September/October 2026

The Architect's Newspaper September/October 2026

The Gordie Howe International Bridge opens, a data center for Kansas City, and more page 6

archpaper.com

Brian J. Mac designs a steel-clad addition for the Southern Vermont Arts Center page 15

The biggest Fall 2026 building openings across the country and around the world.

Read on page 10.

ROLL OUT THE RED CARPET

@archpaper

Valerio Franzone interviews Ignacio G. Galán about Architecture’s Kinships page 62

Midwest to Middle East

Coen+Partners. Read on page 16.

Ekemini Ekpo reviews MoMA’s Architects of Liberation: Modernism in West Africa page 63

$6.95

Research by D’Arcy Jones captures the intelligence of ordinary old buildings page 64

8 Open: Retail 9 What is architecture?

56 Marketplace 61 Happenings 66 Comic: Amelyn Ng

Over the River A waterfront park designed by EskewDumezRipple and Hargreaves Jones opens in New Orleans. Read on page 42.

COURTESY COEN+PARTNERS

TIM HURSLE Y

A New Green GOOD CHEMISTRY FIXING ACADEMIA INDIGENOUS HOUSE Commons AND PRACTICE? VJAA completes Fraser Hall in Minneapolis. Read on page 24.

DOUBLESPACE

Architecture academia and architecture practice have drifted so far apart that they now operate as separate professions. The educator measures success by publications produced, grants secured, and student achievements.

The practitioner measures success by buildings realized, clients satisfied, and contracts secured. Each regards the other with a mixture of envy and suspicion: The educator finds practice insufficiently serious about ideas, while the practitioner finds the school insufficiently serious about building. Students, caught between them, are left to navigate this widening gulf without inheriting the discipline that once made it intelligible.

This is not cultural drift. As argued by Anthony Kronman in Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, our current state is a structural condition produced by three forces: the research ideal, ideological capture, and commercialization. Together they have displaced continued on page 20

DOUBLESPACE

Outdoor Spaces The Architect’s Newspaper 25 Park Place, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10007

When the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) first moved to downtown Santa Ana, California, it hardly had a campus to speak of.

Instead, its roughly 2,300 students in grades 7 to 12 occupied a loose collection of preexisting buildings. Outdoor space was limited to the exposed concrete surrounding a 75-car parking lot. “The priority was simply getting a school open, so there wasn’t an emotional center or any real cohesion,” Michael Bonn, a partner and design director at the Long Beach–based architecture firm Studio One Eleven, told AN. In 2011, Studio One Eleven was invited to design Campus Green, an adaptive reuse and unification strategy that the original campus had been critically missing. Fifteen years later, Campus Green encompasses a 1.2-acre park and roughly 350,000 square feet of interior space across 13 buildings—including classrooms, conservatories, rehearsal spaces, performance venues, recording studios, sciWILLIAM JESS L AIRD ence labs, film stages, continued on page 14

Formline and LGA at the University of Toronto. Read on page 28.

Landscape’s greatness.

Read on page 31.

AL AN K ARCHMER /OT TO

PRSRT STD US POSTAGE PAID PERMIT No. 336 MIDLAND, MI

MAKE YOUR M RK

University of the District of Columbia Student Center Washington, D.C. — Designwall 2000

Transcend the Expected with BENCHMARK Designwall Kingspan’s BENCHMARK Designwall architectural insulated panels and façade systems deliver thermal performance with a high-end, architectural look. The perfect choice to display custom colors and patterns while retaining energy efficiency and a professional, refined look, the BENCHMARK Product Portfolio transcends the expected with limitless options.

Designwall 2000

kingspanbenchmark.us

Turn your education project into a work of art with Kingspan BENCHMARK at kingspanbenchmark.us.

4

The Architect’s Newspaper

Editor’s Note

Masthead

Information

CEO/Creative Director Diana Darling

General Information info@archpaper.com

Editor in Chief Jack Murphy Art Director Ian Searcy Managing Editor Isabel Ling Design Editor Kelly Pau News Editor Daniel Jonas Roche Associate Editor Paige Davidson Copy Editor Don Armstrong Proofreader Joanne Camas

SAR AH VASQUEZ

In April, over 100 people gathered at Santa Elena Canyon beneath a Texas flag as a peaceful demonstration of transborder solidarity.

No Big Bend Wall Ahead of the ASLA 2026 Conference on Landscape Architecture in Los Angeles (organized under the timely theme of Action!), we take landscape as our theme across this issue. We start with a studio visit with Coen+Partners (page 16) and in our Focus section, we visit a park along Manhattan’s East River designed for flood resilience (page 34), a new park in New Orleans that connects a string of riverfront destinations (page 42), streetscape improvements across Philadelphia (page 38), and a winery in California (page 46). (Surfacedesign is the landscape architect of the last project; Roderick Wyllie, one of its founding principals, is a juror in our Best of Design Awards, whose submission deadline is September 18.) How might parks help counteract our loneliness epidemic? Read Land Collective founding principal David Rubin’s thoughts on page 32.

Elsewhere in the issue, we highlight new higher education projects (page 19). And our critics assess projects like Campus Green, an open-air campus in Orange County, California, for grades 7 to 12 (page 14), and a Cor-ten-clad addition to the Southern Vermont Arts Center (page 15). Plus, in our fall preview we round up notable openings (page 10).

Many competing forces are at play within landscape architecture projects, from nature to infrastructure, maintenance, and time. These days, the politics of federal lands is a hot topic as President Trump reshapes Washington, D.C., despite pushback and lawsuits. Beyond an arch or a ballroom, environmental alarm bells are ringing across the country, because last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act included provisions to expand oil and gas leasing on federal lands.

The Center for American Progress, an independent, nonpartisan policy institute, called the legislation “anti-environment.” Already this year, the federal government has spent almost $4 billion to cancel offshore wind leases.

More recently, news broke that the Trump administration is planning to open about 45 million acres of wilderness in national forests to road construction and logging. This would occur through the removal of the “roadless rule,” in place since 2001, which protects undeveloped forest lands. According to The New York Times, supporters say this would aid in forest management and economic activities, while detractors claim it would ruin habitats and headwaters for major municipal water supplies. This push arrives as federal funding for the National Park Service has been reduced and park staffing has dropped 25 percent since January 2025.

Also in the works is a potential “Trump Interstate”: The proposed I-47 Future Interstate Act of 2026 would designate U.S. Highway 287 as an interstate, which would allow it to be widened for additional capacity. The road begins in Port Arthur, Texas, and runs northwest to Montana, with one interruption for Yellowstone National Park. Already local specialists are worried about how the change might impact wildlife migration.

Environmental concerns have led to outrage over the expansion of border wall infrastructure between the U.S. and Mexico, for which the One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $46.5 billion to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Late last year, sites within the Coronado National Memorial in Arizona were dynamited to make way for enhanced surveillance.

As Sarah Vasquez covered in June for AN, the fight has come to the Big Bend region of Far West Texas, where a mix of physical walls, vehicle barriers, and “smart walls” stand to divide a remote, ecologically diverse, and archaeologically rich part of the continent.

