher education is under scrutiny. How can higher education reclaim its relevance as a site of critical, meaningful intellectual inquiry? The same question applies to architectural education, which has grown increasingly diffuse in its emphasis, values, and objectives, often at the expense of deep engagement with core competencies—the essential skills that enable architects to create and manipulate form, space, and material with control and intention. Without a deep commitment to these skills, students may struggle to attain positions of influence or demonstrate the expertise required to collaborate with colleagues, clients, consultants, and contractors and, ultimately, lead building projects. Without expertise, not only will emerging professionals lose their ability to be instrumental in professional practice, but their lack of sustained intellectual inquiry and participation in architecture culture—tied to form, space, and material—will negate the possibility of their contributing to, or conceiving of, Projects in the discipline of architecture, grounded by informed practice
The notion of a Project was established by Peter Eisenman, who encouraged intellectual, theoretical, and philosophical engagement with the discipline of architecture. A Project unfolds over time and is incrementally constructed and revealed across multiple acts of architecture. Without disciplinary knowledge and design techniques (and perhaps an ideological framework for their application), architectural education and practice, and therefore architecture students and architects, will become susceptible to reacting passively to the multiple and often contradictory demands of context, clients, regulating agencies, media, economics, culture, society, and politics. It’s relatively easy to identify where Projects have emerged previously. While the idea of an architecture school overtly declaring an ideological position and a self-defined Project feels almost foreign today, history offers powerful examples: the Bauhaus in Weimar (1919–25); Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship (1932–2003); Harvard under Walter Gropius (1937–52); IIT under Mies
A diagram of three decades of architectural Projects sets the stage for provoking contemporary discourse.
van der Rohe (1938–58); the Texas Rangers at the University of Texas at Austin (1951–58); the Philadelphia School at the University of Pennsylvania (1951–65); John Hejduk at Cooper Union (1975–2000); Werner Seligmann at Syracuse (1976–90); Bernard Tschumi at Columbia (1988–2003); Sylvia Lavin at UCLA (1996–2006); and Robert Somol at the University of Illinois Chicago (2007–22). Each of these moments represented more than a collection of educators with aligned interests; they embodied intellectual Projects that demanded sustained focus and collective commitment. These schools produced generations of architects who shared values, beliefs, techniques, and ambitions and who, in turn, reshaped critical and professional practice. Does anything like this exist today? As a result of schools’ embracing the marketplace and privileging broad appeal and inclusivity over focused identity and exclusivity, I definitively state that it does not . Could a school once again host a singular vision with rigorous investigation and transformative design? Because commitment to a Project would deny students access to diversity of thought, I suggest that it would not be prudent to do so.
If architecture schools today are not the right place for the cultivation of Projects, where will novel and inspiring intellectual inquiry in architectural design come from? The Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), founded in 1967 as a nonprofit focused on architectural and urban design research and education, is an example of collaboration between like-minded individuals that advanced theoretical discourse and shaped architecture culture. The most productive period at the IAUS occurred between 1967 and 1980. Since then, there have been several examples of cross- or extra-institutional collaborations. In addition to historical exhibitions such as Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA in 1988, Architecture Non Standard at the Centre Pompidou in 2003, and more recent groups such as the Black Reconstruction Collective and WIP Collaborative, I’d like to highlight Matters of Sensation, a 2008 group show at Artists Space in New York City curated by Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich, showcasing architectural forms that induce fantasy, intimacy, and pleasure; and, if I may, Possible Mediums, a series of events that took place around the United States from 2012 to 2018, organized by Kristy Balliet, Kelly Bair, Adam Fure, and myself, which explored new conceptual supports—speculative mediums such as narrative, profiles, and puzzles—for architectural production.
Beginning in the 1990s, ease of global communication and access to, and production of, information via the internet offered a new form of collectivity for academic architects. For the generations mentioned above, what often started as individual design investigations quickly became networked pursuits and enabled the possibility of Projects existing beyond the boundaries of individual schools—rather than being forged from immediate physical proximity. Projects became conceptual and representational frameworks built atop foundations of carefully selected and developed design techniques, references, and aesthetic sensibilities. What the existence of Matters of Sensation and Possible Mediums suggests is that there no longer exists a need for a school to commit
to a Project. So, does anything akin to these group efforts exist today? It doesn’t seem so. The predicament raises important questions: Where does design discourse exist? Who are the emerging thought leaders among academic architects?
Two generations ago (as seen in Matters of Sensation), several individuals, many of whom were in school when computers were first introduced into design studios, carried forward with them the responsibility to insert digital design techniques into critical practice. Their collective Projects can be typified by three primary areas of interest: (1) Architecture as animated form, (2) architecture via topological models, and (3) architecture for affect and sensation (often tied to digital fabrication). A generation ago, as seen in Possible Mediums, four collective Projects could be identified: (1) Architecture from architecture, (2) architecture as a conceptual art practice, (3) architecture without legible order, and (4) architecture as associative forms.
A glimpse at the newest generation of academic architects elicits hope for the cultivation of new collective Projects. After a multiyear hiatus in the early 2020s, novel conceptual and representational frameworks of architecture are being developed with a renewed commitment to technique. I’d like to offer a provisional grouping of these individuals organized around shared values and overlaps in the visual and material qualities of their work. Selected for attention they’ve garnered, acclaim they’ve earned, and the potential of their work, each of these individuals and offices has, through their actions and words, made a commitment to academic discourse and critical practice. Their collective efforts produce collaborative proto-Projects, respectively convened around the following: (1) Architecture as geometric precision, (2) architecture as living entity, (3) architecture as an extension of identity, and (4) architecture as almost nothing.
Time will tell if these nascent collaborations coalesce into intentionally collective pursuits, as has been the case in recent generational Projects, but there is potential in their renewed commitment to design. The hope now is that some of these individuals will take responsibility for initiating and cultivating a generational conversation that can mature and advance architectural education and the discipline of architecture, putting pressure on professional practice to do the same.
Nota Bene
These groupings capture moments when design educators across the country made their presence known and declared affiliations to unique formal, spatial, and material pursuits during formative years of teaching and critical practice. The diagram tracks incremental and ever-changing trends and sensibilities in academic discourse and, in the best-case scenario, their maturation through practice. I hope this contribution serves as a conversation starter for the forces that will animate architectural education and critical practice in the years to come.
After decamping from Spain to the U.S. in 1939, Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert said he wanted to “bring the color and life of the Mediterranean” to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sert, Jackson and Associates was founded in 1963 with Huson Jackson, and Sert served as dean of Harvard GSD until 1969. Flash forward: Sert’s oeuvre has become integral to Boston’s urban fabric, but it’s aged quite a bit, warranting rehabilitations all over the Eastern Seaboard. Sert’s Boston University School of Law tower (1964), Peabody Terrace (1964) and Holyoke Center (1966) at Harvard University, Riverview Houses (1974) in Yonkers, and Eastwood apartment buildings (1976) on New York City’s Roosevelt Island have all been subject to renovation. Since 1998, Leers Weinzapfel Associates, a Boston office, has been working on the Harvard Science Center,
completed in 1973 by Sert, Jackson and Associates for Harvard’s History of Science, Statistics and Computer Services departments, and its Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. This year, Leers Weinzapfel completed an interior renovation at Harvard Science Center, delivering new, more-welcoming study and social spaces. Having had a working relationship with Harvard Science Center for over two decades, Andrea Leers, Leers Weinzapfel cofounder and principal, told AN her office is a “friend to the building.”
“It’s been fun. We really love this building and appreciate it,” Leers said. “We’ve sort of entered the spirit of Sert, who was a very inventive person in identifying his intentions. We often said to ourselves: ‘What would Sert do?’”
At Harvard Science Center, Sert, Jackson and Associates successfully combined multiple programs into a single modernist landmark at the nexus of Massachusetts Avenue and Kirkland, Oxford, and Cambridge streets. A talented urbanist, Sert envisioned the building’s ground level as a public space, yielding a network of interlocked pathways. The bona fide educator also designed the Harvard Science Center as a learning tool, with its structure and systems left open to see, not unlike the Centre Pompidou (1977), by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, which came a few years later.
Project architect Winnie Stopps said in describing Harvard Science Center’s likeness to the Pompidou: “They’re of the same era, when structure and systems were expressed. As part of that, what Sert tried doing in this building was make it an adaptive learning device, so engineers and scientists could see how it’s put together. Sert wanted to make a building that could be altered in the future. I think he was trying to make a living building.”
By 2004, Leers Weinzapfel had completed three rooftop additions at Harvard Science Center, transforming its profile and giving scientists there much more wiggle room. It was one of the office’s first built projects. “Huson Jackson, Sert’s partner, was still alive then,” Leers said. “He came over and looked at our studies and said, ‘Oh, we tried to do that, but they cut it out because of cost.’ The addition on Oxford Street was originally intended, and so he was pleased to see that happen eventually. We’ve done a number of renovations at the building since then, largely because the way science is taught has changed so much, and because the way students study is also so different.” Then came another renovation by Leers Weinzapfel Associates in 2017. For Leers, Stopps, and project architect Zhanina Boyadzhieva, this latest update was about transforming transient corridors into places where students and faculty want to stay awhile.
The original labs and classrooms inside the Harvard Science Center had scant visual connection to the outlying pathways. Their spatial assembly was very much of its time, when Louis Kahn’s philosophy about “served” and “servant” spaces formatted so many buildings in its image. (Think: Kahn’s Esherick House or Richards Medical Research Laboratories.) This binary arrangement made for admittedly bleak learning environments at Harvard Science Center, especially in winter. To better visually connect these spaces and broadcast the scientific inquiry happening within them, Leers Weinzapfel swapped out solid partition walls with glazing along major corridors, giving passersby portals into labs and classrooms.
“We were interested in putting science on display,” Boyadzhieva said. “In terms of materiality, we searched for minor but impactful insertions we could make.”
Existing red accents and gray tones designed by Sert, Jackson and Associates were augmented with new, more polychromatic furnishings and felt graphic walls. A new wood-slat ceiling that greets visitors upon entry was introduced, providing a calmer, biophilic quality. There’s also a new laptop bar that fronts the atrium edge, and a new advising suite that surrounds an open student lounge and lab classroom along Harvard Science Center’s eastern corridor. A mezzanine on the second floor was expanded; this was achieved with new cantilevered balconies and accompanying recessed alcoves.
Harvard Science Center isn’t landmarked, but there were certain rules in place set by Harvard University for negotiating the structure—some parts of the building simply couldn’t be touched. The red accents, for instance, had to be respected and left in place. Many of the structure’s built-in details were off limits. “We didn’t change the major handrails around the atrium. We did, however, renovate the stair to make it accessible to today’s code,” Leers explained. This latest renovation at Harvard Science Center is a case study in adapting Brutalist structures for modern needs, a way of looking back in order to then move forward. DJR
Left: A new desking bar now fronts the mezzanine, located beneath a skylight.
Opposite page, clockwise from top: Wood-slat ceilings were introduced to warm up the Harvard Science Center’s interior; solid partitions were replaced with glazing in the labs and classrooms to better visually connect these spaces to the corridors; new furniture was installed in the ground level corridor to encourage building users to spend more time there.
DLR Group creates a student services complex for Evergreen Valley College in San Jose as a gateway that transforms a commuter school into a welcoming environment.
What is a brand-new $86.3 million student services complex doing at a community college? It’s a fair question, and there’s a good answer. In San Jose, California, home to Silicon Valley and some of the most expensive residential real estate on the planet—where the median home sales price hovers around $1.5 million—property taxes and a bond measure passed by residents provided funding for Evergreen Valley College (EVC), allowing it to commission DLR Group to design and build a gateway and entry point to its 175-acre campus.
In response, DLR Group created a 74,000-square-foot hybrid student service and administrative building with a curvilinear facade featuring a large canopy, an oculus connecting the two separate uses, and a breezeway that welcomes students and professors to pass through on their way to classes—or to hang out in the shade. The complex is certified as LEED Silver, built with sustainable materials. With its extensive glazing and vertical fins, the attention-grabbing structure looks like something you’d be more likely to encounter on the fabled grounds of Stanford University, just 30 miles to the west, but this project intentionally allows the “have-nots” to get a taste of what the “haves,” well, have.
The student services complex opened in August 2024, five years after visioning and community engagement sessions sought input mainly from students but also from a bond oversight committee. The input drove the college and DLR Group to deliver a unifying space for a campus that lacked a focal point, according to Dr. Andrea Alexander, the vice president of administrative services, who also served as client consultant.
Noting that EVC’s students are generally less well off and from more diverse backgrounds than many of their neighbors in the bustling region, Alexander told AN that the new complex addressed a key question: “How can we help our students, who would normally not have these opportunities, be ready for a globalized world so they can change the trajectory of their particular circumstance?” She added that creating a more inclusive, welcoming education environment would eventually allow the students and their families to “not only live and survive here but want to stay in this particular area that’s really, really costly.
Before the architects could tackle one of the main issues that arose from student input—that the EVC campus lacked both useful communal spaces and quiet areas for study and reflection—a transformational visual identity was needed.
Originally setting out to create two separate buildings, one for student services and the other for administration, DLR Group seized the idea to create a single structure to serve as a gateway, according to global design leader and principal Vanessa Kassabian. “There was a whole discussion about where the front door would be,” she told AN. By connecting the two, the building would symbolically join students and staff, and DLR Group created a breezeway with a curved glass oculus above that opens to the sky and looks to the plaza below.
EVC is a commuter campus; here, students earn twoyear associate degrees and generally live in less-affluent areas within driving distance. The school (and architects) thoughtfully used the project as impetus to design a new arrival experience. A design committee worked with Siegfried Engineers to regrade the entry road from the public right-of-way to bring the ground floor to the same level. The new entry plaza, accessible from Tamien Way— named for the Indigenous Tamien Nation—improves traffic flow, allowing students and others to either be dropped off en route to class or to make their way to parking garages.
The gateway design provides copious choices. “Even as you approach the building, there’s a lot of transparency,” Kassabian said. “The entry is facing west, and so we used a lot of the sun-shading devices and the canopy to draw people toward the center.
Unlike four-year universities and their destination-worthy campuses, community colleges aren’t generally known for dynamic public spaces. The student services complex at this institution, however, is as impressive inside as out. The grounds surrounding it, designed by landscape firm Joni L. Janecki & Associates, provide attractive outdoor spaces for study and social gatherings.
DLR Group placed a double-height lobby in the student services wing, with a multilingual “Welcome Wall” reflecting many of the languages spoken by EVC students, as well as a symbol recognizing the Native Americans who originally occupied the land. Alexander said that the three top languages spoken on campus are English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and the graphics concept proved such a hit that students whose languages weren’t represented asked to be included.
The wall and lobby design, which includes acoustic wood slats on the walls and ceilings to mitigate noise from the terrazzo floors and color coding to help direct students to the service areas, was part of a concerted effort by DLR Group to provide a pleasant experience and inclusive wayfinding. Kassabian explained that the firm’s higher-education division conducts regular research to foster innovation, and the integrated approach allowed architects to collaborate on wayfinding, acoustics, and other elements of the project, including facade design.
DLR Group, with input from EVC administrators, including Alexander, rose to the challenge of creating communal spaces with the inclusion of the oculus. This light-filled space has become a favorite gathering spot on campus, as it serves as both an events space and a visual landmark that further assists wayfinding.
A bridge connecting the student services building and the administrative offices, including the president’s suite, added more opportunities for gathering. From this vantage point, DLR Group highlighted the mountain through the extensive glazing.
The LEED Silver certification, awarded this past spring, reflects a commitment from the school and architects to work with sustainable materials and methods. “Our facade team does a lot of analysis in terms of solar control and where the wind and light are coming from,” Kassabian said. “It’s all specific to place. We understand the sun angles and determine the depth of the fins of the facade and where they’re located. We use our specialty studios to work through some of the details.”
The student services building is also connected to the campus’s PV solar array and central plant and is integrated with the chilled water distribution system. Even the breezeway was designed to provide shading and natural wind distribution. The project achieved a 46 percent reduction from the Energy Use Intensity benchmark.
Perhaps more importantly, the complex has added panache to a community college where students can skill up and train for careers without the exorbitant cost of a major university. And the thoughtful design streamlines the student experience while fulfilling the administration’s mission to keep the students engaged and on campus.
The plan worked so well, Alexander noted, that the surrounding community offered no objections, except for one—that the school turn off all the outdoor LED lights on campus by 10:00 p.m. “As long as we did that,” she said, “the community was like, ‘Go forth, be merry.’”
Inspired by racing shells, VJAA lands the Lindsay Boathouse on the banks of Outer Harbour in Toronto.
The Upper Canada College (UCC) Lindsay Boathouse occupies a stretch of Toronto’s Outer Harbour—a reclaimed, rugged peninsula that feels remote despite its proximity to the city. Designed by VJAA with Toronto’s RDHA as architect of record, the 9,400-square-foot building occupies a peninsula with both ecological sensitivity and public significance. This part of the Outer Harbour was formed through decades of lake-filling using construction rubble and dredged material.
The school—a 196-year-old institution that is a pillar of Toronto’s elite—has a long tradition of rowing. Its team trained for decades out of a nearby facility in two Quonset huts.
For the new facility UCC reached out to Minneapolisbased VJAA, which had previously completed three rowing clubhouses, including one for the Minneapolis Rowing Club in 1999. “So many architects are involved in the sport, and we realized that it has aesthetic aspects that are aligned with architecture,” said VJAA principal/CEO Jennifer Yoos. “The equipment is beautiful. The rowers work together in rhythm.” Racing boats, known as “shells,” are traditionally made of wood; their long profiles and exposed structure of bent wood provide an easy analogy to a building, particularly early–20th century factories. Yoos notes that the boatbuilding analogy extends to joinery and material efficiency—every element serves a structural purpose, with minimal superfluous mass.
The Lindsay Boathouse, named after a donor, wields that symbolic language with quiet precision. It encompasses three black bar-shaped forms that slide past each other like boats racing toward a finish line. Two of these are connected and provide storage, while the third, on the south side, houses a training gym and office space for the team’s coach.
Just as today’s shells are made of fiberglass and carbon fiber, the building takes a strategic approach to structure. Piles are driven deep into the soil, which is peppered with large chunks of concrete and masonry rubble, remnants of the site’s landfill past. A structural concrete slab supports a light steel frame, while panels of cross-laminated timber form the walls, their knotty, textured surfaces left proudly exposed. On top, a wood roof deck curves into three concave arcs that cradle north-facing clerestory windows. The storage zone houses approximately 40 boats on bespoke racks, their hulls stretching out lengthwise beneath the curves of the roof. Widely spaced columns allow even 12-seater boats to be moved comfortably in and out.
The building also welcomes natural light through a south-facing wall of glazing along the workout zone. These windows frame views across a small bay toward Toronto’s downtown skyline. At the west end, where the boathouse reaches toward the launch, the structure opens up with glass on two sides, providing natural ventilation as well as immersing occupants in the shifting light and breeze of the waterfront.
The entire building relies on passive heating and cooling, part of the school’s deliberate effort to minimize the project’s footprint. The site rests within a delicate
ecosystem that is gradually occupying the shoreline here, much of which is artificial. (Tommy Thompson Park, an entirely man-made peninsula that has become an important sanctuary for migrating birds, is nearby.) And yet the building sits less than a mile from where the $1 billion USD reconstruction of the Don River was recently completed, opening the way for future development of the port area. (See page 34 for that story.)
The site is publicly owned, and municipal agencies plan to expand an existing network of pedestrian and cycle trails into this area. The boathouse leaves space
along the shoreline for these future additions. Its footprint and siting were coordinated with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to maintain a buffer for vegetation and potential fish habitat improvements. The docks were aligned to avoid disturbing aquatic vegetation that serves as spawning grounds for native fish species.
For now, the boathouse remains a quiet outpost— an escape for UCC’s students and, in summer, for day campers bused in from downtown public schools. Its low profile, warm timber walls, and operable windows reinforce a tactile connection to nature.
“Having natural ventilation pass through the building is sustainable,” said VJAA project architect Nate Steuerwald, “but it’s also about connecting yourself physically to the landscape—not just looking through a window but feeling the air move.”
Houston boomed thanks to its oil and natural gas resources across the 20th century, but also because of its shipping, healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing, and education industries. The city attracted talent from around the world: John and Dominique de Menil, whose eponymous art collection is now one of Houston’s cultural centers, both hailed from France. Often, these international transplants, along with the area’s local elites, sought private academies to educate their children, which supported the growth of the region’s independent schools. One, St. John’s School, was the inspiration and principal shooting location for Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Another institution, the Awty School, was founded by Kathleen “Kay” Awty in 1956 as a preschool specializing in international cultures and languages. It grew in scope before merging with the French School of Houston in 1984 to become the Awty International School.
Awty’s context exemplifies the free-for-all conditions of Houstonian urbanism: Located just outside the I-610 loop, which is most easily identified in local parlance as being “near IKEA,” the school’s site is bounded by I-10, a movie theater, a tilt-up factory complex, and a Jewish cemetery. Over time, its grounds were filled by a series of 1-story buildings. Looking to improve STEM education in an increasingly competitive marketplace for precollege offerings—and to continue to support its International Baccalaureate programs—the school embarked on a search for an architect to help create a gathering place for Awty’s community.
Originally, Awty anticipated the construction of one large infill building, but that direction didn’t sit well with Lake Flato when it interviewed for the job. Brandi Rickels, a partner at Lake Flato and coleader of its Independent Schools Studio, told AN that in preparation for the interview the office built a “very rudimentary” block model to visualize the school’s ideas. Then, in the meeting, Lake Flato said, “You could do it your way [and make] this big, ugly, blocky building” or, as an alternate vision, the school could remove existing buildings, clear out more space, and build a new campus center. The team
physically reshuffled the blocks during the pitch to demonstrate the proposed arrangement.
It worked: The conceptual boldness won Lake Flato the commission in 2018. In the meeting, Awty’s thendirector of facilities and construction, Don Davis, responded thoughtfully. According to Greg Papay, a partner at Lake Flato and the other coleader of its Independent Schools Studio, Davis basically said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way. That’s why we hire architects.”
Lake Flato’s scheme called for the demolition of eight “underperforming” structures to realize a new 3-story student center with academic buildings flanking a quad. Previously, beyond sports fields, Awty had “no functional outdoor space for large groups to gather,” Rickels recalled. The new arrival quad, named Awty Green, is now the heart of the school. The designers began by making the center of the campus an outdoor space, like every great campus in the country, which is then surrounded by buildings that activate it, Papay said.
Awty Green does double duty: Beyond the lawn’s social benefits, it caps a cistern that can hold 42,500 cubic feet of stormwater. The site is basically flat—there wasn’t a contour line on the survey—so the architects, working with regular landscape architecture collaborators CARBO, had to get creative to meet the stricter runoff requirements set by the City of Houston after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Beyond underground storage, the design uses rain gardens, bioswales, and storage tanks to make the environmental systems visible to students.
Though there are light architectural nods to existing buildings on campus, the new structures instead “set the tone for future development,” Rickels said. One link is the white precast-concrete parking garage where students are dropped off for school; the architects pulled this tone into the new cladding.
The ground floor of the new student center contains the cafeteria, which includes separate K–5 and 6–12 wings and shaded outdoor space facing Awty Green. The top floor supports a multipurpose auditorium with retractable seating. (A separate, dedicated performing arts building is anticipated to be built later.) The library and media center are on the middle floor, with all three areas connected by an open stair, which incorporates the wood used as slatted ceilings and paneled soffits across the project.
Referencing the importance of daylight and cross ventilation, the firm “likes to say that a skinny building is a healthy building,” Papay said. A narrow, bar-like building is also more expensive because of the higher ratio of perimeter envelope to interior area. To illuminate the building’s deeper floor plate, the architects brightened the library with a series of east-facing internal skylights that bounce sunlight from the event balcony above. Danny Davy, Lake Flato senior associate and project architect for the school, recalled that he initially thought the light scoops wouldn’t do much, but the daylighting analysis showed that they generate substantial improvements. Papay said that rather than feeling like a building that is 120 feet wide, instead it feels like two 60-foot-wide pieces.
To the south, 14 STEM labs include the latest technology, flexible partitions, and adjacent meeting areas. To the north, 29 high-performance classrooms are largely accessed from open-air walkways and stairs. On the ground floor, a robotics and maker lab is faced in glass along a high-traffic route to highlight the role of experimentation in education.
Design for the project began in spring 2018 and wrapped up in January 2020. The construction sequencing was “a bit of a puzzle,” Davy said, as the school needed to keep a key existing building intact across two phases before demolishing it. The pandemic introduced some delays with equipment delivery, but the full scope of the project was completed in spring 2024.
Today, Awty hosts nearly 1,800 students, which makes it one of the country’s largest independent schools. Its attendees hail from diverse backgrounds: According to its website, 40 percent are American, 30 percent are French, and the remaining 30 percent arrive from more than fifty other countries. (The French government provides financial aid for French families, and Awty operates in partnership with the French Consulate of Houston, Katie Frederick, Awty’s director of communications, shared.) Nearly 60 percent of the student body identifies as not white, and more than half of the students are bilingual or plurilingual—plus a combined 53 percent of students are from French families or speak French. Lake Flato’s efforts were recognized with an Educational Facility Design Award from the AIA this year. The work sets the stage for the next generation of Awty students to thrive.
K–12 projects are a fun challenge for architects because they often possess all the ambition of a university commission with little of its bureaucracy. But despite their reputation, Papay said the facilities at independent schools often lag behind those of public schools because of their limited funding mechanisms: Private schools often must fundraise to construct a new building. And since many independent school buildings are smaller in size than public school buildings, they don’t benefit from the economies of scale available for larger projects. Though enrollment dropped during the pandemic (why pay a hefty tuition when you’re learning calculus from your bedroom?), interest in attending a school with competitive STEM/STEAM offerings and extracurricular amenities has returned.
All in, Awty’s construction cost was just over $50 million and came in at $335 per square foot for 131,500 square feet of building area. Funding came in thirds from tuition/ fundraising, corporate support, and a construction loan, which, midpandemic, was extended with incredibly low interest rates. (Fees for Awty start at $30,000 for the 2025–26 academic year). Davy said it took a “Herculean effort” to keep the project close to the original budget given the steep increases in the cost of construction nationwide. Looking back, the pricing looks like “the deal of the century,” Papay said. Today, Lake Flato is seeing K–12 projects begin at $500 per square foot and go up from there. Since the opening, Davy has heard “nothing but positive comments from the school administrators.” Students seem to like it, too. When on site to document the building with photographer Lara Swimmer, one asked Davy if he was the architect before delivering a hot take: “This building’s fire.” Davy remembered, “I was like, you know, that’s actually the nicest compliment ever in my career.” JM
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Through regular online stories and our Outdoor Spaces newsletter and virtual events, AN covers the latest projects, topics, and products in landscape architecture. In this section, read about MVVA’s transformative Biidaasige Park in Toronto that redirects the Don River, among other timely case studies about urban forestry and Midwestern landscape architecture practices. Check out recommended products, gathered for your awareness and inspiration. At the end of the section, don’t miss our indepth resource directory, with recommended companies assembled from our coverage, events, and awards.
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates takes on Toronto’s multidecade, multidisciplinary effort to restore the Don River’s mouth and improve climate resilience.
“The second that construction fences went down, people were swarming in,” said Emily Mueller De Celis, partner at the landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA). And that’s how it felt when the bus dropped me and other park-goers off east of the newly naturalized mouth of the Don River in Toronto. For many, the project to restore the Don River is synonymous with the Task Force to Bring Back the Don—a citizen advocacy group whose 1991 report outlined the aspirations for what would become a monumental, once-in-a-generation climate resiliency undertaking on the Canadian city’s shore.
The opening of Biidaasige Park on July 18 marked the first encounter Torontonians had with the Port Lands Flood Protection (PLFP)
project—the decades-long effort to renaturalize the mouth of the Don River, deliver flood protection, and provide spaces for living and recreation, at an overall cost of about $1 billion USD. But for those arriving later in the afternoon, as I did, one could be forgiven for thinking that it had long been part of our city. I entered the park through its northern edge, just south of Commissioners Street, to find that people were making it their own: Kids were climbing the already famous Snowy Owl Theatre and sliding down zip lines; others were busy in the many designated fishing areas; and a small crowd gathered by a paddleboat launch location.
Along with the cohort that had exited the bus, I joined dozens of others on foot and bicycle bound for the Commissioners Street
Bridge—the main eastern connecting point between the mainland and the new island (Ookwemin Minising) formed by the extended river valley. At the foot of the bridge, people slowed and looked: Here was their city as they’d never seen it before, set behind a freely flowing Don. The river had once been more like this— before the city’s port and industry grew and its path to Lake Ontario became increasingly constricted. “The river came down the valley to a hard, 90-degree turn—and water does not want to flow that way,” explained Mueller De Celis. “It became such a flood-prone area.”
The 98-acre Ookwemin Minising island, meaning “place of the black cherry trees” in Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwemowin, is at the heart of the PLFP project. Biidaasige Park, meaning “sunlight shining toward us” in Anishinaabemowin, occupies 49 acres within it and integrates Indigenous placekeeping through native plantings, interpretive signage (NVision Insight Group), Indigenous trail tree markers (Two Row Architect), teaching signifiers (Solomon King and Brook McIlroy), and a shade structure (Tawaw Architecture Collective), among other spaces and installations to be
completed this year. In addition to the newly inaugurated park, the island will be home to the under-construction Promontory Park and a mixeduse development with 9,000 new homes.