A community coalition has united under the rallying cry “No Big Bend Wall” to raise awareness.

In mid-August, antiwall sentiment surged as footage circulated online of heavy equipment scraping across ridges near Mariscal Canyon to establish access roads and plowing through brush along the Rio Grande at the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon. Though CBP isn’t currently erecting a physical wall, it is still planning to spend $1.7 billion on patrol roads, technology (cameras, lights, and more), in-river buoys, and vehicle barriers. If it seems that this infrastructural move is an overreaction, it is: Crossings in the park constitute only about 0.05 percent of the national total.

Construction work began this summer without environmental reviews or preservation audits, prompting at least one lawsuit, filed on religious grounds.

Newsweek reported that Barnard Construction Company, which was awarded multiple contracts for CBP projects in the Big Bend region worth billions of dollars, is led by a Trump donor.

At the time of this writing, CBP has announced that it will temporarily halt construction after it attracted criticism from many people who love this landscape.

Count me among them: I have fond memories of the national park, from camping along the Rio Grande to hiking the South Rim Trail atop the Chisos Mountains.

Already the bulldozing has scarred a beautiful place.

The fight for the future of the Big Bend is one of many unnecessary battles that are too common in the United States today. Jack Murphy

Vice President of Brand Partnerships (Southwest, West, Europe) Dionne Darling Director of Brand Partnerships (East, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Asia) Tara Newton Sales Manager Heather Peters Audience Development Manager Samuel Granato Vice President of Events Marketing and Programming Marty Wood Assistant Program Manager Josh Ilano

Editorial editors@archpaper.com Advertising sales@archpaper.com Subscription subscribe@archpaper.com Vol. 24, Issue 5 September/October 2026 The Architect’s Newspaper (ISSN 1552-8081) is published 6 times per year by The Architect’s Newspaper, LLC, 25 Park Place, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10007.

Presort-standard postage paid in New York, NY. Postmaster, send address changes to: 25 Park Place, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10007.

For subscriber service, email subscribe@archpaper.com. $6.95/copy, $50/year; institutional $189/year.

Entire contents copyright 2026 by The Architect’s Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved.

Please notify us if you are receiving duplicate copies.

The views of our writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff or advertisers of The Architect’s Newspaper.

Events Marketing Manager Andrea Parsons Business Office Manager Katherine Ross Design Manager Dennis Rose Graphic Designer Carissa Tsien­­

Corrections

Associate Marketing Manager Sultan Mashriqi

The story about KPF’s 50th anniversary in the July/ August issue contained numerous errors. Cofounder Bill Pedersen’s last name was misspelled. The office has eight offices and over 650 employees, not nine offices and 1,400 employees. One of the buildings discussed is located at 520 Fifth Avenue, not 570 Fifth Avenue, which is also a KPF project. The photography credit for the Shanghai World Financial Center should be Mori Building.

Marketing Associate Trista Bowser Marketing Assistant Eazhel Breeden

STEELE Associates was the local architect for the Oregon library designed by The Miller Hull Partnership.

6 News Scout and ISA to convert historic Frank Furness building in Philadelphia into affordable housing for artists A historic building designed

by Philadelphia architect Frank Furness on the city’s Avenue of the Arts will be converted into affordable housing for artists by Scout, a local development and design group that now owns the Furness Residence Hall. ISA, a Philadelphia-based practice, is the architect. The adaptive reuse of Furness Residence Hall will move forward thanks in part to a $2.5 million grant from the Knight Foundation. The grant will go toward rehabilitating the building to make it viable for permanent housing, as well as on-site programming that will support the artists living there. DANIEL JONAS ROCHE

Louisville city officials share new renderings of the Belvedere by Heatherwick Studio On August 11, Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg, alongside London-based Heatherwick Studio and local firm KNBA Architects, unveiled new renderings of the Belvedere, a 5.5-acre elevated plaza that has anchored downtown Louisville’s riverfront since the early 1970s.

The renderings showed an updated version of a design from January 2025, that would have required building

↓

out from barges on the Ohio River. That design was later replaced. ILANA AMSELEM

CambridgeSeven converts historic Boston office building into allelectric, fossil fuel–free workplace In 2023, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu issued an executive order banning fossil fuels in buildings owned by the municipality, making it the first major U.S. city to do so.

As part of the effort to curb carbon emissions, a historic building owned by the City of Boston has been converted into an all-electric, fossil fuel–free workplace

by CambridgeSeven. Building Conservation Associates served as historic preservation consultant. CambridgeSeven said that 89 percent of the original limestone, brick, and cast stone structure from 1912 was preserved. At the same time, its systems were fully electrified to meet the city’s net-zero-emissions goals, making it one of Boston’s first “near-net-zero civic buildings,” the architects said. DJR

sauerbruch hutton and Studio Gang win competition to renovate German House at United Nations Plaza sauerbruch hutton and Studio Gang have been selected to overhaul a tower in New York City that hosts Germany’s

The Architect’s Newspaper

consulate general and permanent mission to the United Nations following an international design competition that concluded this month. Berlin-based sauerbruch hutton will lead the design, with Studio Gang acting as the architect of record and general planner overseeing construction. It is the first U.S. commission for sauerbruch hutton and the first collaboration between the two firms. IA

Beyer Blinder Belle completes Miramar, a residential complex, on Inwood’s rezoned waterfront When the New York City Council approved the Inwood Neighborhood Rezoning in August 2018, it opened roughly 10 acres of parking lots and industrial land to new housing, with the promise of over $200 million in public investment and thousands of income-restricted apartments in exchange. Miramar, a 770,000-square-foot complex now open on West 206th Street, is one of the first large-scale results of the rezoning. Designed by Beyer Blinder Belle (BBB), it delivers 698 rental apartments across three interconnected towers, 281 of which are permanently affordable, along with spaces for retail and a new home for the People’s Theatre: Centro Cultural Inmigrante, designed

by WORKac. IA

↓

BIG NUMBER

Square Feet SpaceX plans to build the “world’s largest building” for its Terafab semiconductor factory in Grimes County, Texas. The facility is expected to be 100 million square feet. DJR Trump takes the White House Ballroom project to the Supreme Court after Washington, D.C., circuit court judges rule against it Washington, D.C., circuit court judges ruled on August 7 against President Trump’s plans for the White House East Wing Ballroom, designed by Shalom Baranes Associates.