MVVA, which joined the project after winning the 2007 Waterfront Toronto competition, has led its design and execution with a mandate to deliver flood protection, naturalization, and placemaking. “The beauty of the project is that so many hands have contributed to making it the way that it is today,” said Laura Solano, partner at MVVA. The large-scale, multidisciplinary effort has brought together fields ranging from marine and coastal engineering (GEI Consultants) to heritage conservation (ERA Architects).
“[The project] is first and foremost flood protection infrastructure,” said Jennifer Bonnell, historian and author of Reclaiming the Don “Over the course of its development, I was lucky enough to be able to tour the site, and you really got a sense of what a constructed landscape this is—how they built the bed of a new river channel and constructed it in ways that would direct floodwater in the event of a large century flood.”
The scale and complexity of the undertaking is especially apparent on foot. Moving through the vast under-construction stretches along Cherry Street and Commissioners Street—and
the intermingled remnants of port and industry— one feels small. All manner of earthmoving equipment can be heard and seen, sometimes perched atop mountains of dirt. A bike trip some weeks later took me farther than my legs alone could, to the southern and eastern edges of Ookwemin Minising. Here, planting is ongoing, and I was greeted by a surreal and hopeful sight: With the big city skyline as a backdrop—engulfed in the ever-present wildfire smoke that blows from the prairies—smiling faces under big sun hats looked and waved before returning to their work on the plants.
“Planting and then caring for the native plants on that scale is a massive achievement,” said Bonnell. “They employed tons and tons of human labor to weed all of those plants and to make sure that they had a fighting chance against invasive species.”
From the beginning, the PLFP project embraced a deeply public, participatory process. “An important part of the design process—to make sure that we were making a park for everyone in Toronto—was to work with the community,” said Mueller De Celis. “We had open houses, pop-up consultations at different events...and
we closely collaborated with an Indigenous design adviser [MinoKamik Collective] to identify plant species that have cultural significance for the regional Indigenous communities.”
Besides human visitors, nonhuman species have found their place too: Bees and butterflies are busy pollinating, and the occasional blue jay and northern cardinal can be spotted. The data shows this as well: The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Bonnell told me, is already monitoring aquatic species and seeing what they were hoping to see in terms of numbers and diversity.
From its inception, Bonnell said, one of the main objectives of the Task Force to Bring Back the Don was to encourage people to come to the river, and to get them to love this space so that they would then be motivated to protect it. “You need the access to build the public will and the public connection with the space in order to have generations of people who care for it and want to protect it,” said Bonnell. “I think a similar idea went into this project.”
Sebastián López Cardozo is an architectural designer and writer based in Toronto. He is a founding editor of Architecture Writing Workshop and a coeditor of Nueva Vivienda: New Housing Paradigms in Mexico (Park Books, 2022).
DESIGN LEAD/PRIME: MVVA
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: MVVA
LIGHTING DESIGN: Domingo Gonzalez Associates
WETLAND AND MEADOW CONSULTANT: Dougan Ecology
WAYFINDING AND SIGNAGE: Entro Communications
HERITAGE CONSERVATION ARCHITECT: ERA Architects
OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE: ETM Associates
MARINE AND COASTAL ENGINEERING: GEI Consultants
GEOTECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING: Geosyntec Consultants
IRRIGATION DESIGN: Hines
ECOLOGIST: Inter-Fluve
GEOTECHNICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING: Jacobs
HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING: LimnoTech
CODE CONSULTANT: LMDG
SOIL SCIENTIST: Olsson
PLAY CODE CONSULTANT: Reliable Reporting
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: RJC Engineers
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: Smith + Andersen
QP/ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATION: Stantec
COST ESTIMATING: Vermeulens
CIVIL ENGINEERING: WSP Canada
CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: EllisDon
PLAY STRUCTURES: MONSTRUM, WholeTrees Strutures, Richter
Spielgeräte, Earthscape
BENCHES: Landscape Forms, Streetlife
BBQ GRILLS: Most Dependable Fountains
The latest in outdoor furniture prioritizes flexibility, whether from indoors to outdoors, lounging to working, or coastal escapes to city retreats. KP
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Lagrasse is a collection that includes a dining chair, a lounge chair, and a two-seater sofa, all of which are formed by a simple powder-coated aluminum frame, perfect for small outdoor areas.
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Rippled stainless steel forms a lounge chair, designed by Lise Vester, whose sculptural curves are both stylish and comfortable.
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The delicate silhouette of this seating and table collection, designed by Lievore Altherr Molina, mimics the veining of leaves, creating a light, stackable option for both hospitality and residential projects.
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Reed Hilderbrand’s Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan puts time-tested climate science into practice.
In 2019, Reed Hildberbrand released an urban forest master plan for Cambridge, Massachusetts. Four years later, the Biden administration allocated $1.5 billion to Urban and Community Forestry Grants as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Urban forests have massive benefits—they help combat heat-island effect and aid stormwater capture and runoff, to name just a couple. In New York City, trees remove 1,100 tons of air pollution each year. But despite the social, ecological, and financial merits of urban forests, tree coverage in the U.S. is shrinking. The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, lost on average 16 acres of urban tree canopy coverage per year between 2009 and 2018, according to a 2019 report. This was largely because of new building construction, increased paving, landscape renewal projects, and lack of adequate tree protection.
But Cambridge is not alone. Nationwide, about 175,000 acres were lost annually from 2009 to 2014, or about 1 percent of the country’s urban canopy over five years, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Now, architecture firms and government offices are working to reverse this trend. “For public health in the 21st century, we have to have cooling, and we have to
have air quality, and that’s what trees do,” said Eric Kramer, principal at the Cambridge-based landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand. Kramer is part of a team that leads the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan, a project that aims to cultivate a healthy urban forest across the city.
Reed Hilderbrand’s urban forest master plan is part of a larger effort in Cambridge to restore ecological balance in the city of 121,000 residents. Similar projects there include Stoss Landscape Urbanism’s Triangle Park, a recently completed green space in Kendall Square. Shade is Social Justice, a program funded by an Accelerating Climate Resilience grant from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, supports the construction of shading devices all throughout Cambridge, some designed by architects Gabriel Cira and Matthew Okazaki. SHADE, a local Cambridge nonprofit led by Jeff Goldenson, enables local high schoolers to design and build shading devices in their communities.
Similar urban forest plans have in recent years come out of cities across the U.S: In 2023, Philadelphia released the Philly Tree Plan, a road map by Hinge Collective to grow its urban canopy over the next decade. Urban forest plans are also underway in Boston, New York City, Austin, and San Francisco. Like those other programs, Reed Hilderbrand’s Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan is not just about planting more trees—it also prioritizes retaining those that already exist. Seeds planted today won’t grow large canopies for many years, so limiting tree removal and providing solutions for the “in-between” period necessary for newly planted trees to grow tall is essential for a sustainable and healthy urban forest to take hold.
“You have to act at all scales,” said Kramer, who also teaches in the landscape programs at Harvard GSD and ETH Zurich, where he explores the future of urban forestry with students. “You have to think about the individual condition. The tree itself is living, and you have to care for that tree. It takes human intervention in most urban environments to care for a tree. But that tree is not isolated. It’s growing in a community, and that community is both ecological, cultural, and social.” Kramer and his team rely heavily on data to track progress and establish target interventions. Largely due to 20th century redlining, low-income, minority communities like in the nearby Boston neighborhood of Roxbury have less canopy coverage compared with wealthier areas. Thus, Reed Hilderbrand’s plan prioritizes areas of Cambridge with populations at greater risk of extreme heat.
In 2023, the Biden administration allocated $1.5 billion to Urban and Community Forestry Grants as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. That same year, California received over $100 million in such grant funding, the most of any state. Today, among local officials, there is “emphasis on thinking about equitable distribution, mitigating heat, and we’re really working on ways that we can target communities in need,” said Dr. Max Robert Louis Piana, researcher, ecologist, and lecturer at Harvard GSD.
A crucial element to this work is developing deeper civic interest and engagement. Trees don’t just impact one person—even a fruit tree in someone’s front yard can provide shade for passersby. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to care for urban forests, Kramer said. That’s why community engagement is a core component of the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan.
“We need to have this connection to natural areas if we’re to nurture a greater global stewardship to address climate change,” Dr. Piana said. “Otherwise, it becomes distant and removed. It’s hard to wrap your head around the challenges that we face in terms of the climate crisis without experiencing biodiversity in natural areas.”
Kramer said he envisions future cities that, from ten thousand feet, will look primarily green with buildings dotting the landscape, rather than what cities are today: seas of gray with speckles of green. “I don’t think that’s impossible,” Kramer added. “Certainly, in cities we have bigger buildings and there’s going to be breaks in the forest for those buildings, but we have the capacity, both through techniques of planting and, if the investment is right, through the capacity of our city agencies and private actors to create continuous canopy in the rest of the open space. That’s what the city should look like.”
Eric Newstrom is a journalist in New York City. He writes primarily about climate change and sustainability.
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How are Midwest landscape architecture practices transforming sites of extraction into spaces of ecological and social cohesion?
Strips of earth running north–south where long ago glaciers carved their paths in limestone cliffs; flatland prairies that have been burned for regrowth; vast stretches of cultivated farmland; swamps built into cities; and more: These are the landscapes that make up the American Midwest, a place that has been shaped by human agents and natural factors for millennia. Much of this contouring has colored this area as the nation’s “breadbasket,” ripe for picking, whether it be for food or fuel. For landscape architects working in this region, this shaping is both physical and metaphorical, and it continually informs their practices, whether they’re working in Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, or the eastern edges of the American Rust Belt. But instead of replicating extractive practices, they’re tapping into working-class histories and regenerative strategies that lay a path to a future where climate, labor, and natural resources become central to everyday life.
When Chris Merritt and Nina Chase opened their landscape architecture firm, Merritt Chase, eight years ago, the two founders, who met while working in Sasaki’s Boston office, wanted to focus specifically on the Midwest. They located their two headquarters in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh to “redefine what contemporary middle American landscape architecture is and could be,” Chase told AN With many commissions in Rust Belt areas, their projects, Merritt said, tell “comeback” stories. “We’re often participating in projects in rebounding downtowns, redeveloping urban districts from an economic lens, and thinking about trying to retain or recruit talent back to cities.”
From an ecological viewpoint, however, they recognize that many residents have familial or ancestral connections to the land itself; they’re also prompting residents to “come back” to that history. Many Midwesterners, he says, “grew up with a connection to a creek or river or forest or farm or field, and [we’re] capturing that from a material standpoint, so that local identity is authentically represented in these places that, otherwise, are cast under a broad stroke of the flyover state.”
Many of Merritt Chase’s commissions are located in swing states like Ohio. In Cleveland, they’re doing two projects: 1 Canal Basin Park, which will bring visitors back to the city’s industrial riverfront, where a canal and railroad supported the area’s economic history; and The Midline, an existing railway that will include a greenway and industrial development. In these projects Merritt Chase tries to instill pride in place. This could mean celebrating an area’s industrial or working-class history and generating the political will to make people-and-ecologycentric projects happen.
Ernest Wong and his firm, site design group, have spent 35 years working across priorities that change with each mayoral administration in the Windy City. Though civic leaders don’t need much convincing about the benefits of things like climate resilience or outdoor space, site has built a reputation on delivering these types of landscape projects to those who most need them by focusing its attention on working-class people and, importantly, their futures.
“Historically, the city has been a very workingclass city and a working-class immigrant city,”
Wong said. “A lot of times, [these residents] are still working seven days a week, so being outdoors is a luxury.”
Site’s 2 Ping Tom Memorial Park is emblematic of the office’s ethos. Completed in 2013 and located in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood, which lacked green space for decades, the park, designed by site, delivered a space that asserts Chinatown was, is, and will continue to be inhabited by Chinese families. Chicago’s Chinatown is one of the few Chinatowns in the U.S. whose Chinese population is still growing. The park celebrates the area’s industrial past by inviting residents back to the once-polluted Chicago River and frames views of former railways, cantilevered bridges, and factories.
“I think that had we designed that park not along the Chicago River, it would not be as popular as it is now,” Wong explained. “I think that those qualities of the river and the railroads make that park what it is. It’s not necessarily the park space itself, but the things that are around it.”
Minneapolis-based 3 Coen+Partners (CP) principal McKenzie Wilhelm speaks of Midwestern landscape practices as “regenerative,” meaning not only do they reaffirm the region’s working-class history and ethos but they are also spearheading the movement to change our relationship to the land itself. This attention might be expressed through caring for soil health or water quality, she said, especially as climate change’s effects ripple across the region. But it also means discovering what allows people to thrive, even in difficult climate conditions.
The Midwest, notes CP director Laura Kamin-Lyndgaard, is primed for this type of thinking. “The words that come to mind are incredibly hardworking, the sense of grit and perseverance, of not only weathering the harsh climates but embracing them,” she stated. With this attitude in mind, practitioners are now seeing land as part of maintaining human livelihoods through physical and cultural resource stewardship.
For Wilhelm, this might mean acknowledging that the Midwest nickname “America’s breadbasket” no longer fits. What feels more appropriate today is “an understanding of what a more reciprocal version of land stewardship looks like,” she said. “Land isn’t necessarily seen as just an asset that’s going to make you money, but also something that requires care and understanding at the systems level.”
The Forest and the Trees
Part of the work is acknowledging that the region’s economy has relinquished its share of the cash-crop/export economy that powered its original growth. Now, cultural and ecological assets are greater sources of growth and economic revitalization. While landscape architects certainly play a role in that effort, the region’s potential for positive reinvention must come with other political and architectural investments in its housing and sustainable sectors. Across the plains, forests, and urban environs, landscape architects, trained to analyze, design, and maintain natural environments, stand ready to lend a helping hand.
Anjulie Rao is a journalist and critic covering the built environment.
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Lodes’s entry into outdoor lighting includes a collection of sleek luminaires, such as the slim, mushroom-shaped bollard, KINNO, and the projector inspired by photography, FOCUS.
As public space continues to shed its rigidity and embrace the comfort of domestic life, Flaneur steps confidently into view. Designed by mmcité as a thoughtful response to this cultural shift, Flaneur is a collection of movable chairs, stools, and tables that brings interior calm to exterior settings. It is street furniture that embraces its urban origin, yet gently dissolves the line between public and private, communal and personal.
First glance
At first glance, the Flaneur line appears simple and understated. Beneath that quiet elegance lies remarkable strength. A lightweight galvanized steel structure, finished with a durable powder coating, supports either warm wooden slats or finely detailed steel rounds. Each element is crafted for ergonomic comfort, resilience, and mobility. It is stackable, portable, and easily repositioned within parks, plazas, cafés, or cultural venues.
America first
Flaneur was born with America in mind. In cities like New York, trust is placed in the hands of the public. Bryant Park, for instance, has 4,000 movable chairs and 1,000 movable tables. Not fixed in place, but loose and liberated. Here, the arrangement of furniture becomes
a kind of urban dance. Strangers shift a table toward the sun. Friends gather in circles under trees. Solitary thinkers angle their chairs just so. The space is never static, always alive. This is more than convenience. This is democracy made visible. As the American Planning Association notes, movable furniture empowers people to shape their surroundings. And remarkably, only a few pieces go missing each year. In return, the park gains something priceless: spontaneity, interaction, and a sense of shared ownership. In early 2025, mmcité introduced Flaneur in the United States, reflecting the values of flexibility, empowerment, and inclusivity. It is more than a product line; it is a philosophy of urban ease. As cities become softer, more welcoming, and more expressive, Flaneur offers an architectural tool that shapes public space not through permanence, but through possibility. Flaneur is made for America.
As Flaneur continues to shape more human-centered public spaces across the country, we’re taking the next step in its journey. We are bringing production closer to home. In response to growing demand and a deepening commitment to the communities we serve, we are actively working toward manufacturing Flaneur in the United States. This evolution reinforces our belief that great design should move with ease and integrity across spaces, across cities, and now, across the sea into American production. Soon, Flaneur won’t just be made for America, it will be Made in America.
FLANEUR, SOON MADE IN AMERICA.
dwg. creates a biodiverse landscape for an office building designed by Gensler on a former brownfield site in East Austin.
In any city, building atop a floodplain is a challenge. In Austin, where a five-hundred-year rainfall is now considered a one-hundred-year rainfall, the project becomes almost unimaginably difficult. On a property situated on a now-remediated brownfield site with heavy, alluvial clay soils, a developer seeking to build a sprawling office campus dared to take on an even more complex task. Gensler and local landscape architecture firm dwg. worked together to transform a 30-acre site dubbed Springdale Green at 1011 Springdale Road in East Austin for the Jay Paul Company. In addition to two office buildings and a parking garage, the campus boasts a verdant landscape programmed for recreation and wellness, as well as flood mitigation.
Gensler sited the two office buildings to the north, placing them outside of the FEMA floodplain, which left room on the rest of the site for dwg. to design a regenerative hydrology system, an elevated boardwalk, and acres of land planted with native species.
“From a landscape perspective, it was a 20-acre challenge of epic proportion,” Daniel Woodroffe, president and founder of dwg., told AN . He added that his job entailed thinking about how to “leverage the land to tell a meaningful story, not just of cleaning up and removing invasive species, but about the modern trends in workplace and how people want to work [and have] access to the outdoors and natural light.”
An elevated 0.62-mile wooden boardwalk, circuitously routed through the campus, became a linchpin for delivering this vision.
“The boardwalk is a very surgical, lighttouch element but at the same time immersive, because it goes from 18 inches above the meadows all the way up into the canopy of the trees and then back down again,” Woodroffe described.
The walkway begins at the campus amphitheater and event lawn, located outside of the ground-floor gym facilities. Follow its meandering path, and one comes across programming also designed for office work and leisure. Among these activations are hammocks, a pavilion, and a bird blind. The architects and designers imagined the pavilion as if it had always been there, envisioning that nature had grown around it, and not the other way around. The small openair building is equipped with modern amenities like internet access and restrooms. Workers can convene under the shade of its wood canopy for meetings, to host a happy hour, take a phone call, or take in nature.
“The pavilion is an abstract of the elements of the building: the concrete corners, the wood soffits, the use of the D’Hanis terra-cotta block to create a temple in the woods,” Woodroffe said. Just up the path, the bird blind posits a similar environment. A curved canopy structure was lined with wood slats facing the pathway and a screen of stainless-steel black mesh on its other side. Furnishings inside the open-air volume face out toward woodlands. This location was chosen for a number of reasons: It’s the highest point of boardwalk; it had the largest grove of elm trees and the largest concentration of red cardinal birds.
“We call it the bird blind because it is up in the canopy of the trees,” Woodroffe added. “It is
almost imperceptible that you’re seeing through that mesh out into the canopy of the trees.”
Deciding what trees to leave and what vegetation to plant was informed by the area’s geology and Austin’s heritage tree ordinance. Two large live oaks—one of which is three hundred years old—were transplanted, and more than four thousand new trees were added to the site. The site’s ecology combines Blackland Prairie— prominent in the area but shrinking from urban sprawl—with that of riparian wetlands. Woodroffe and dwg. worked with an ecologist and a soil scientist to select plants for the property.
Shielded from sight but essential to the narrative of Springdale Green’s transformation is water. A 650,000-gallon cistern stores rainwater and HVAC condensate for 100 percent of the site’s irrigation needs. The water is released slowly over time as needed. As a result, the campus’s new bio-retention basins and rain gardens are nearly superfluous. Prior to this project, the neighborhood had a serious flooding issue. An interbasin transfer, negotiated with the neighbors, now means water from the north of the site gets directed through a swale and into the campus’s floodplain meadows for storage.
At Springdale Green, dwg.’s “light-touch” approach has managed to change the trajectory for a maligned site, restoring its ecology amid increasing flood risk and urban expansion. KK
DESIGN ARCHITECT: Gensler
ARCHITECT OF RECORD: Gensler
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: dwg.
INTERIOR DESIGN: Gensler
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: IMEG
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: EEA
CIVIL ENGINEERING: Kimley-Horn
LIGHTING DESIGN: Tillotson
SIGNAGE/WAYFINDING: Gensler
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Level 10 Construction
LANDSCAPE CONTRACTOR: Clean Scapes
LANDSCAPE CARPENTRY: Duffin Architectural
CLIENT REPRESENTATIVE: Jay Paul Company
LANDSCAPE PRODUCTS: Landscape Forms, Blu Dot, LOLL, Kettal, Cuero, Vestre, Atelier Vierkant
WOOD DECKING AND CUSTOM FURNITURE: Kebony
CONCRETE UNIT PAVERS: Keystone Hardscapes, Concrete Collaborative
cistern stores rainwater and HVAC condensate and then releases stored rainwater gradually.
Middle: Office workers have access to furnished terraces with restorative views into the landscape.
Bottom: The elevated boardwalk is decked in Kebony and runs 0.62 miles through the campus.
Next-generation pedestals and invisible wind uplift solutions, combined with unlimited surface options, redefine what’s possible in roof deck design. Elevate performance, expand possibilities, and transform rooftop spaces with SkyView™ from Unilock.
Scan the QR code to learn more about SkyView.
From luxury settings to modern rooftops and high-traffic areas, these outdoor surfaces offer strong visual identities as well as functionality. KP
This granite with a monochromatic gray color palette is particularly suited for frosty and thaw-prone regions with a recommended thickness minimum of 2.5 centimeters.
SkyView Roof Deck System | Unilock unilock.com
Designed to meet the demands of modern rooftop construction, this system features solutions to support high-wind uplift applications, a wide range of surfacing options, and intuitive installation.
Wood Pavers | ORCA orcaliving.com
This three-piece modular permeable system offers the look and feel of vintage cut stone while improving stormwater runoff.
Crafted from black locust, these permeable pavers are milled to reveal the rings and story of each tree while providing the feel of unfinished wood for a tactile experience underfoot.
This listing combines outdoor companies and products featured in our coverage, case studies, product highlights, and awards. By Arlo Freedman
Arup
arup.com
This global consultancy powerhouse provides advisory services for firms and organizations whose business is the built environment, including landscape architecture.
Atelier Ten atelierten.com
Atelier Ten is a global sustainability-minded environmental design consultant with lighting design and engineering capabilities, offering services including carbon strategy and energy analysis.
Biohabitats
biohabitats.com
Biohabitats is a consultant specializing in projects centered in ecological restoration, conservation, and climate resilience, with experience across the United States.
Brightworks Sustainability brightworks.net
Brightworks is a consultancy firm guiding projects toward environmental sustainability for residential, commercial, and governmental sectors.
Brookwater brookwater.com
Brookwater, specializing in irrigation consulting and design, assists with water management for parks, transportation, and residential projects for a wide range of clients.
Climate Positive Design climatepositivedesign.org
Climate Positive Design is a consultant offering guidance in greenhouse gas reduction for the exterior built environment and supporting biodiversity in landscaping.
DataBased+ databasedplus.com
DataBased+ is an innovative building systems design firm offering sustainable planning services and climate analysis.
Fluidity Design Consultants fluidity-design.com
Fluidity features a multidisciplinary team of architects, designers, engineers, and technologists devoted to fountain and water design for many types of projects.
Footprint Consulting footprintconsulting.green/ en
Footprint Consulting provides consulting services to quantify and reduce greenhouse gas emissions for climate-conscious architectural projects.
GEI Consultants geiconsultants.com
GEI provides geotechnical, environmental, and civil design consulting for clients across the United States and Ontario.
Irrigation Consulting irrigationconsulting.com
Irrigation Consulting provides sustainable irrigation design counseling for landscape and outdoor recreational projects, with offices in New Hampshire and North Carolina.
Phyto Studio phytostudio.com
Phyto Studio is a nature-based design studio with landscape architecture and ecological horticulture consulting services.
Pine & Swallow Environmental pineandswallow.com
Pine & Swallow Environmental provides horticultural soil consulting to public and private clients for the construction of landscape development projects.
Plántica plantica.mx
Plántica specializes in consultancy for landscape architectural projects, vertical gardens, and green roofs.
Regenerative Environmental Design redbeyondgreen.com
RED partners with project teams to protect healthy ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes, providing robust regenerative solutions.
RWDI rwdi.com
RWDI is a global consultancy with climate and environmental engineering services for landscaping projects.
Stanley Consultants stanleyconsultants.com
Stanley Consultants is a global consulting engineering firm rooted in sustainable and energyefficient solutions for diverse markets.
Stok stok.com
Stok is a consulting team with a range of services in decarbonization for the built environment, including energy engineering and sustainability consulting.
Studio Ludo studioludo.org
Studio Ludo is a nonprofit playground design consultant firm based in Philadelphia, with expertise in playground safety solutions and risk-benefit assessment.
Urban Canopy Works urbancanopyworks.com
Urban Canopy Works is a firm dedicated to the advancement of the tree canopy in the urban environment, providing forestry consultant services.
Vectorworks vectorworks.net
This design software company provides architects with intuitive, powerful tools to create whatever designs they can imagine.
Arhaus arhaus.com
Arhaus is a sustainably sourced furniture and decor company with outdoor kitchen and furniture lines.
Belgard belgard.com
Belgard is a California-based outdoor products company with a large outdoor kitchen collection.
BlueStar bluestarcooking.com
BlueStar is a 140-year-old Pennsylvania-based kitchen appliance company with design-forward products, including many in customizable colors.
Dacor dacor.com
Dacor provides high-performing kitchen and refrigeration appliances for indoor and outdoor spaces.
Danver danver.com
Danver is an outdoor stainlesssteel cabinet and kitchen manufacturer based in Connecticut.
Duravit USA duravit.com
Duravit makes high-quality bathroom ceramics and furniture, working with well-known designers and expert manufacturers.
Fisher & Paykel fisherpaykel.com
Fisher & Paykel is a luxury kitchen appliance company with a large product line of outdoor grills.
Neolith neolith.com
Neolith is a leading sintered stone surface manufacturer featuring kitchen and bathroom products suited for the outdoors.
Novara novara.es
Novara is an outdoor kitchen supply company with bespoke and customization capabilities.
Rbrohant rbrohant.com
Rbrohant is a bathroom product manufacturer designing premium outdoor baths and showers.
Room & Board roomandboard.com
The modern and contemporary furniture retailer features a diverse range of outdoor kitchen furniture.
Talenti Outdoor Living talentispa.com
Talenti is a recognized Italian outdoor furniture company designing kitchens for commercial and residential projects.
TOTO toto.com/en
TOTO creates spa-inspired outdoor bathroom appliances for hotels and resorts.
Watrline watrline.com
Watrline is a designer and manufacturer of outdoor showers for residential and hospitality projects.
Acuity Brands acuitybrands.com
Acuity Brands provides a wide range of sustainable outdoor lighting solutions.
Ambientec ambientec.co.jp
Ambientec is a Japanese lighting design brand specializing in portable, rechargeable, waterproof LED lamps.
AMEICO ameico.com
AMEICO provides high-performing, environmentally sound exterior lighting fixtures.
Amerlux amerlux.com
Amerlux manufactures lighting fixtures for the commercial sector with product lines for both indoors and outdoors.
Artemide artemide.com
Artemide is an illumination brand with products for architectural lightscapes in public and private outdoor spaces.
B-K Lighting bklighting.com
B-K Lighting provides high-quality sustainable lighting fixtures and power supplies for the outdoors.
Cerno cernogroup.com
Cerno designs decorative exterior architectural lighting systems with a focus on sustainability.
Cyclone Lighting cyclonelighting.com
Cyclone designs, develops, and manufactures high-performance, durable outdoor luminaires and accessories.
Diabla diablaoutdoor.com
Diabla is an avant-garde Spanish outdoor furniture company with a range of lamp products.
ERCO erco.com
ERCO is an international specialist in architectural lighting with LED technology.
Flos flos.com
Flos is a European company designing luxury furnishing and lighting for interiors and exteriors.
Inter-lux inter-lux.com
Inter-lux provides a curated collection of exterior lighting products and tools.
Landscape Forms landscapeforms.com
Landscape Forms crafts artful furniture and lighting fixtures for commercial exteriors.
Lebello lebello.com
Lebello is a designer and manufacturer of colorful outdoor furniture and lighting, primarily for restaurants, hospitality, and retail.
Luminii luminii.com
Luminii manufactures highly modifiable, made-to-order linear LED luminaires for indoor and outdoor applications.
Luminis luminis.com
Luminis creates functional and modern luminaires for diverse applications.
Modern Forms modernforms.com
Modern Forms offers outdoor luminaires featuring lamp, flush mount, and step light collections.
Qu Lighting qu-lighting.com
Qu Lighting is an Italian outdoor bespoke lighting designer with an array of sleek exterior lighting products.
RBW rbw.com
RBW is a New York–based independent design and manufacturing company utilizing sustainable energy in its exterior lighting product line.
Selux selux.us
Selux designs timeless lighting fixtures for exterior settings, with modular design allowing for smart functions.
Stickbulb stickbulb.com
Stickbulb manufactures architectural and custom outdoor luminaires and repurposes salvaged pin-oak from the NYC urban forest in its TREELINE collection.
Tala talalighting.com
Tala is a London-based company that creates low-carbon and design-forward sustainable exterior light fixtures.
Targetti targettiusa.com
Targetti specializes in elegant architectural lighting for interior and exterior environments.