The project needs approval from Congress, which the president has not received, the judges affirmed in a joint majority opinion. The decision blocks any aboveground construction on the ballroom from advancing until Congress

A HIGH-RISE DATA CENTER PROPOSAL BY SOM STIRS OPPOSITION IN KANSAS CITY

allows the project to proceed, if at all. On August 14 the Trump administration filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court asking justices to block the lower court’s ruling so construction can proceed. DJR

Green New Deal for Public Housing Act reintroduced in Congress Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Delia C. Ramirez and Senator Bernie Sanders reintroduced the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act. The legislation is aimed at rebuilding the country’s public housing stock, addressing capital backlog, and creating union jobs. A summary of the bill states that “the legislation blends housing and climate policy—turning public housing into a model of efficiency, sustainability, and resiliency for the rest of the nation.” DJR

Thomas Hines, scholar of modern architecture in California, dies at 89

COURTESY SOM

A plan to build a data center within a 20-story high-rise in Kansas City’s Quality Hill neighborhood drew pushback from local community and preservation groups. The data center proposal was announced in June. The proposed building was designed by SOM and backed by Revitalization Unlimited, a Miami-based developer that advertises itself as a “real estate fund for accredited investors who value both returns and heritage.” The Kansas City Plan Commission unanimously voted against the data center on August 5. It received almost 500 letters of opposition and zero letters of support. DJR

Thomas Hines, a UCLA professor and leading scholar of modern architecture, died on July 28. Best known for his studies of Daniel Burnham, Richard Neutra, Irving Gill, and Los Angeles modernism, Hines helped establish Southern California architecture within the broader canon. His scholarship, teaching, archival research, and mentorship profoundly shaped generations of architectural historians. EDWARD DIMENDBERG

Corgan acquires Albany, New York–based WCGS Architects On August 3, Corgan announced it acquired WCGS Architects, a firm based in Albany, New York. Morrissey Goodale, a New York business

consultancy, served as an adviser during the acquisition process. Corgan CEO Scott Ruch said in a statement that the acquisition will make Corgan “better positioned to serve clients, pursue new opportunities, and continue growing across the Northeast.” DJR

National Park Service states Trump’s arch poses adverse effects to Washington, D.C. In a recent assessment, the National Park Service (NPS) found that President Trump’s proposed triumphal arch, designed by Harrison Design, would adversely affect views from 37 locations in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia. At 250 feet tall, the arch would far exceed the city’s 130-foot height limit and obstruct the historic sightline between the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and Robert E. Lee’s former home, a vista that came to symbolize national reunification after the Civil War. The NPS also identified potential impacts to views from the Washington Monument, Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Grove, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Georgetown Historic District, Francis Scott Key Bridge, and other historic sites.

JOSH ILANO

Pliny Fisk III, “mad scientist of the green building movement” and codirector of CMPBS, dies at 82 Pliny Fisk III, the exuberant and visionary codirector of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, died on July 27. Fisk earned a reputation as one of the founding figures of the modern sustainability movement in design.

Over his 50 years of leadership at CMPBS, Fisk—in tandem with his equally renowned

7 partner, Gail Vittori—constantly experimented, venturing regularly into uncharted territory with an ever-changing cast of collaborators from all corners of the earth. DAVID DEWANE

London’s Barbican Centre announces competition to design new furniture for its campus The Barbican Centre has launched an international competition to find a designer to create up to 500 bespoke furniture pieces. The commission, which coincides with the museum’s major overhaul being overseen by Allies and Morrison and Asif Khan Studio with Buro Happold and Harris Bugg Studio, will include seating, tables, benches, and more, prioritizing accessibility, flexibility, sustainability, reuse, and sensitivity to the landmark Brutalist architecture. KRISTINE KLEIN

President Trump and Department of Transportation reveal plans to update Dulles Airport On July 29, President Trump and the U.S. Department of Transportation revealed plans to renovate and improve the efficiency and design of Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport. The project, estimated to cost $22.5 billion, is a collaboration between the USDOT, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, and United Airlines. Trump said, “We have had over 30 architects and 30 different designs, and we did a little cherry-picking, and we spoke to a lot of people, and we’ve come up with a plan that is efficient and really beautiful.” KK

SLCE Architects is designing affordable housing atop an NYPD parking lot in East Village SLCE Architects is designing The Aurea, a mixed-use development atop an NYPD parking lot in Manhattan’s East Village. The project will provide 131 affordable homes, including units for formerly unhoused New Yorkers, alongside a senior center, community space, and replacement parking. Housing Works will offer on-site resident services. DJR

Jeremy Melvin—writer, academic, and World Architecture Festival curator—dies at 62 British writer, curator, and academic Jeremy Melvin, who specialized in modern and contemporary architecture, died at age 62 on July 14. Melvin was known around the world for his work as a curator of SLCE Architects

September/October 2026

is designing The Aurea, a mixed-use development atop an NYPD parking lot in Manhattan’s East Village. The project will provide 131 affordable homes, including units for formerly unhoused New Yorkers, alongside a senior center, community space, and replacement parking. Housing Works will offer on-site resident services. DJR Jeremy Melvin— writer, academic, and World Architecture Festival curator— dies at 62 British writer, curator, and academic Jeremy Melvin, who specialized in modern and contemporary architecture, died at age 62 on July 14.

Melvin was known around the world for his work as a curator of the World Architecture Festival. Over the years, the festival brought together architects in Barcelona, Singapore, Berlin, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Miami. JACK MURPHY

Arcadis and SmithGroup restore prominent South Boston Revolutionary War site Plans to restore Thomas Park, and its Dorchester Heights Monument, were announced by the National Park Service in 2023. Construction on the park was completed this year, timed with the country’s semiquincentennial. Arcadis shepherded accessibility changes to Thomas Park and SmithGroup served as historical preservation architect for the Dorchester Heights Monument. DJR

Montreal government announces plan to revamp interiors of its Olympic Stadium Fifty years ago, Montreal hosted the 1976 Summer Olympics. In preparation for the Games, city officials commissioned Olympic Park, including a stadium designed

by French architect Roger Taillibert. Known as “The Big O,” the stadium was not completed in time for the Olympics, but its distinctive architecture has endured as a landmark of Montreal’s sports and entertainment scene. Now, following the Quebec government’s approval of an $870 million project to replace the stadium’s deteriorating roof, the province has announced plans to also renovate and upgrade its interiors. KK

center and movie theater.

Opened in 1947, the 783-seat theater features an art deco lobby and botanical details.

Gensler and Preservation Houston are helping develop preservation-minded restoration plans, while filmmaker Wes Anderson is supporting the effort through a benefit gala and fundraising campaign. JI

↓

NEW INFRASTRUCTURES PROMOTE CONNECTIVITY ACROSS U.S. CANADA BORDER

Rike Tubes by Fuksas Studio in Tbilisi, Georgia, are slated for demolition Fuksas Studio’s Rike Tubes in Tbilisi, Georgia, are slated for demolition by December 25.

Built in 2012 as a cultural complex, the structures have exteriors that were completed, but construction on the interiors was halted following a government transition, leaving the buildings vacant and unfinished. In 2025, Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, criticized the architecture, calling the Rike Tubes “ugliness” that “does not befit our beautiful capital.” In response, the editorial board of Georgia Today argued that demolishing the structures would be “a civic and cultural failure.” DJR

COURTESY WINDSOR–DETROIT BRIDGE AUTHORIT Y

The new Gordie Howe International Bridge (pictured above), which connects Canada to Michigan, opened in July. AECOM designed the bridge and port of entry crossing. Moriyama Teshima Architects also completed the bridge’s Canadian Port of Entry (pictured below). IA

Smiljan Radić, PPAA, and other architecture and design firms stage installations at Concéntrico Concéntrico, an annual architecture and design festival in Logroño, Spain, brought together international firms including Smiljan Radić, PPAA, and AAU Anastas. Through pavilions, gardens, performances, and experimental structures, this year’s installations explored identity, urban ecology, and public-space transformation while addressing environmental needs, community engagement, play, and alternative approaches to city making. KK

New York State passes temporary moratorium on hyperscale data center construction

Arthouse Houston, Gensler, Preservation Houston, and Wes Anderson rally to restore Houston’s Garden Oaks Theater

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order in July that sets the country’s first moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, despite construction industry leaders’ and AI lobbyists’ opposition. Hyperscale data centers consume more than 50 megawatts of power and typically exceed 10,000 square feet and have more than 5,000 servers.

Data center projects that have already received permits will not be impacted. DJR

Arthouse Houston is leading a $14 million campaign to save Houston’s historic Garden Oaks Theater from demolition and restore it as an arts community

EskewDumezRipple completes Burden Museum & Gardens Welcome Center in Louisiana

RICHARD SECK

A new 6,500-square-foot building designed by EskewDumezRipple in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, serves as a “civic gateway” to the Burden Museum & Gardens and the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens campus more broadly.

The timber structure consists of locally sourced cypress, complemented by polished-concrete flooring. Dark corrugated siding wraps the building’s envelope. DJR

SANAA, Estudio A0, Caá Porá Arquitectura, Jerome Haferd Studio, Taller Capital Landscape, and others to design National Museum of Ecuador On July 19, Ecuador’s minister of Transportation and Public Works, Roberto Luque, announced that SANAA, Estudio A0, Caá Porá Arquitectura, Jerome Haferd Studio, and Taller Capital Landscape have been selected to design

the National Museum of Ecuador in Quito. SANAA’s design replaces a proposal by Studio Campo Baeza and MAODA that was initially selected by jurors for the museum as part of an international competition hosted by the Ecuadoran government. DJR

Changes to Section 106 of National Historic Preservation Act draw pushback from preservationists and legal experts On July 17, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) released a draft outlining proposed changes to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which regulates approximately 1.4 million sites around the U.S. listed on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places database. The changes were approved by ACHP on July 24. Per the changes, public comment is “an optional,

not mandatory” part of the Section 106 process. Criteria for what constitutes a project’s “adverse effect” are revised.

The definition of “historic property” is changed, meaning only sites with “tangible human improvements” are included as such. DJR

Get the full stories and daily news updates at archpaper.com.

8 Open Restrained Retail

In contrast to the sensory, immersive approach that has taken over retail design lately, the newest crop of brick-and-mortar stores opt for restrained palettes, minimal materials, and the incorporation of existing architectural elements.

GABE ROTH

ADAM ROUSE

Aer by FIGURE

1318 East 7th Street Suite M1-120, Los Angeles, California 90021

After designing Aer’s locations in New York and San Francisco, FIGURE completed a third brick-and-mortar store for the luggage company in Los Angeles, located in Row DTLA. Like the first two stores, the latest design uses a clean, modular visual language. FIGURE developed a display system for the travel gear brand that riffs off Aer’s emphasis on simplicity and utility. The system utilizes a two-tone palette of satin aluminum and speckled recycled rubber. Stepped millwork runs along the perimeter of the space, showcasing the bags without outshining them. The forms of the system mimic the seamless motion of airport luggage carousels. At the center of the space, a monolithic table and aluminum stools offer a place to get up close and personal with the gear. Lush plants lighten the gray and steel color scheme while connecting the store with the equally lush greenery in the city.

Sundae School Store by Nohar Zask-Agadi

NAHO KUBOTA

117 Hester Street, New York, New York 10002

Soft drapery and metal frames make up the minimal material palette of Sundae School Store, the first brick-and-mortar store of the Korean American fashion and lifestyle brand. The brand tapped architect Nohar Zask-Agadi (who is also the husband of the company’s founder) to update the space in New York’s China­town. Drawing inspiration from the gradual spatial sequencing within Korean Buddhist temples, Zask-Agadi clad the space in pink drapes that frame the perimeter. These create portals deeper into the space, establishing thresholds that slow down progression. Stacked atop the curtains, a metal beam wraps around the store to create a display system. A floral-shaped aluminum table rests at the center of the space, uniting the warm and sleek design elements of the store.

Issey Miyake Flagship by SO–IL

45 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10010

Located on the ground floor of the Cass Gilbert–designed New York Life Building, the New York flagship for Issey Miyake pays homage to both the Beaux Arts structure it is now housed in and its former, Frank Gehry–designed flagship in Tribeca. SO–IL adapted two floors and 13,000 square feet for the flagship. New glazing clads the store on three sides, while inside, elements of the original structure are left exposed. At the heart of the store, a new monumental transparent staircase, constructed from large-format structural glass, appears like a ribbon of treads suspended in space. Steel columns and a continuous aluminum rail rhythmically break up the open floorplan. It’s a fitting material palette for the titanium panels that hang on the wall, a leftover element from Gehry’s design for the brand. SO– IL also repurposed glass wall panels from the former flagship into tables for displaying products.

ZACHARY SERR ANO

SEAN DAVIDSON

BONNIE CLYDE New York by balcony

NONFICTION New York by Charlap Hyman & Herrero

328 Grand Street, New York, New York 10002

BONNIE CLYDE’s New York flagship combines raw imperfection with domestic design. balcony, an architecture and interior studio based in Los Angeles and Athens, modeled the long, linear space after narrow railroad apartments. The space is divided into three rooms. In the first, the walls are wrapped in custom floral wallpaper. At its center, a custom display combines an antique table base with stacked layers of pale green acrylic that display the brand’s eyewear. In the second room, dark-stained plywood creates a darker, quieter atmosphere.

Retrofitted Victorian cabinets continue the domestic inspiration while providing new ways to display products. A portal offers entry into the final room, conceived like a bedroom.

Here, floor-to-ceiling drapery adds a soft touch, contrasting against sharp mirrors and aluminum panels. Scuffed flooring and melted metal lighting by Berlin-based Korean artist Shino Nam unite the rooms into one old-meets-new flagship.

CHRIS MOT TALINI

Ruti by BOND Architecture

1100 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10028

Founded in California in 2009, Ruti is a ready-to-wear womenswear brand that tapped BOND Architecture to create a new design direction for its New York debut. Located on Madison Avenue, the store unites its East Coast context with West Coast sensibilities. The result is a mix of edgy New York and California ease. The space was reconceived as an L shape in plan, with the exception of a freestanding mirror cube that doubles as a dressing room. Green epoxy flooring, sapele wood, and a green mohair carpet add color and warmth and are complemented by stainless steel and chrome. A purple desk adds a bright departure from the monochrome palette, reviving the boutique with a fresh look.