Vibia
vibia.com
Vibia creates outdoor lighting products that utilize low-voltage LEDs for efficient energy consumption and well-being.
Bernhardt bernhardt.com
Bernhardt offers a large catalog of high-performance and high-design outdoor fabrics for residential outdoor living spaces.
Brentano brentanofabrics.com
Brentano Design Studio creates sophisticated fabrics and wallcoverings for indoor and outdoor spaces, with stain-resistant and easy-clean finish options.
Carnegie carnegiefabrics.com
Carnegie manufactures environmentally friendly textile, wallcovering, and acoustic solutions for outdoor applications.
CF Stinson cfstinson.com
Stinson Studio provides commercial textile solutions, including a large collection of weatherproof textiles for outdoor environments.
Chilewich chilewich.com
Chilewich is a textile design company creating woven textiles, and boasts an everexpanding catalog of products for indoor and outdoor application.
Designtex designtex.com
Designtex manufactures applied materials for the built environment and textiles for exterior settings.
Gan gan-rugs.com
Gan is a Spanish textile company creating unique residential indoor and outdoor rugs, carpets, and accessories.
HBF Textiles hbftextiles.com
HBF Textiles provides a large inventory of textile products, including water-repellent and weatherproof textiles in multiple finishes and a new line, Layered by Mark Grattan.
Kravet kravet.com
Kravet is a fabric, carpet, and wallcovering manufacturer offering durability to outdoor living spaces.
Kvadrat kvadrat.dk/en
Scandinavian textile brand Kvadrat offers quality contemporary textiles and textilerelated, including products for the outdoors.
Link Outdoor linkoutdoor.com
Link Outdoor designs fabrics, trim, and rugs resistant to fading and stains for lively indoor and outdoor spaces.
Luum luumtextiles.com
Luum is a textile designer and manufacturer offering products suitable for the outdoor built environment.
Momentum Textiles momentumtextilesandwalls .com
Momentum Textiles provides performance-driven textiles in a wide variety of styles for commercial interior and exteriors.
Sunbrella sunbrella.com
Sunbrella is a trusted designer and manufacturer of outdoor upholstery and shade fabrics, with bespoke capabilities.
ABC Stone abcworldwidestone.com
ABC Stone is an exterior stone company offering paving in a variety of designs and composite materials.
Alaplana Ceramica nuevaalaplana.es
Alaplana Ceramica possesses a large catalog of paving materials and finishes.
Artistic Tile artistictile.com
Artistic Tile provides quality, sustainably sourced tile for exterior application in porcelain, natural stone, and terrazzo.
Bison Innovative Products bisonip.com
Bison Innovative Products manufactures pedestals, pavers, and site furnishings for commercial, governmental, and residential sectors, as well as modular deck systems.
Duradek duradek.com
This 50-year-old company is a pioneer in the vinyl decking industry, providing sheet vinyl waterproofing solutions for all sorts of decks, and a wide network of distributors and applicators.
Florim florim.com
Florim is an Italian company offering porcelain stoneware surfaces for outdoor flooring and cladding.
Gardenia Orchidea gardenia.it/en
Gardenia Orchidea is a tile manufacturer with ceramic flooring products for outdoor purposes.
Glen-Gery glengery.com
Glen-Gery is a manufacturer offering a large collection of porcelain and brick pavers for architectural landscaping projects.
Hanover Architectural Products hanoverpavers.com
Hanover Architectural Products presents a wide range of innovative pavers for diverse architectural outdoor spaces.
Invisible Structures invisiblestructures.com
Invisible Structures provides glass and gravel porous paving solutions for sustainable landscaping.
Kebony kebony.com
Kebony is a modified-wood brand with an innovative, patented technology that enhances traditional timber, allowing it to take on characteristics comparable to those of tropical hardwoods.
Keystone Hardscapes keystonehardscapes.com
Keystone Hardscapes manufactures durable pavers and specialty permeable pavers that deliver water runoff reduction.
La Nova Tile lanovatile.com
La Nova Tile is a Texas-based slab and tile company delivering contemporary tiling solutions from Spain and Italy to the Houston architecture and design industry.
LiLi Tile lilitile.com
LiLi Tile designs and manufactures colorful cement tiling for the North American landscaping and exterior architecture market.
Marble Systems marblesystems.com
Marble Systems manufactures tiles and slabs for exterior settings in a range of materials, finishes, and designs.
Matter Surfaces mattersurfaces.com
Matter Surfaces offers commercially rated, slip-resistant matting and flooring solutions engineered to withstand weather for high-traffic outdoor spaces.
September 2025
Millboard millboard.com
Millboard is a composite deck and siding company with products made of oak, built to maintain enhanced durability and to ensure fire resistance.
Monocibec monocibec.it/en
Monocibec is an Italian stoneware company providing quality ceramic flooring for outdoor settings.
Nicolock nicolock.com
Nicolock is a manufacturer of retaining walls, pavers, and other concrete outdoor flooring products for residential projects.
ORCA orcaliving.com
ORCA is a landscape design firm that also offers a large collection of specialty pavers, tiles, and outdoor accessories.
Pioneer Landscape Centers pioneerco.com
Pioneer Landscape Centers, now part of SiteOne Stone Center, is a landscape and hardscape supply company with an extensive product selection from top national brands.
Shildan shildan.com
Shildan provides UV- and frost-resistant terra-cotta deck and pavers for commercial and educational facilities.
Unilock commercial.unilock.com
Unilock is an architectural hardscape product manufacturer offering pavers, slabs, and roof decking products for the outdoors.
Wausau wausautile.com
Wausau Tile manufactures premier tile and architectural pavers available in a variety of textures and looks.
Bailey Nurseries baileynurseries.com
Bailey Nurseries is a plant breeder and nursery assisting retailers, growers, and landscapers to create sustainable horticulture.
Cactus Store cactusstore.com
Cactus store offers cacti, succulents, and desert plants, as well as a range of seeds including wildflowers, trees, shrubs, and grasses.
Chelsea Garden Center chelseagardencenter.com
Chelsea Garden Center is a Brooklyn-based gardening business and online shop offering a wide inventory of houseplants, nursery plants, containers, and supplies.
Ernst Conservation Seeds ernstseed.com
Ernst Conservation Seeds grows, processes, and sells hundreds of species of native seeds and live plant materials for ecological restoration and sustainable landscaping.
Intrinsic Perennial Gardens intrinsicperennialgardens .com
Intrinsic Perennial Gardens is a Midwest breeder of perennials and North American native plants.
Iseli Nursery iselinursery.com
Iseli Nursery is a wholesale landscape plant grower, specializing in conifers, Japanese maples, and ornamental trees and shrubs.
Moss Greenhouses mossgreenhouses.com
Moss Greenhouses is a fourthgeneration-run bedding plant producer and wholesale distributor located in Idaho.
OMNI Ecosystems omniecosystems.com
OMNI delivers complete soil ecosystems for green roofs and planters, and other landscaping services.
Peat & Son peatnson.com
Peat & Son Nursery is located in Westhampton, New York, and carries a wide range of plants and hard goods for landscaping needs, with regional delivery capabilities.
Plants of the Wild plantsofthewild.com
Plants of the Wild’s inventory includes native grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees, deliverable to landscapers in the inland Pacific Northwest.
Proven Winners ColorChoice provenwinnerscolorchoice. com
Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs specializes in hydrangeas native to North America, which are distributed nationally.
Read Custom Soils readcustomsoils.com
Read Custom Soils provides precision soil for a diverse range of landscaping projects in New England.
Soil Retention soilretention.com
Soil Retention offers plantable concrete pavement systems and drivable grass for commercial and retail landscaping applications.
Walla Walla Nursery Co. wallawallanursery.com
Walla Walla Nursery is a Washington-based wholesale grower with a broad selection of plants shipping nationally to landscapers and retail garden centers.
BCI Burke bciburke.com
BCI Burke designs and manufactures commercial playgrounds, outdoor fitness and recreation equipment, and accompanying site amenities.
Berliner berliner-playequipment .com/us
Berliner is a 160-year-old international creative playground equipment company, manufacturing play structures suitable for educational, urban, and landscape settings.
Columbia Cascade columbia-cascade.com
Columbia Cascade is a playground equipment, fitness systems, and site furnishings manufacturer specializing in wooden play structures.
Cre8Play cre8play.com
Cre8Play designs and fabricates creative playground apparatus and custom equipment for the parks and recreation industry.
Earthscape earthscapeplay.com
Earthscape designs and builds custom playground sculptures and structures made of natural materials.
Goric goric.com
Goric is a playground equipment company, crafting European play structures made of stainless steel, timber, and rubber for landscape designers and architects.
Greenfields Outdoor Fitness gfoutdoorfitness.com
Greenfields Outdoor Fitness is a provider of inclusive and durable outdoor exercise equipment serving a diverse range of communities.
Kompan kompan.com
Kompan manufactures commercial playground equipment and outdoor fitness solutions, offering colorful playgrounds made of 95-percent recycled material.
Landscape Structures playlsi.com
Landscape Structures is a commercial play manufacturer with an extensive catalog of play equipment for residential, educational, and commercial clients.
Lappset lappset.com
Lappset is a Finnish playground and outdoor fitness fabricator, with custom design and installation services.
MONSTRUM monstrum.dk
MONSTRUM is an international company crafting accessible custom-designed playgrounds with artistic and architectural focus.
PlayCore playcore.com
PlayCore designs, manufactures, and builds turnkey play, recreation, and outdoor spaces with a wide selection of products, programs, and services.
Richter Spielgeräte richter-spielgeraete.de/en/ Richter Spielgeräte designs and manufactures unique play spaces made of wood from sustainably managed forests.
3form 3-form.com
3form is a material design studio that provides resin panels that are durable, impact-resistant, and suitable for outdoor use.
Amop grupoamop.com
Founded in 1973, the Amop Synergies Group develops precast concrete and stone composites for cladding and street furniture.
BEGA bega-us.com
BEGA is a vertically integrated manufacturing company crafting modular furniture systems for civic spaces.
Dedon dedon.de
Dedon crafts contract furniture for diverse environmental settings, with specialties in beach and dining furniture.
Durbanis durbanis.com
Durbanis creates contemporary street and outdoor furniture for public spaces, with products made of recycled and recyclable materials.
Extremis extremis.com
Belgian-based furniture company Extremis designs a wide variety of sleek contract furniture.
Forms+Surfaces forms-surfaces.com
Forms+Surfaces manufactures site-specific furniture for public outdoor space crafted with a range of durable materials.
Green Furniture Concept greenfc.com
GFC creates sustainable furnishings for healthcare, airport, education, and exterior public settings.
Heller hellerfurniture.com
Modern design company Heller crafts affordable chairs and benches suited for outdoor public areas.
Kornegay kornegaydesign.com
Kornegay Design creates design-forward sculptural planters and furnishings for the public outdoors.
Landscape Forms landscapeforms.com
Founded by landscape architect John Chimpan, Sr. in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Landscape Forms has evolved to manufacture products with an emphasis on design, culture, and craft, including outdoor furniture and accessories.
Maglin maglin.com
Maglin Site Furniture is a public and contract furniture company offering furnishings with customizable, UV-resistant finishes.
MDT-Tex mdt-tex.com
MDT-Tex creates individual, largescale designer weather and sun protection systems for public spaces.
Miramondo miramondo.com
Miramondo designs unique contract furnishing lines in various styles and materials, with calculated CO2e values for ease in sustainability evaluation.
Mizetto mizetto.se/en
Mizetto is a Scandinavian furniture company with an outdoor site furniture collection, including modular planting systems and dining fixtures fit for parks and schoolyards.
mmcité mmcite.com/us
mmcité creates quality furniture for urban public areas with a vast product library fit for all street furnishing needs.
Nola nola.se
Sweden-based Nola collaborates with architects and designers to manufacture unique site furnishings for city streets and parks.
QCP qcp-corp.com
QCP manufactures an extensive line of precast concrete, steel, and wood architectural amenities and site furnishings, and offers a variety of concrete color and texture combinations for unique public spaces.
Streetlife streetlife.nl
Streetlife is a sustainable, customizable street furniture company with products made of modular wood and timber building blocks.
Tournesol tournesol.com
Named for the French word for sunflower, Tournesol is a manufacturer of pots, planters, and site furnishings manufactured in North America. The company also offers high-quality green facade solutions for the architecture and design trades.
Vestre vestre.com/us
Vestre crafts sustainable public furniture with a lifetime antirust warranty, with customizable accessories like LED lighting and game surfaces.
Victor Stanley victorstanley.com
Victor Stanley engineers and manufactures standard site furnishings for public spaces, distributed across North America and Canada.
Andreu World andreuworld.com
Andreu World is a seating and table furniture company creating high-end outdoor furnishings for residential and hospitality settings.
Barlow Tyrie teak.com
Barlow Tyrie produces practical and contemporary outdoor furniture crafted with British teakwood, steel, and aluminum materials.
Blu Dot bludot.com
Blu Dot is a Minneapolis-based furniture designer producing modern outdoor seating, tables, and decor for residential patios and decks.
Bosquet bosquet.us
Bosquet builds unique and durable outdoor furnishings from sustainably sourced North American wood.
Carl Hansen & Søn carlhansen.com
Carl Hansen & Søn is a Danish company crafting outdoor furniture for daily life and maintaining traditional Scandinavian design.
Cassina cassina.com
Italian outdoor furniture company Cassina possesses a vast product range designed to satisfy a broad spectrum of styles for residential and hospitality settings.
de Sede desede.ch/en
de Sede’s Swiss-made outdoor sofas and armchairs are suitable for residential terraces, hotels, and restaurants seeking comfort and class.
Division Twelve division12.com
Divisions Twelve’s outdoor furniture collection includes colorful, durable chairs made of weatherproof bent metal.
Emeco emeco.net
Emeco is a chair designer and manufacturer creating timeless outdoor seating crafted from recycled materials and sustainable resources.
Fermob fermob.com
Fermob is a French furniture company designing colorful and creative outdoor lighting and furnishings for garden and poolside spaces.
Fritz Hansen fritzhansen.com
Danish company Fritz Hansen creates contemporary outdoor furniture made of certified wood and durable materials.
GANDIABLASCO gandiablasco.com
GANDIABLASCO manufactures bohemian outdoor furniture available through retail stores and online.
Greenscreen tournesol.com
Tournesol’s Greenscreen line includes tables, benches, and planters for commercial and residential outdoor use.
Knoll knoll.com
Knoll creates sculptural furnishings for residential exteriors, with both midcentury modern and contemporary collections built to withstand climate.
Loll Designs lolldesigns.com
Loll designs and manufactures weatherproof outdoor lounge, dining, and planting furniture made from durable HDPE.
Pavilion Furniture pavilion-furniture.com
Inspired by South Florida’s vibrant outdoor-living culture, Pavilion Furniture crafts contemporary exterior furnishing for hospitality, contract, and residential markets.