38 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002

For fragrance brand NONFICTION’s first U.S. store, Charlap Hyman & Herrero clad the space in geometric elements to create a place of pause. Limewashed walls and glossy, oxbloodtiled floors form the warm base of the boutique. Near the entry, a sharp, triangular mass conceals the stair bulkhead. Slender aluminum shelves mirror the rational grid on the floor. In contrast, a cylinder runs from floor to ceiling emitting light. It lies adjacent to the rectilinear archway. Within, a niche is clad in tiles featuring a hand-painted black rose. Another cylinder, this time metallic, divides the niche. The merging geometries are paired alongside new and old furniture and decor: a Queen Anne candlestand (circa 1770) sourced from Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery, a commissioned mahogany table by Doug Mc­Collough, designed in the Queen Anne style, and a sconce by Minjae Kim. The amalgamation leaves small surprises throughout the space while remaining serene and inviting. Kelly Pau

9 Eavesdrop What Is Architecture?

It’s that time of the year where we circulate some of our readers’ answers to this age-old question.

The built environment It’s so easy to write a flip answer here, but I do still believe architecture can be a platform to make the world better through engagement and dialogue. And good design is still very important.

The subject of most of my work as an architectural photographer The exploitative use of nature’s materials for the whim of the wealthy smallest minority at the expense of the well-being and equity of the majority

September/October 2026

Honor Your Design.

Rely on the Right Fire Safety.

Take the worry out of compromising your inspired building design to fire-safety requirements with reliable Aluflam vision doors, windows and glazed walls, fired-rated for up to 120 minutes. This pioneering system is fabricated from true extruded aluminum.

The art of designing the built environment to positively impact humanity.

The art and science of designing and building structures

Aluflam products are indistinguishable from non-fire-rated doors and windows and are available in a wide portfolio of most architectural finishes.

Most of what gets designed and built by firms, of all sizes and fame levels, is rubbish. Most architects never outgrow their professors’ hazing and zeal.

Start with Vitruvius. Consider Alberti. Study Aalto. Celebrate Kahn. Pity those who champion ironic cynicism.

Reward your creativity with Aluflam, the high-performance fire-safety system that works to achieve the design you want.

Architecture is frozen music duh. It is also our societal hopes, dreams, and fears realized in concrete and 2×4s.

At its best, architecture is a pervasively beautiful act of improving ecologies, communities, and individual lives while meeting its aspirations toward a more just and edifying world.

Architecture is both the art and science of designing and building structures for humanity.

Firmness, commodity, and delight It’s like the wind. It’s everywhere!

Architecture is the art and science of designing and building structures.

Materials and labor under time and value, with poetry

The visual beauty, artistic form, and emotional expression of a structure. It is highly personal and subjective and has the capacity to both function as a basic need as well as at a higher level.

Designing spaces and places that are relevant to the communities we live in

Any architectural work that does not express serenity is an error. —Luis Barragán

A job

Something that needs to be better understood by people outside the industry Welcoming, thoughtful, attractive, comfortable, and durable places for human activity Giving space, order, and form to social relations safely and without leaks Designing a structure that offers purpose and significance for those who occupy it “Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.” —Le Corbusier A profession that needs to define its standing in the changing world Probably the most critical framework that facilitates interaction (social, economic, political) between people and space and which produces the cultural and altered ecological landscapes that we inhabit I don’t know what it is, but know what it isn’t!

A business. Nobody works for free. All these college grads think they should earn a six-figure salary with three years of experience!

Art that works Architecture is like pornography: I know it when I see it.

Architecture is not building—building is mere shelter. Architecture is light’s negotiation with gravity, the unconscious ether of civilization rendered in concrete. Architects do not design objects; they design slow events unfolding toward their eventual ruins. It is the one art you cannot escape: Space possesses you.

Ultimately, architecture is the question “What does it mean to dwell?” asked at the scale of the eternal.

An ancient cultural practice that gives form to humanity’s ideas and values Architecture is the perichoresis of time, space, and persons.

Seriously? That’s a dissertation.…

Still trying to figure that out... 30 years in.

Not my job, my profession!

An increasingly difficult business, which it was never meant to be Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces.

—Louis Kahn The creating of inspiring spaces; not gimmicky or politically correct ...a dying profession Don’t know what it is, but I know what it isn’t!

A means to support an emotionally healthy society What you learn at architectural school A magical blend of construction science and humanity art in order for humans to continue to experience the universe in their daily lives “Architecture is what happens to a building when you look at it.”

My professor stated many years ago: “shaping air.”

Whatever I say it is I would hope you know.

The communication of societal values in the built form Space, form, light At its best architecture provides useful and inspiring places to enhance our quality of life.

Photo: ©Jason O’Rear

omg! ;)

Pursuing a creative form to improve living and work environments The art and science of building Wonderful profession in service to society Great question. One we ask ourselves many times a day. For us it is a manifestation of contemporary culture in built form, including concerns with climate change, social justice, cultural representation, and concepts of beauty.

Quality of the light and space we create. Not wonk social crap Not a good question That’s a damn good question.

Fire-Rated Aluminum Window And Door Systems

Aluflam North America 562-926-9520 aluflam-usa.com

10 Preview

The Architect’s Newspaper

From Bozeman to Brussels COURTESY LMN ARCHITECTS

Mark your calendar for new building openings across the U.S. and around the world. Museums, educational buildings, and a sports stadium will soon open their doors this fall. Hotly anticipated cultural completions include the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in L.A., the Kanal-Centre Pompidou in Brussels, the Memphis Art Museum, and the Guggenheim’s latest location, in Abu Dhabi. Beyond these highlights, a whole host of other structures by leading architects are almost done. Read on to see what caught our eyes this season. —The Editors

TIM MCMANUS/POPULOUS

This four-building complex will consolidate a variety of programs while becoming a new gateway for the school along Gilman Drive. The idea is to create a downtown for the campus, organized around a plaza. One building, the Forum, will house a donated collection of contemporary art, while another, a cylindrical 6-story structure with an illuminated facade, will support alumni and new students. LMN Architects will also open the Undergraduate Academic Building at UC Berkeley this semester. JM

COURTESY LUCAS MUSEUM OF NARR ATIVE ART

Highmark Stadium Populous Buffalo, New York Opens September 17

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art MAD with Stantec and Studio-MLA Los Angeles Opens September 22

The Buffalo Bills are a Super Bowl contender this year, with quarterback Josh Allen at the helm. On September 17, the “Bills Mafia” will step into a new stadium designed by Populous.