Poliform poliform.it
Poliform is an international furniture company crafting modern appliances for residential exteriors, including seating and dining furniture, textiles, and outdoor kitchens.
Trueform Concrete trueformconcrete.com
Trueform manufactures prefabricated and custom concrete tables, benches, and mantels for the outdoors.
Tuuci tuuci.com
Tuuci designs outdoor lifestyle furnishing and shade products for exterior commercial, hospitality, and residential environments.
Vaarnii vaarnii.com
Vaarnii is a furniture company designing objects from Finnish pine, with an outdoor collection featuring sophisticated wooden seating and dining tables.
Vondom vondom.com
Vondom is an avant-garde indoor and outdoor furniture company that partners with designers to create unique pieces for hospitality, workplace, and residential spaces.
Anova anovafurnishings.com
Anova creates outdoor contract furniture installations made of recycled materials to help customers achieve their goals in sustainability and LEED certification.
ArborStakes arborstakes.com
ArborStakes crafts elegant below-ground tree stake solutions, constructed from U.S.sourced wood and equipped with locks made of plant-based resin.
Delta Fountains deltafountains.com
Delta Fountains partners with clients to design, manufacture, and install outdoor water feature displays across the United States.
Fancy Fence East fancyfenceeast.com
Fancy Fence East provides standard and custom gate configurations made with an exclusive, patented system, working with installation partners to offer gates for design and security.
Fountain People fountainpeople.com
Fountain People provides clients with high-quality equipment and design services for water features in outdoor commercial, recreational, and residential settings.
Global Drain Technologies globaldraintech.com
Global Drain Technologies is a manufacturer of drainage system products and drainage solutions for the outdoors to effectively manage water runoff.
Greenspoke gogreenspoke.com
Greenspoke designs and fabricates bike parking and bike repair stations for parks and communities, and outdoor bike storage rooms for residential projects.
ICON Shelter Systems iconshelters.com
ICON Shelter Systems manufactures industry-standard shelters, gazebos, and transit/bus shelters for public spaces.
Infinity Drain infinitydrain.com
Infinity Drain is a shower drain manufacturer with linear outdoor drain products that can be used for a diverse range of applications, ranging from outdoor showers to storm drainage.
LAB23
lab23.it/en
LAB23 crafts specialty, sustainability-oriented street furniture for the urban environment, working with both public and private clientele
Magnuson Group magnusongroup.com
Magnuson Group manufactures contract furniture for commercial facilities, with an extensive collection of outdoor accessories and furniture in its product line.
Most Dependable Fountains mostdependable.com
Most Dependable Fountains is a manufacturer that specializes in outdoor drinking fountains and bottle fillers.
Olev olevlight.com
Olev is an Italian lamp designer utilizing smart LED lighting systems in its indoor and outdoor lighting products.
Ortal ortalheat.com
Ortal is a designer and builder of contemporary frameless gas fireplaces for residential interiors and exteriors; it also manufactures traditional outdoor fireplaces.
Parasoleil parasoleil.com
Parasoleil is an architectural products company with a collection of shade and screen systems for outdoor spaces.
Platipus Landscape Solutions platipus.us
Platipus provides underground tree-anchoring systems designed for landscaping, rooftop, and over-structure applications.
Royal Botania royalbotania.com
Royal Botania designs and constructs luxury outdoor lighting, furnishing, and planters for the residential and hospitality markets.
Shade Systems shadesystemsinc.com
Shade Systems is a fabric shade and canopy manufacturer that provides design, engineering, and installation services.
Thermory thermoryusa.com
Thermory’s decking, cladding, porch flooring, and sauna systems are distributed to landscapers across the U.S.
Timberlab timberlab.com
Timberlab constructs and designs environmentally conscious mass timber projects for the U.S. commercial market.
Watertronics watertronics.com
Watertronics develops and maintains landscape and agricultural water-pumping systems.
Weltevree
weltevree.eu
Weltevree is a Dutch design brand manufacturing specialty outdoor furniture, cooking appliances, baths, and lighting for residential and commercial markets.
yanou yanou.studio
Yanou crafts nature-inspired, handmade planters and select furnishings for hospitality, residential, and commercial outdoor spaces.
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The Best of Design Awards is your opportunity to reach AN ’s audience of over 1 million readers. This is a unique project-based awards program which showcases great buildings, landscapes, master plans, interiors, and installations. Entrants are invited to submit works in over 50 categories which reflect AN ’s editorial coverage, as well as the interests of our readers.
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These upcoming fall building openings and renovation completions caught the eyes of AN ’s editors.
This fall promises a whirlwind of new building openings, with firms shaping (and reshaping!) cultural landmarks around the world. Sustainability, material innovation, and adaptive reuse are at the forefront of our concerns, but so is the capacity for spaces and structures to shape contemporary culture. These openings stand to show how design can connect communities, honor context, and push the boundaries of creative architecture. —The Editors
The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation by Grafton Architects Opened August 29
Arkansas is 57 percent forest, so it’s fitting that a new building at the University of Arkansas for the Fay Jones School of Architecture makes use of the abundant wood supply. The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, designed by Grafton Architects with modus studio, opens this fall. Among the woods cladding the building’s jagged volumes are Southern yellow pine, white oak, and crosslaminated timber panels. KK
Temple Emanu-El by Mark Cavagnero Associates Opens September 12
One hundred years after Arthur Brown, Jr., designed Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco, the congregation will complete a preservation-minded renovation of the Byzantine Revival–style building. In 2023, Mark Cavagnero Associates was tapped for the project, which adds two glass stories and relocates the main entrance of the place of worship back to Lake Street. KK
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Powell Hall by Snøhetta Opens September 19
Snøhetta is giving Powell Hall, home to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, a 65,000-squarefoot expansion for its 2025 centennial. The update adds a striking arched portal entry, a triple-height lobby made for mingling, and upgraded backstage, educational, and accessible spaces—all tuned to echo the hall’s historic architecture and musical spirit. IA
Judd Foundation’s Architecture Office by SCHAUM Architects Opens September 20
Restoration of Judd Foundation’s Architecture Office in Marfa, Texas, began in 2018 but was halted in 2021 due to a building fire. But the end is now here: SCHAUM Architects restored the building, preserving the original aesthetic while integrating new systems and materials to improve building performance. (See page 14 for the full story.) KP
Calder Gardens by Herzog & de Meuron and Piet Oudolf Opens September 21
Herzog & de Meuron and Piet Oudolf have been working in Philadelphia for over five years to reimagine a 1.8-acre site along Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Calder Gardens, as the honorific name suggests, references Philadelphia native Alexander Calder. Herzog & de Meuron’s 18,000-square-foot building and Oudolf’s
verdant landscape are the backdrop for a rotating selection of art pieces from the Calder Foundation. DJR
George Brown College’s Limberlost Place by Moriyama Teshima Opens in September
The new 10-story Limberlost Place on the campus of George Brown College in Toronto by Moriyama Teshima Architects and Acton Ostry Architects will soon open just a short walk from where the Google Quayside project, Sidewalk Toronto, was supposed to be built. The mass timber building’s defining feature is its grand stair, which doubles as circulation and leisure space. Its passive cooling techniques include solar chimneys and what the design team calls “breathing rooms.” The building will be used by students this semester. DJR
Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art by Jean Nouvel Opens October 25
The Cartier Foundation is moving from its iconic glass-and-steel home designed by Jean Nouvel home to a 1855 Haussmannian landmark at Place du Palais-Royal, now reimagined by Nouvel. The architect’s design preserves the building’s historic sensibility while adding vast bay windows, 36-foot-high reconfigurable galleries, and elevated walkways. It’s an architectural remix that fuses Parisian heritage with contemporary flexibility and keeps the city’s built landscape in constant evolution. IA
Harvard’s David Rubenstein Treehouse by Studio Gang
Opens October 27
Harvard University wanted to do things a little differently with the new David Rubenstein Treehouse. The 55,000-square-foot conference center, designed by Studio Gang, is Harvard’s first mass timber structure and university-wide community hub. The Treehouse is an example of how low carbon, sustainable construction can be seamlessly incorporated into institutional conference centers. PD
Princeton Art Museum by Adjaye Associates and Cooper Robertson Opens October 31
Built on the site of the university’s art museum, this new facility, designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson, doubles the institution’s square footage. The new Princeton Art Museum comprises nine pavilions and two “artwalks” at ground level that bring visitors, students, faculty, and researchers closer to the works on view. KK
Westerly Museum by Centerbrook Architects Opens in October
The new Westerly Museum of American Impressionism occupies a site overlooking the Pawcatuck River in Westerly, Rhode Island. Art collectors Cynthia and Thomas Sculco tapped Centerbrook Architects to transform a vacant rehabilitation facility and its grounds to complement the American Impressionist works on display dating from the 1880s to the 1920s. Set to open in October 2025, the new 20,000-squarefoot museum will span 11 galleries. PD
Johns Hopkins Student Center by BIG, Shepley Bulfinch, and Rockwell Group Opens in October
The new Johns Hopkins Student Center designed by BIG with Shepley Bulfinch and Rockwell Group reimagines campus life as a “central living room.” Built on the site
of a now-demolished complex by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the mass timber building’s standout feature is its flexible social spaces, which are meant to encourage gathering. Sustainability is woven into the design through solar roofs and energyefficient systems, while a 200-seat performance hall anchors the building as a space for creativity, collaboration, and community. IA
Sotheby’s New York at Marcel Breuer’s Whitney by Herzog & de Meuron Opens November 8
The stone-clad inverted ziggurat that hangs over New York’s Madison Avenue will be home to Sotheby’s headquarters. Tasked with designing the offices within the Marcel Breuer building, Herzon & de Meuron will preserve the landmark, restoring the flooring, concrete surfaces, dome lights, and floor-wide galleries. New additions focus on the needs of transporting and displaying art and illuminating the facade. KP
Portland Art Museum by Hennebery Eddy and Vinci Hamp Opens November 12
In the heart of downtown Portland, Oregon, Hennebery Eddy and Vinci Hamp’s expanded campus is set to weave together the 1932 Main Building and 1924 Mark Building with the luminous, glass-clad Rothko Pavilion. Terraces, passageways, and a new plaza will spill into the city, while sunlit circulation paths and transparent facades are meant to create moments of surprise, linking historic bones with bold contemporary gestures. IA
Studio Museum by Adjaye Associates, Cooper Robertson, and Studio Zewde Opens November 15
A new home for the Studio Museum in Harlem by Adjaye Associates, Cooper Robertson, and Studio Zewde will showcase artworks from the historic institution’s vast collection. Its first exhibition will be indebted to Tom Lloyd, a Queens-based sculptor who died in 1999. The retrospective will come full circle: Lloyd was the subject of Studio Museum in Harlem’s first exhibition, titled Electronic Refractions II , when it opened 56 years ago. DJR
New Museum expansion by OMA Opens this year
Most New York architects seem to have an opinion about the New Museum’s addition designed by OMA. Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas are the project leads, driving the high-profile commission in collaboration with Cooper Robertson. The inaugural exhibition, New Humans, will mount artworks by contemporary artists like Sophia Al-Maria, Lucy Beech, Meriem Bennani, Cyprien Gaillard, and Pierre Huyghe. How will it be received? Time will tell. DJR
By Ilana Amselem
Civic Architecture: The Panoramic Photography of Thomas R. Schiff at the Cincinnati Museum Center
Architectural photographer Thomas R. Schiff captures America’s civic spaces in sweeping 360-degree panoramas in Civic Architecture
The exhibition studies how courthouses, capitols, and libraries reflect democratic ideals and evolving civic life, revealing how these buildings inspire, shape, and mirror the communities they are meant to serve.
1301 Western Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45203 cincymuseum.org
Through October 19
Rose Iron Works and Art Deco at the Cleveland Museum of Art
An important part of Cleveland’s artistic heritage, Rose Iron Works has operated continuously since 1904. In the early 1900s, Cleveland attracted Hungarian blacksmith Martin Rose, whose firm soon became a national leader in decorative ironwork. Rose Iron Works and Art Deco traces the studio’s evolution from art nouveau to art deco design.
Detroit Month of Design
Design Core Detroit marks 15 years of design excellence with a monthlong festival featuring 95 events across the city and showcasing the work of more than 500 creatives.
Various locations around Detroit detroitmonthofdesign.org
September 1–30
Chicago Architecture Biennial: SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change
The sixth Chicago Architecture Biennial features more than 100 participants exploring architecture’s response to cultural, social, and environmental challenges. Led by artistic director Florencia Rodriguez, SHIFT includes exhibitions, performances, and programs citywide. Various locations around Chicago chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org
September 19–21 (Through February 28, 2026)
Atlanta Design Festival
Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts
Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture presents 35 works that reveal the artist’s deep engagement with the built environment. Spanning the 1920s through the 1960s, the exhibition highlights how O’Keeffe applied her modernist eye to skyscrapers, barns, and adobe structures, transforming architecture into powerful abstractions.
200 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan 48202 dia.org
September 13, 2026–January 3, 2027
Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US at the Cranbrook Art Museum
Eventually Everything Connects is a major survey of one of the most influential and enduring currents in American modern design, underscoring Cranbrook’s influential role. Featuring 200 works by nearly 100 artists, architects, and designers, it emphasizes the movement’s diversity and interconnectedness across people, ideas, and objects.
39221 Woodward Avenue Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 48304 cranbrookartmuseum.org
Through September 21
Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night at the Whitney Museum of Art
American sound artist Christine Sun Kim’s midcareer retrospective, All Day All Night , examines sound, language, and accessibility through a poetic, witty, and politically incisive body of work. Using drawings, murals, video, and sculpture, the exhibition challenges dominant narratives while celebrating Deaf culture, communication, and community.
99 Gansevoort Street New York, New York 10014 whitney.org
Through September 21
Four Five Six at a83
To mark the publication of a new three-volume set of books published by Buchhandlung Walther König, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen arrives for its first exhibition in the U.S. The show will include 96 new limited-edition
silkscreen prints, produced by a83, along with several large-scale models by OFFICE and sculptures by artist Rita McBride.
83 Grand Street, New York, NY 10013 a83.site
September 25–November 23
Oscar Tuazon: Salt Lake Water School at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art Oscar Tuazon’s work explores power structures around land, water, and infrastructure. His Water School project creates educational spaces aligned with the natural water cycle and spotlights water as a connector between people and environments. Salt Lake Water School focuses on the Great Salt Lake’s environmental urgency through modular architecture and text.
20 South West Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 utahmoca.org
Through September 27
Jorge Otero-Pailos: Treaties on DeFences at the Onera Foundation
The Onera Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic American architecture, opens its new home in a landmarked, 1,400-square-foot building in New Canaan with an exhibition by Jorge Otero-Pailos that explores the Eero Saarinen–designed U.S. embassy in Oslo.