Highmark Stadium has seating capacity for 60,000 fans. The exterior is defined by repeating vertical fins, meant to reinforce notions of “strength and resilience,” Populous said in a project description. Iron-spot brick is deployed at the stadium’s base, another nod to Buffalo’s gritty industrial past. DJR

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rises up from Exposition Park in Los Angeles like a spaceship, much like other buildings by MAD Architects (MAD). The museum, topped with a sprawling green roof by Studio-MLA, opens to the public after a series of delays. Cofounded by the husband-and-wife duo of Star Wars—director George Lucas and author Mellody Hobson— the 100,000-square-foot museum contains more than 40,000 artworks spread throughout 35 galleries. DJR

NICOL AS TROUILL ARD

Triton Center at the University of California, San Diego LMN Architects San Diego Opens in September

COURTESY L AKE FL ATO

MSU Gianforte Hall Lake Flato with Hennebery Eddy Architects Bozeman, Montana Opens September 10 Lake Flato designed Gianforte Hall, a new 58,000-square-foot academic building, in response to the campus’s surrounding mountainous landscape. The structure, which will house the School of Computing as well as the Music Technology and Film & Photography programs, will be the university’s first mass timber building. It uses regionally sourced glue-laminated timber and CLT to create a warm, welcoming atmosphere. Lake Flato will also finish the El Paso Water Utilities Headquarters, among other completions. Paige Davidson

IWAN BA AN/COURTESY MIT

The MET Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Leers Weinzapfel Associates and Reed Hilderbrand Cambridge, Massachusetts Opens October 3 MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning has a new home across the street from the university’s Main Group. Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) with Leers Weinzapfel Associates has renovated the historic Metropolitan Warehouse, originally designed by Frederic Pope and first completed in 1894. Inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark, the architects have sliced and cored through the building. “DS+R would rather celebrate a problem than conceal it,” Fred A. Bernstein wrote.

Read his review on page 21. JM

COURTESY PL ANTING FIELDS FOUNDATION

POWERHOUSE STUDIO

JOHAN DEHLIN

Design Museum Gent Carmody Groarke Ghent, Belgium Opens October 3 The London-based practice Carmody Groarke has rethought a historic campus in the UNESCOprotected heart of Ghent and added a new 5-story mass timber building that will expand the museum’s cultural programming and visitor outreach. The structure’s facade sports limecured bricks made from municipal trash such as crushed concrete and glass. They call it the Gent Waste Brick, and it produces one-third of the carbon emissions of a typical Belgian clayfired brick. JM

COURTESY SOM

Large RCR Arquitectes with CALQ Architecture Boulogne-Billancourt, France Opens October 17

Planting Fields Foundation Piet Oudolf Oyster Bay, New York Opens October 17

Powerhouse Parramatta Moreau Kusunoki Sydney Opens in November

American Buddhist Cultural Society SOM San Francisco Opens in November

The French carmaker Renault operated its factory on Île Seguin—an island in the Seine, southwest of Paris—until 1992. Now, post remediation, the island is being remade into a cultural destination, and Large, a new contemporary art center focused on French artists, is its latest attraction. The riverfront building, partially faced in a parquet surface composed of galvanized steel, is the first Paris project for the Catalan office RCR Arquitectes, which won the Pritzker Prize in 2017. JM

On the north side of Long Island, a historic plot of land full of Olmsted brothers–designed landscapes and gardens occupies a 409-acre site in Oyster Bay. First opened in the 1930s, Planting Fields Foundation is filled with diverse horticulture. This October, acclaimed Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf will add his mark to the floral landscape through the new Oudolf Garden.

Marking Oudolf’s first public garden in New York in over a decade, the 1-acre garden meticulously exhibits 25,000 grasses and other plants. PD

The largest cultural infrastructure project in Australia since the Sydney Opera House will open this fall. French-Japanese architect Moreau Kusunoki led the design with the help of Genton, an Australian firm. A latticed exoskeleton made from 1,237 pieces defines the building. The steel lattice gives the museum a human scale while reducing the amount of materials needed to support the building’s load. It also allows the interior to be column free for larger, uninterrupted viewing spaces. KP

A new 40,000-square-foot home for the American Buddhist Cultural Society will offer a public tearoom, gallery, bookstore, and meditation spaces in addition to a main shrine. Stacked above will be dormitories for visiting scholars and volunteers. A central atrium brings light deep into the building, while the facade incorporates multiple elements of traditional Buddhist architecture. Other notable SOM completions include the first phase of renovating Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and the opening of the Success Academy in The Bronx. JM

11

September/October 2026

COURTESY SCHULHOF R ASHIDI

COURTESY NEW AFFILIATES

COURTESY PAU

William King Museum of Art Schulhof Rashidi Abington, Virginia Opens in November

Canyon New Affiliates New York Opens in November

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame PAU Cleveland Opens in November

Azadeh Rashidi and Paul Schulhof set off on their own after working for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects on commissions such as David Geffen Hall and the Obama Presidential Center. William King Museum of Art, one of their firm’s first major museum commissions, adds 10,000 square feet of space to an existing complex. The new building will host the Worrell Collection of Art, and the detailing of its brick facade is meant to recall Appalachian quilts. DJR

Canyon, the new 40,000-square-foot art space devoted to video, sound, performance, and other art forms, will open with the exhibition WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age. New Affiliates adapted the former vacant retail site in Essex Crossing to accommodate 18,000 square feet of gallery space, all equipped for video presentation. The project, the firm’s largest to date, is anchored by a 60-foot-tall skylit atrium that serves as a town square, cafe, and restaurant. KP

PAU’s expansion to I. M. Pei’s 1995 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame features a new, publicly accessible entry lobby; exhibition spaces; a new state-of-the-art exhibition center; and a 6,000 square-foot multipurpose space. The design employs “solid shapes dancing around a central transparent pyramid”—a PAU party, not a Pei party, according to the architects. The wider design team includes Field Operations, Cooper Robertson, L’Observatoire International, and Robert P. Madison International/DLR Group, and Heintges, among others. DJR

MIKE KELLE Y

Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center ZGF Los Angeles Opens November 13 Located within Exposition Park alongside the Lucas Museum, the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center is a new addition to the California Science Center. Its swoops are clad in stainless steel and rise into a truncated cone to house a prized possession: the space shuttle Endeavor, standing on end, as if ready for takeoff. Inside, the bright-red circulation tower relates to the vessel’s warm-red fuel tank, while the exposed diagrid structure recedes, thanks to engineering by Arup. JM

COURTESY K ANAL

Kanal-Centre Pompidou noAarchitecten, EM2N, Sergison Bates architects Brussels Opens November 28 It goes without saying that factories are a staple of the modernist movement; the AEG Turbine Factory by Peter Behrens and Fagus Factory

by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer are obvious examples. In Brussels, a team of architects transformed a stunning 20th-century industrial building, formerly a Citroën car factory, into an equally impressive hub for culture. It will also be a new home for the public institution CIVA, which will become Kanal Architecture. DJR

COURTESY GUGGENHEIM ABU DHABI

COURTESY HASTINGS

COURTESY HERZOG & DE MEURON

Jim Moran Foundation HASTINGS Fort Lauderdale, Florida Opens in December

Memphis Art Museum Herzog & de Meuron with archimania and OLIN Memphis Opens December 6

Named for an enterprising car dealer, the Jim Moran Foundation uplifts the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders. Its new headquarters, designed by the Nashville-based office HASTINGS, will span 63,000 square feet spread across two buildings. The facade is a mix of sculpted precast-concrete pieces and perforated bronze panels. The anticipated landscaping is planned to reduce heat island effect and slow rainwater runoff. The entire project is designed to resist a Category 5 hurricane. JM