63 Park Street, New Canaan, CT 06840 onerafoundation.org
October 1–March 28, 2026
Sandra Poulson: Este Quarto Parece uma República! at MoMa PS1
Following her 2024 Venice Biennale installation, Sandra Poulson’s first museum exhibition at MoMA PS1 presents new assemblage works exploring Angolan cultural symbols and geopolitics. With a title that means “This Bedroom Looks Like a Republic!” the exhibition includes sculptures made from garments and furniture in an effort to examine how intimate spaces reflect and challenge transnational histories and power dynamics.
22–25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, New York 11101 momaps1.org
Through October 6
11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 clevelandart.org
Through October 19
Iwan Baan: The Notational Surface at the Rice School of Architecture Gallery
Within the Rice School of Architecture Gallery in the new William T. Cannady Hall, photographer Iwan Baan showcases selections from his Houston Archive Project, which includes various helicopter trips over Houston’s “zoohemic canopy”—a phrase coined by Lars Lerup—and beyond.
6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005 arch.rice.edu
Through October 25
The Prize Is the Beginning at the Chicago Architecture Center, Usher Lambe Gallery
Presented with the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), this exhibition showcases diverse architectural excellence across the Americas. Highlighting award-winning projects and emerging voices, it emphasizes MCHAP’s broader mission: to spark ongoing conversations about architecture’s impact across cultures, communities, and disciplines.
111 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60601 architecture.org
Through October 26
LIGA 41: Unidad Vecinal, Departamento del Distrito at Liga Space for Architecture
Departamento del Distrito, founded by Francisco Quiñones and Nathan Friedman, dissects architecture through design, curation, and academia. Its installation, Unidad Vecinal, aims to reimagine domestic space as a flexible, collective stage, activated through public programs blending rest, work, and community.
Doctor Lucio, 181, Doctores, Mexico City, Mexico 06720 liga-df.com
Through October 30
Check archpaper.com/calendar for updated listings and other exhibitions and events.
The Atlanta Design Festival celebrates and connects the city’s creative industries through installations, exhibitions, tours, and panels. The weeklong event begins with the Creative Futures Conference on September 27.
Fourth Ward Offices (Tower 2), 505 North Angier Avenue North East, Atlanta, Georgia 30308 atlantadesignfestival.net
September 27–October 5
Archtober
Archtober celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2025 with the theme Shared Spaces, inviting New Yorkers to rethink how they live, move, and connect. The monthlong architecture and design festival features exhibitions, talks, and tours exploring public space, equity, community, and collective engagement across the five boroughs. Various locations around New York City archtober.org
October 1–31
The annual gathering is set to bring together landscape architects and allied professionals for education sessions, networking, and an expo of more than 275 exhibitors. This year’s theme, Beyond Boundaries , highlights how landscape architecture is addressing climate change, community health, and resilience.
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, 900 Convention Center Boulevard, New Orleans, LA 70130 aslaconference.com
October 10–13
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Directed by Victor Kossakovsky
The subject of Architecton, a new documentary, is ostensibly architecture. But unlike Brady Corbet’s recent psychological fantasy The Brutalist or Francis Ford Coppola’s lamentable fever dream Megalopolis , this film arrives with a pointed message about the problematic—and widespread—use of concrete, a virtually unrecyclable material. Instead, the film pleasingly unfolds as a lyrical, impressionistic journey more in the spirit of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi trilogy. The title Architecton literally means “master builder” in Greek, and, for Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky, “it’s another way of saying ‘master of the universe,’ right?” he recently told AN Kossakovsky was inspired by Kyiv-born avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935), who made “arkhitektons ,” austere blocks arranged in complex combinations in what he called “architectural Suprematism,” after his Suprematist paintings (think Black Square [1915] or White on White [1918]). Kossakovsky is the director behind the acclaimed films Vivan las Antipodas! / Long Live the Antipodes! (2011)—which contrasts two cities located diametrically opposite each other on the earth’s surface—and Aquerela (2018), about the power and beauty of water. He has said that Architecton is the third and final film in this trilogy. A producer advised him against using the title, but the director happened to read War and Peace and was amazed that Tolstoy employed the term “architecton” toward the end of the book to connote a god’s-eye point of view, shifting between characters’ perspectives, historical events during the Napoleonic Wars, and social customs, similar to cinematic storytelling modes that give readers total immersion in the story. This echoes the filmmaker’s ambitions to create a holistic approach to the depiction of the environment, natural and built.
Architecton’s scenes stage visuals of cities and landscapes, moments of beauty and banality, and the dichotomies of
sustainability and waste. More than architecture, the film is really about creation and destruction.
To get the point across during its tidy, 97-minute run time, cinematographer Ben Bernhard employs high frame rates, slow-motion pans, and drone shots. The film opens with a prologue of bombed-out buildings in Ukraine, with tower blocks ripped apart, with the remnants of lives on display—although there are no signs of life. Kossakovsky, a Russian now living between Berlin and Barcelona, told AN that “Russia is making such a catastrophe. I feel such guilt. If you look [at] the ruins in Ukraine, you know who is guilty. It’s from Russia, and you see how they destroy residential buildings when people are sleeping.”
But the destruction doesn’t end there: “On top of everything, we have a war with nature. We cannot win. It’s something wrong with the architecture of the world we create.” He also incorporates footage of the devastation wrought by the Turkish earthquake in 2023.
Kossakovsky maintains there is much to be learned from ruins. In his view, we should incorporate those romantic sensibilities in new construction, both in aesthetics and material use. “Generally speaking, ruins are more important than any written document, because normally, written documents are written by winners,” he said. Kossakovsky admires Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–78), whose black-and-white etchings of ancient Rome, which Kossakovsky maintains are so accurate they are almost photographic, inspired the black-and-white sequences he shoots of exploding rock quarries that cascade boulders down like an avalanche. The director also lovingly films Cretto di Burri in B&W, a white-concrete landscape artwork by Alberto Burri (1915–95) begun in 1984 and built on the ruins of Gibellina, a Sicilian town leveled by an earthquake. It is “a concrete scar in the landscape,” as Kossakovsky called it, which mimics the original streetscape.
The only architect who appears on camera in Architecton is Michele De Lucchi, founder of AMDL CIRCLE. (Kossakovsky approached several others and ended up pairing with De Lucchi.) In the film, De Lucchi travels to the ancient ruins of Baalbek, the City of Cyclops, in Lebanon, where enormous pieces of stone were used to create temples—but no one can figure out how the stones were moved or how the temples were constructed. Kossakovsky wanted to show off “this part of the world that is just made [of] stone. In one way, I want to show how badly we treat stones and how we grind them for cement. But on the other side, it’s also enhancing how beautiful the stuff we did was in the past and how much stones are a witness to the ability of humans to create. So, it’s a way to accuse and a way to celebrate the human production of artifacts.”
De Lucchi returns home to his garden in Lombardy, where he oversees the creation of a perfect circle of stones; humans cannot enter, but animals can. It is then the site of a closing conversation between the filmmaker and the architect. In that exchange, Kossakovsky questions why a “people who knew how to make buildings which lasted thousands of years […] build buildings that only last 40 years? Why do we build ugly, boring buildings if we know how to build beautiful ones?”
De Lucchi offers a slant reply: “Everything that has no fertility inside is dead. And it’ll stay ugly forever. Everything that is fertile and grows and develops and comes back to a new life—that is what we need: to find a new idea of beauty.” Architecton offers lyrical images that pack an existential punch. De Lucchi continues: “Architecture is just a way to think about how we live, and how we behave. There is a famous sentence that we say: ‘When we design something we do not design only products, buildings, or spaces, but we design the behavior of people.’”
Susan Morris works across media—film, television, radio, exhibitions, public programs, print, digital media— specializing in the arts and culture with an emphasis on architecture and design.
I met Robert Wilson soon after starting my first “real” job, as the director of the architecture and design gallery at the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston. This was in the mid-1990s, and Bob was spending a lot of time in Texas directing productions at the Houston Grand Opera—most notably the 1928 opera Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein. It was a homecoming of sorts for Bob, who grew up in Waco but soon left to study architecture and interior design at the Pratt Institute in New York City.
Early successes like Einstein on the Beach, a collaboration with minimalist composer Philip Glass, took Bob to Europe’s opera houses in the 1980s, where he was hailed as the savior of contemporary theater. By the time of his return to Texas and his productions at the Houston Grand Opera in the 1990s, Bob was already viewed (by me, at least) as a Grand Old Man of the Avant-Garde. We were introduced by the gallerist Hiram Butler, because Bob wanted to do a large-scale installation in an abandoned building on the edge of downtown. Titled Water Jug Boy, the installation involved a formation of blue geese that Bob wanted to suspend in the high-ceilinged industrial space. Getting insurance for visitors in an abandoned, waterlogged space proved impossible, but Bob was able to install the geese at Art Cologne later that year.
Many think Bob’s work is about light, space, and time. Although that is all true, Water Jug Boy, based on a Native American myth about a baby born as a water jug who then discovered his manhood through an adventure with his grandfather, is a hero’s tale of self-identity, which is an indirect theme that underlies all of Bob’s work.
In 2024, three decades later, I jumped at the chance to work with Bob again, this time to publish Robert Wilson: Chairs, a compilation of the furniture he has designed over the past 50 years. These chairs—made for theater productions using wire, wood, cloth, brass, and other materials—are often the only object on the stage and inevitably the only artifact left from his ethereal productions. As expressed in the interview below, conducted by Glenn Adamson in 2023 as preparation for his essay in the book, for Bob, the back of an object is as important as the front, if not more so. I view each of these chairs as a facet of Bob’s identity. Gathered together, they form an alternative and revealing autobiography. —Dung Ngo
The space in back of anything is more important than the space in front; the space in back is what gives the front space its power. It’s the same with an object or design, and it’s the same with acting. If you stand on a stage and you’re only aware of the audience in front of you, it’s one thing. But if you feel the space behind you, the space in front of you, facing the audience, is more powerful. That space around an object is what is important to me. In New Jersey they put furniture against the walls, and in Waco, Texas, my parents put the furniture against the walls. But I put it in the middle of the room.
Are you interested in exaggeration? You often work with what I would describe as a stretched, attenuated form. Is the idea of exaggeration important to you?
For me, design—whether it’s architecture or music composition—is about a vertical line and a horizontal line. And it’s this cross of time and space that’s the basic construction of everything.
In some Eastern belief systems, they believe man was born in the east and dies in the west, which follows the sun as it rises and falls. The Watermill Center is based on that construction. There is a cut that goes from north to south, and you can see all the way through the building. And, similarly, there’s a cut that goes from east to west. If you enter from the street, you walk through this narrow passage. Then the central building has no door, but there is an opening, and you can look to the west. There, I’ve placed a circle of megalithic stones that are from a burial site on the island of Flores in Indonesia. They’re more than 3,500 years old. Unfortunately, they were put on the market, and I acquired them to avoid having them broken up.
Glenn Adamson interviewed Robert Wilson, who died on July 31 at age 83, about his chair designs.
Glenn Adamson: Do you have deep relationships with the furniture you live with?
Robert Wilson: Yes, but maybe less so than I used to. Right now, I’m sitting in a room with a round table that Alvar Aalto designed in 1933. And there are four Aalto chairs that he designed. Over to my right is a chair of Frank Lloyd Wright’s. I don’t sit on many of the chairs that I have had through the years. They asked Gertrude Stein once: “Miss Stein, what do you think of modern art?” She said: “I like to look at it.” I like to look at these objects.
Do you think your own chairs thematize that act of looking? Given that they are props, do they in some way acknowledge the fact that they’re being looked at?
My father visited from Texas when I had finished school at Pratt Institute and was living in Manhattan. At the time, I had many more chairs than I have now, maybe several hundred chairs. He said: “You’ve got so many chairs here, but there’s nothing comfortable to sit on.” He was thinking more about a sink-in sofa with a shaggy rug in front of it; that was his idea of comfort. Many of the chairs that I designed are like sculptures, though I have done things that are more functional and utilitarian.
The main thing about my designs is that they deal with geometry, as do all of my theater works; I can diagram them rather quickly. What’s important is: Can I quickly see the whole of it? For example, with Einstein on the Beach, the opera I made with Philip Glass in 1976, the first time I met with Philip, I said, “This is five hours, four acts: Act 1, 2, 3, 4. And there are three themes: AB, CA, BC, ABC.” So I can quickly see five hours and envision the shape of the whole thing.
How do you think of the chairs? As compressions of these calculated shapes or as objects within the shapes? Are they both of those things?
Another thing that strikes me about many of your chairs is that they’re almost childlike. If you asked a child to draw a chair, it’s the simplest thing.
The best designs are the ones that are very simple. They don’t scream at you for attention. The ones that are probably better known are the ones that are demanding you to look at them. Like the first chair I designed for Freud, it disappears. You see it from a distance, and you don’t even notice it. When I made the chair as a piece of sculpture, it was hanging in space and illuminated, so the shadow became a drawing. If you see the object and the shadow from a distance, you couldn’t distinguish which was which. It was a drawing in space.
You’ve also made a chair that includes its own shadow physically.
That happened by accident. I was working in Hamburg, Germany, at the Thalia Theater with a young woman assisting me. She was a student. I had quickly sketched a chair, and she made a mock-up full-scale in cardboard. The proportions seemed wrong, so I said, “Maybe it should be a little taller.” We took black tape and masked out the parts we wanted to eliminate. Then I took tape and made it a little taller and thinner. We looked at it, and I thought: “Wow, that’s it.” It’s like a chair with its own shadow.
Do you find that often the ideas for the chairs arise during the design process? Or is it very much in your head before the making in most cases?
I make sketches and quick drawings. When I was young, my mother said, “Bob thinks by drawing.” I was always sketching. Even now, I’m talking to you and I’m showing you a drawing. It’s a way of thinking. Sometimes I work quickly to see the idea and then take time to study it.
If you see Einstein on the Beach, in the first scene of the first act, there’s a vertical bar of light that appears three times. And in the second scene, 1B, a horizontal bar of light appears; it’s a window in a courtroom. And in one scene in the fourth act, the only thing we see on stage is a horizontal bar of light that becomes vertical and flies away. Lighting was not something done two weeks before we opened. It was integral to the structure of the book. It was the book. It’s what we hear in the abstract, like the solfège—do, re, mi; do, so; do, so; do, so— and the numerical counts: 1,2; 1,2; 1,2; 1,2; 1,2. The construction was not anything new or radical. We understood at the time that people were looking for a narrative, but we worked from a classical pattern of theme and variation.
I suppose your chairs over time can be understood as theme and variation. Exactly.
You mentioned Eastern philosophy. It strikes me that in many Eastern countries—and many other countries—there are no chairs, or at least very few. People sit on the floor, so a chair is a specific object for a specific occasion. It elevates and creates power and importance. Is that something that is relevant to your chairs?