A new flagship building for the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee’s “largest and oldest” art institution, has taken shape on the banks of the Mississippi River. After the building opens on December 6, the Memphis Brooks Art Museum will be officially rebranded as the Memphis Art Museum. Renderings of a new flagship were issued in 2021, and construction began two years later. This culminating moment will be a cause for celebration. DJR

MARK NIEDERMANN

FIELD CONDITION

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Gehry Partners Abu Dhabi Opens December 11

Fondation Beyeler Atelier Peter Zumthor Basel, Switzerland Opens January 2027

Rolex Building David Chipperfield Architects New York City Opens in February 2027

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the long-awaited Frank Gehry–designed cultural landmark on Saadiyat Island, will finally open to the public in December. Its collection focuses on work made after 1960, and a variety of media will be on view across its 30 galleries. The building’s exterior boasts ten sculptural cones: Nine are clad in stainless steel mesh, while the tenth is sheathed in onyx and glass. The cones shield 247,500 square feet of outdoor exhibition space from the sun. KK

The Fondation Beyeler opened in 1997 with a handsome museum designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Thirty years later, it’s expanding with three smaller buildings designed by Atelier Peter Zumthor: Wyss Museum uses local Jura limestone in different ways, including for an earthy facade punctuated by small triangular openings; the Ammann Pavilion is a venue for events; and the Torhaus is an entry and back-of-house structure. Nearby, a former orangerie will be reimagined by India Mahdavi. JM

A 30-story tower at the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd Street, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, will be a handsome addition to Manhattan’s skyline. The new Rolex headquarters replaced another building on the site that had been the watch company’s home base since the 1970s. Rather than a perfect extrusion like, say, the Seagram Building, the new Rolex headquarters has dramatic setbacks, reminiscent of early art deco towers, and a serrated Miesian curtain wall, making it a blend of (relatively) old and new. DJR

12 Open House

The Architect’s Newspaper

Cut Out Chronicles Julian von der Schulenburg enhances a neo-Georgian townhouse in Brooklyn to emphasize its complex geometries.

Since its construction in 1890, a neo-Georgian townhome in Kensington, Brooklyn, has been transformed into a Frankenstein of geometries, with various additions over the years, including a turret, wraparound porch, dormer windows, and bay windows. Julian von der Schulenburg’s renovation adds one more: a 3-story, rectilinear enlargement that provides the house’s residents, a family of four, with expanded space and natural light.

The gut renovation cleans up the interior, allowing the swooping armatures of previous interventions to take center stage.

The first floor was turned into one continuous space. The previous interior walls (most of which were loadbearing) were replaced with a new structure of glulam and laminated veneer lumber. “It’s almost like a tree inside the house that holds up all those floors,” said von der Schulenburg. “The problem is the moment you remove interior walls, the joists start to sag and over time ultimately break the structure.”

A series of exposed solid birch beams and columns now support the weight of the building. Some lie flush against the walls, while other, rounded variations float throughout the space. They help visually divide the rooms in place of partitions.

The new frame works alongside the former chimney, which was maintained, as it helps structurally support the residence.

Von der Schulenburg left the brick structure exposed, highlighting the history and quirks of the home. White-stained wooden floors, white walls, and oak details ensure the frame and the building’s many niches are the focal point.

Von der Schulenburg’s addition lies at the rear of the building. The former crawl space was filled and raised to make it level with the first floor and create an uninterrupted plinth. Generous stairs connect the kitchen to the small yard and art studio that von der Schulenburg designed using the zoning allowance of the previous garage.

From the back of the building, the new addition is perceived as a series of stepped boxes. This allows each room to get maximal light and an unobstructed balcony and makes the addition less domineering over the narrow yard. The inspiration, said von der Schulenburg, “started from old light and air regulations for downtown Manhattan.”

In the attic, the enlargement and preexisting geometries come together. The floor was turned into an open space, clad simply in white and wood flooring. The cutouts from the bay and dormer windows and turret make for swooping expressions and a new, dramatic home office. A thickened wall integrates a compact bathroom, shower, and storage with a frameless door so that only the expressions of the building’s geometries are on display.

The whole home is clad in new cedar shingles, including the roof, overhangs, and art studio, unifying old and new. KP

MIN LEE

MIN LEE

MIN LEE

MIN LEE

Top left: Previous additions to the neoGeorgian house include a turret, porch, and bay windows.

Top right : Von der Schulenburg’s rectilinear addition appears as a series of stepped boxes.

Above left: Exposed solid birch beams and columns support the weight of the building.

MIN LEE

Above right: White walls and oak details highlight the distinct geometries and intersections formed by the house’s various additions.

Left: The architect took advantage of a zoning allowance from the previous garage to construct an art studio.

Introducing the Matte Series A Collection of 7 New Finishes

Ecru

Dune

Earthen

Pebble

Flint

Eclipse

Which Lens Are You Looking Through Today?

Experience changes our view of the world. Over time, the places we go and the people we meet shape our perspective. We often see these shifts reflected in the environments we inhabit, the grounding earth, the expansive sky, and the fluid sea. The ALUCOBOND Matte Series is a collection of seven finishes that reflect these evolving viewpoints, grounding our internal experiences in the textures of the natural world. Each finish embraces light and represents a different lens through which we see the world around us.

• 5–10 gloss level with a finish that allows for rich depth of color.

• Standard in ALUCOBOND PLUS 4mm ACM; Non-Standard in AXCENT 0.040” metal sheets.

The result is a finish that pairs expressive design with the durability and performance expected from ALUCOBOND.

from domestic & imported materials

Aegean

14 Crit

The Architect’s Newspaper

Open-Ended

Studio One Eleven’s porous design for the Orange County School of the Arts weaves a grade school campus into the city. continued from cover visual arts studios, and

support spaces—woven into the surrounding urban fabric of downtown Santa Ana. “It isn’t a traditional enclosed campus,” said Bonn. “There’s a certain messiness to it, and we embrace that rather than try to hide it. Instead of competing with the city, we wanted to stitch the campus together while accepting its urban context. And rather than putting up a large sign announcing ‘This is the school,’ we wanted people to recognize it through color, playfulness, and character.”

A grade school campus with this level of urban porosity is almost unheard of in Southern California. In the postwar era, families flocked to the rapidly developing suburbs of Orange County. Marketed for its family-oriented infrastructure, the area had grade-school campuses that were designed like adolescent citadels: isolated buildings and leftover spaces enclosed within chainlink fencing, whose gates opened only at the beginning and end of the school day. By the 21st century, this had become the nationwide model for campus design, driven by the

concerns of outspoken parents who imagined borders as the key to physical safety.

Campus Green may well be cited in the future as a testament to the charter school system, a controversial framework of publicly funded schools that operate independently of established local school districts. In this case, the system allowed for the relatively streamlined allocation of $6.5 million in private donations from alumni and parents toward the unorthodox urban scheme (which might sound like a lot until one compares it with the $232 million ground-up development of the nearby Coop Himmelblau– designed Central Los Angeles High School No. 9, completed in 2008). The decision to invite students to paint the murals and other artistic elements across the campus reduced costs, directly involved visual arts students in shaping the campus, and gave them experience as they prepared for college and professional careers in the arts.