From time to time, I return to John Cage’s lecture on nothing: “I am here. And there is nothing to say.” It’s measured silence. I think I first heard him read this in 1962, and my life was forever changed. It was an introduction to Eastern philosophy and to Zen thinking. My education was conventional and based on Western philosophy: “I do something because of a reason.” It was a completely different way of thinking.
Do you think that your chairs could be understood as perches from which to experience nothing?
I think so. That’s a good way to think about it.
How do your chairs seem to you now when you see them all together photographed, gathered?
I like the dialogue they have together. When I see a drawing I did in the 1960s or ’70s, I can say, “Oh, that’s when Richard Nixon resigned,” or something. Somehow memories are encoded in those graphics. They’re like a diary or a journal.
That’s the best an object can be for us.
It might be “Oh, that’s when I was in love” or “Oh, this is when I was not happy” or da, da, da. They have memories.
Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer, and historian based in New York and London. He is currently the artistic director for Design Doha, a biennial in Qatar, and curator at large for the Vitra Design Museum.
Dung Ngo is an editor and the publisher of August Editions, a bespoke publishing house focused on historic and contemporary visual culture.
Sam Bloch
Random House
$32
The first cities were not heat islands, but the opposite: shady oases that provided refuge from the blazing Mesopotamian sun. Here in the New World, from Indigenous adobe homes to California Craftsman bungalows and breezy Louisiana shotgun houses, “American builders used to be climate control experts,” Sam Bloch writes. So why, today, is it impossible to find shade along many urban thoroughfares? Shade can mean the difference between comfort and misery, or even life and death. It invites us to linger and interact. In Shade, an enjoyable and persuasive read, Bloch, an environmental journalist, argues that shade is an overlooked “natural resource” and fundamental human right that can help us survive a warming planet and revitalize the urban public realm.
Leveraging scientific data and colorful anecdotes, Bloch proves that shade is far more important, delightful, and elusive than I, for one, had considered. We humans are just like salmon and squirrels and cows and bugs in that, in summer, we mostly choose shade when we can. We differ in that we also design for shade—from sombreros to arcaded cities—but we have forgotten our old tricks for collective outdoor shade tolerance, at least in the U.S. Our default reliance on private air-conditioned cars and homes has left the public realm inhospitable and dangerous, especially for vulnerable populations. It’s also weakened our bodies’ ability to adjust to hot weather, Bloch says. The good news is that all this is reversible— not through architecture alone, but through design coupled with policy moves and different cultural expectations.
Bloch takes us from shade-starved, mercilessly exposed bus stops and streets in Los Angeles, where he lived for a time (in one of the city’s “shadiest,” i.e., most privileged, neighborhoods, he admits), to older cities in sunny climes. The tall, canyon-like alleys of Fez, Morocco, “blockade” cool air near the ground, whereas the arcaded portici of Bologna, Italy, protecting more than 24 miles of street frontage, create a breeze from the differential temperature of shaded walks and unshaded streets. Contemporary Singapore has its covered sidewalks, which Bloch calls an “urban lubricant” because they catalyze social and economic activity in steamy weather. Barcelona has its crazily popular green streets. But in Los Angeles, Bloch reports, shade is effectively “illegal” on arteries like Figueroa Street, where thousands of people wait for buses on scorched sidewalks deemed too narrow for shelters, trees, or even vendor umbrellas. That’s why shade is not strictly an architectural or landscape design problem, according to Bloch. It’s also about culture, politics, and social equity. In Australia, following a generation of public service announcements about the dangers of sun exposure, people “have come to believe that everyone should be able to access shade.” More than 80 percent of public playgrounds in New South Wales are now shaded by trees or sails, Bloch reports, whereas only about 33 percent of American playgrounds are similarly shaded.
Bloch does not think shade can replace air-conditioning when it’s extremely hot out, which is an increasingly urgent matter. But to cope with ordinary summer heat, he implores us to abandon our (North American, post-WWII, fossil fuel–enabled) comfort zone and relearn how to use shade, curtains, water, and ventilation. He describes a passive house in Portland, Oregon, that never warmed above 84 degrees during the 2021 heat dome, when outdoor temperatures soared to 116 degrees. Its builder and inhabitant, architect Jeff Stern, recalled living through those days in “light sweating mode.” Could mainstream American culture adjust to light sweating mode? Bloch says we should try by maximizing passive design options and limiting our use of AC to truly dangerous heat, thereby limiting carbon emissions that further warm the planet. Bloch realizes, of course, that places like Portland are quickly expanding air-conditioning capacity in response to the shock of hotter summers. But if city or state agencies worked together to incentivize shade in public realm design and private development, architects and landscape architects could spring into action.
Bloch’s favorite outdoor air conditioners are deciduous trees, which he fondly calls “communal parasols” and “misting machines that cool the air.” Miraculously, these shade towers automatically drop their canopy in the winter, letting the sun shine through. But he’s also enthusiastic about technological shade solutions like agrivoltaics—solar panels that partially shade crops—which stimulate higher yields and produce clean energy.
Bloch is a witty writer. I could not fathom how I was going to read hundreds of pages on this topic until I realized the author was committed to cranking out zingers: “If shade is as old as the Bible, so is the bias against it.” “Americans use more energy for cooling than the billion-plus people of Africa use for everything.” And Bloch’s science journalism sparkles. Early on, for example, he explains why shade feels good on a
hot day, and it’s almost trippy to contemplate. “Shade soothes the senses. When the sun’s light is removed from bare skin, the infrared waves diminish and the agitated water molecules in our tissues begin to calm. They slow down, which cools them.” He brings the same verve to describing how Diébédo Francis Kéré’s passively cooled schools in Burkina Faso not only use shade and wind to “temper a hot desert environment” but also require that occupants know when to open and close windows and remember to refill buckets of water under windows to maximize evaporative cooling.
Toward the end of the book, Bloch zooms high above the clouds to explore the potential for controversial geoengineering or “planetary shade” solutions involving solar radiation modification. The basic premise is to screen a fraction of the sun’s energy before it hits Earth and gets trapped in the atmosphere. There are many ideas about how this could be done, from blankets of gas to swarms of reflecting devices, but each of them could have unintended and uncontrollable consequences, Bloch says. And in our era of shady billionaires and self-serving politicians setting the agenda for space, such technology could be used for private advantage rather than public good.
Even back on Earth, shade is not equally distributed. Bloch wants to make sure there’s enough to go around. All we have to do is build and plant more shade infrastructure, not piecemeal but systemically, in “holistic, long-term plans for streets, parks, and playgrounds.”
Gideon Fink Shapiro is a critic and historian who spends a lot of time in public spaces.
Five respondents discuss the ethics of how to respond to the Trump administration.
CP: But just taking the executive orders on their face, they claim that classicism is popular and what people want, so we should engage with that and challenge that claim.
Renee Cheng (RC): Some classical architectural details, for example, are expensive and don’t age well, so we can make an argument in terms of functionality. The AIA has a knowledge community on public architecture; maybe they could be helpful to shift the conversation away from style to talk about how design can lower the cost of operations and increase innovation.
Justin Garrett Moore (JGM): We need more spaces of dialogue to have more fruitful conversations around problem-solving. Innovation has traction with people in this administration.
CP: There are a lot of words in the executive order that we could embrace: words like beauty, civic virtue, responsibility, respect, dignity. These are not words that we have always used to describe design, but we could expand upon that.
RC: There have been clumsy and poor attempts at achieving diversity that feel like tokenism or quotas. So, if you say that we’re not setting quotas or numerical goals based on race, gender, or protected classes but instead that inclusion makes architecture better and more innovative, then maybe that is a way forward. If inclusion is something that advances innovation, it’s not a DEI policy; it helps an entity’s bottom line.
NL: But this administration is attempting to eliminate the Department of Education and with it much of the federal infrastructure that aims to democratize education.
RC: But what was the opening for doing that? Pell Grant recipients are not graduating at the rate of other grant recipients, so that’s a failure of the educational system. I’m not saying that eliminating the entire Department of Education is the correct solution, especially given the speed and the way that it’s being done. I’m just saying we ought to look at why the criticisms are landing, take responsibility for that, and propose positive solutions.
Last year, we—Victoria Beach, Peggy Deamer, and Thomas Fisher—authored an online ethics column for AN with the goal of hosting a discussion of the values that architects embody or should embody. We are continuing our inquiry into the ethics of architects through a recent conversation with colleagues in response to the question: “What should architects do when confronted with President Trump’s executive orders? And: What tools are available to our profession?” An edited version of the exchange appears below.
Our respondents were Renee Cheng, dean of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University; Nancy Levinson, editor and executive director of Places Journal; Ana Miljački, professor of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Justin Garrett Moore, program director of Humanities in Place at the Mellon Foundation; and Casius Pealer, senior professor of practice in real estate development, Tulane University.
Ana Miljački (AM): The U.S. has historically set terms for government buildings: They were more open and inviting after the Second World War but became more bunker-like as America saw itself under attack later in the century. Trump’s executive orders are a shortcut for white supremacy, which arrives embedded in classicist architecture.
Nancy Levinson (NL): I agree. It seems important to emphasize that the executive orders are not about architecture or aesthetics; they’re about the weaponization of culture on behalf of an authoritarian agenda to dismantle our flawed but real, pluralistic democracy. The Trump regime is operating in bad faith, and its architectural edicts are part of that.
AM: In response to this, I like the phrase “I would prefer not to” in Melville’s story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” That is a very specific formulation of resistance, stating a preference not to rather than refusing directly. But this position needs to be multiplied; operating collectively is the only way to exert pressure of any significance.
Casius Pealer (CP): Trump’s orders are based on the idea that modernism is not popular, which aligns his interest with what he says the public wants. So in our response, and in our duty to the public, not just our professional desires, we must figure out how to better frame the things that we know are important through our experience and expertise in a way that connects to the public. Rather than debating about whether classicism is a good thing or not, we need to talk about design innovation and its benefits.
AM: The executive order is not a benign aesthetic proposition; it is not a matter of taste. It is retrograde, problematic politics that we have spent a century trying to overcome.
NL: Any regime that demonizes art is doing so with a political agenda. The Nazis denounced modernism as “degenerate” and shut down the Bauhaus. In this country, during the McCarthy era, artists and writers were persecuted for being “un-American.”
AM: If Trump asks the architectural profession what he has asked of lawyers—to do pro bono work of his choosing in exchange for getting federal work—we would be faced with a classic prisoner’s dilemma. We must each make our own decisions about what is right, without knowing how others will choose. If everyone separately chooses for the benefit of the collective, this would be the best cumulative result, but some may choose what might give them an advantage over others. I am from former Yugoslavia, and this moment in the U.S. feels a lot like déjà vu.
NL: It’s historically been hard for Americans to accept that tyranny can happen here, but it’s happening here right now. How to deal with this as a profession? If you refuse to engage on your own, you might lose a job, but if the profession refuses to engage—say, on detention centers—then you have the beginnings of collective action.
RC: I was talking recently with the person who runs the AIA knowledge community for prisons about the movement to opt out of designing prisons that included solitary confinement. Their response was that prisons are going to get built, with or without architects, and that design interventions like biophilia can improve prisoners’ quality of life, so they felt that opting out was not the solution, that it would harm more prisoners than not.
CP: A colleague from the ACLU told me that the AIA’s taking a strong position on [prisons] in our code of ethics about solitary confinement has had a meaningful impact on litigation and on the law.
RC: Trump has, for many years, found ways to get free architectural services, so a quid pro quo would not be anything new, but I do think that this public architecture group at the AIA as well as a large firm roundtable would potentially be a place to start to ask the question so that they’re prepared and so that it doesn’t become a prisoner’s dilemma.
CP: One of the things that’s nice about having a code of ethics is you’ve presumably thought about some of these issues before they come up and you have a framework for them.
RC: It is actually not that hard to update the code of ethics. It would be worth doing if there was something that would be helpful for all the firms because it’s in the code of ethics.
NL: Something that’s fundamental to questions of architecture and ethics is the client-centric basis of most offices. Architects’ livelihoods—and payrolls—depend on meeting the needs of clients, which can mean taking on projects that conflict with one’s political or ethical convictions. At Places, we’ve launched a series called “Repair Manual” that explores “the paradigm shift from building the world to repairing the world.” It’s attracted a wide readership among architects concerned that wasteful construction is contributing to global warming. What to do when you find yourself working on projects that run against your beliefs?
CP: The same may come up with regards to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The first DEI executive orders came out calling it illegal, but DEI is not illegal, and nothing becomes illegal just because of an executive order.
JGM: The same is true with buildings that have some clear faults. The ability to say that something is not working for people and, to be honest about it, has a lot of value relative to putting so much energy in attacking and disparaging something; it does not land well with the public when you do that. The broader public wants some degree of owning up to things, and that doesn’t happen enough. On the DEI question, we are in a highly divided society, and we have always been in a highly divided society. My parents went to segregated schools, so this is not new.
NL: Here it might be useful to note that most architects don’t interact much with the public—or, at least, most clients are private, not public. And yet buildings are inevitably part of our collective experience; architecture is the most public of the arts. How might the profession connect with the debates and divisions that are roiling our country and do so in meaningful ways? Can we imagine a profession with an expanded purview? With new ways of engaging with communities? What we’re experiencing in this country is scary and unprecedented. If the Trump administration succeeds in its authoritarian takeover, life will be different for all of us. But we can still choose how we respond.
JGM: I agree. This connects to how to get the broader public to care about just how much is at stake. That’s why it’s a problem when architectural concerns get boiled down to style, because what is happening is so much more than that. It’s a mass distraction to even talk about it that way, because 99 percent of the people on the street have lots of other things to worry about. So if the argument is about the style of buildings, you lose.
RC: I’m scared, but I’m also optimistic. This is a call to question the role of architecture in serving the public. Talking about architecture in terms of innovation or its ability to serve people is not something that we’ve done well as a profession. I think our current predicament is an opportunity to do something that we’ve needed for a long time, which is to show how design decisions have an impact on your daily life—not just civic life, but your personal life.
CP: I agree, but I also think that we can’t forget the fact that these executive orders are disingenuous. The Trump administration is not making a good faith effort to try to improve architects’ connections with the public. It’s the opposite.
Victoria Beach was a faculty fellow at Harvard’s Center for Ethics and wrote the textbook for the first ethics class at the Harvard GSD. She has had her own architectural practice for nearly 30 years and has recently held elective office in California.
Peggy Deamer is professor emerita at Yale School of Architecture and a founding member of the Architecture Lobby. She has practiced architecture for 45 years and is the author of Architecture and Labor
Thomas Fisher is a professor in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota and the director of the Minnesota Design Center. A former dean of the College of Design, he was also an editor at Progressive Architecture magazine for 14 years.
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