Campus Green is oriented around a central green space, designed for students to gather and hold performances. A grand

outdoor staircase allows the second-floor cafeteria to spill into the large open field below while creating a new social space that students have already used in unexpected ways. “Originally we imagined performances happening at the base of the stairs,” said Bonn. “Instead, students started bringing DJs halfway up the steps and inventing entirely new ways of using the space.” The 1950s office building at the campus center was transformed into the Humanities Tower, a collection of classrooms with an open-plan student lounge on its ground floor.

“One of the streets originally functioned as a drop-off area that would close during parts of the day for buses,” Kirk Keller, a principal at Studio One Eleven, told AN, “but we asked whether it could instead become a permanent extension of Campus Green.”

Students painted a giant piano keyboard mural across the pavement, allowing the boundary between the school and its context to shift throughout the day while remaining visually coherent. “Sometimes students occupy the whole block as they are moving between performances and classes,” said Bonn. “Other times, when classes are over, office workers and neighborhood residents become the dominant users.” The edge along Sycamore Street is further softened by a series of shipping containers repurposed as semi-enclosed outdoor rooms. Some are

fully enclosed, while others remain open, allowing students to use them for studying, tutoring sessions, informal classes, or simply hanging out.

There are still safety measures, of course.

In addition to the transparent fence, staff members and security personnel are present to ensure that students reach their destinations as they move between buildings. But the open design of Campus Green nevertheless goes a long way toward providing teenagers with the agency and mobility that prepare them for the world at large. “There are studies showing that when there isn’t a fence, adolescents naturally understand where the edge of a space is and rarely go beyond it,” said Keller. “When you install a fence, they no longer go near the edge at all. Their relationship with space changes.”

Shane Reiner-Roth is a lecturer at the University of Southern California and a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to writing for publications including Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, KCET’s magazine, and Thresholds Journal.

Reiner-Roth runs the Instagram page @everyverything, a curation of images that highlight the novelties of the mundane and the blunders of luxury.

PAUL VU/HANA AGENCY

PAUL VU/HANA AGENCY

Top: OCSA’s new campus is embedded in Downtown Santa Ana’s urban fabric and was designed to be an open campus.

Above: Campus Green is oriented around a central green space where students gather and stage performances.

Right: The architects transformed a 1950s office building into the Humanities Tower, which houses classrooms and an open-plan student lounge.

PAUL VU/HANA AGENCY

15 Crit

September/October 2026

Mountains at the Margin

even more satisfying. The original, formal entrance to Yester House starts a progression of spaces, from old to new, that carry through to the dramatic borrowed view of the mountains. As Mac noted: “The minute you walk through the door, the insistent view draws you through.” Beyond the entrance hallway, there is a large open entrance hall to the new wing. Here, as throughout, the walls are wrapped in a light, local white oak.

The center of the space features a ceremonial staircase of white Vermont marble that leads to the lower-level exhibition galleries, classrooms, and storage.

The exhibition For the Love of Vermont: The Lyman Orton Collection, a rotating display of 300 20th-century paintings of the state, is at the heart of the new wing. The genius of the house-to-mountain parti is that the artists’ depictions of barns and churches, houses and covered bridges are displayed on flanking walls placed parallel to the main axis, so the view to the mountains beyond is uninterrupted. The artwork can be admired in nearly natural light, and the larger tableau of the Green Mountains is always just over one’s shoulder.

The $14.5 million cost to expand the Southern Vermont Art Center was well spent, resulting in an exceptional small-museum experience. While enlarging the art center’s community commitment and visibility, this thoughtful wing is a meritorious work in its own right. It continues the center’s distinguished legacy while striking the perfect balance between Vermont conservatism and progressivism.

Architecture firm Brian J. Mac’s steel-clad museum extension takes Southern Vermont Arts Center’s Colonial Revival building into the future.

ERICA ALLEN

The new extension to the Southern Vermont Arts Center (SVAC) in Manchester is an architectural triumph. Fittingly, the natural progression of adding a gallery and storage was anything but easy. When architect Brian J. Mac proposed wrapping the building in Cor-ten steel, a groundswell of donors, along with the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation, raised objections.

Self-oxidizing metal seemed at odds with the Colonial Revival summer house at the base of Mount Equinox that has been home to the arts center for three quarters of a century.

Manchester, Vermont, was a fashionable resort town in the 19th century, attracting the rich and famous. Following stays in the grand hotels, out-of-town plutocrats returned to build lavish, domestic showcases. One such case was Yester House, which contains the arts center today. The 28-room, five-part Palladian exercise designed by the New York white-shoe firm Murphy & Dana in 1917 was built as a summer retreat for a lumber baron from Columbus, Ohio. Charles N. Lowrie, a founder and president of the American Society of Landscape Architects, designed the extensive grounds. Part of the handsome campus includes an exhibition building by Hugh Newell Jacobsen in his inimitable restrained modernism.

The SVAC addition reflects the architect and his Vermont ties. After working for a large firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and serving as a house parent at a home for troubled boys in southern Ohio, the University of Detroit–trained Mac went to Vermont and founded the successful design-build firm Birdseye. More than skiing and leaf-peeping, the Vermont he embraced was that of agriculture and industry, hardscrabble existence and survival. For Mac, the use of Cor-ten reflects the nonprecious face of Vermont: plows, and the hard labor that turns forests into lumber.

The Arts Center addition is Mac’s first project under his own eponymous firm, as well as his first nonresidential work. Of the five architects interviewed for the Manchester project, Mac was the only one who envisioned an expansion to the back of Yester House. As with so many additions to historic properties, a design could continue the style of the existing work, reflect the host in proportion and materials, or completely ignore the source.

By placing the 12,000-square-foot expanded museum on the steep downhill behind the house and inserting the lower floor halfway into the ground, Mac was able to be creative with his rusty tectonics and tatami-like repetitive wall panels without compromising the main house’s Early American character.

Extending out from the ground floor of the house, the addition offers two outdoor

ERICA ALLEN

rooms. One is a spacious gathering place; the other features an 80-foot-long catwalk that extends from the adjacent restaurant’s outdoor terrace into the landscape. Reminiscent of Alpine or Scandinavian landscape-viewing platforms, the promenade is something few visitors can resist walking out to the end of to enjoy the unobstructed view of the mountains. There they can discover a cantilevered trough at the end that supports a dramatic rain chain. The 15-foot-high walkway covers a flume, which channels water to the catch basin down the slope. On the main terrace there is another water chain flanking the elevator tower, which itself is a wry reference to the nautical motifs of 1920s International Style, while its vertical reeded surface recalls the sensuous wooden walls of Alvar Aalto.

The addition’s interior plan, however, is

William Morgan is an architectural writer based in Providence, Rhode Island. His previous teaching career included a seminar on museum design at Brown University.

Above: Clad in Cor-ten steel, the addition extends from the ground floor of the building.

Below left: An 80-foot-long catwalk extends from the addition, offering access to surrounding views of the Green Mountains.

Below right: A white Vermont marble staircase leads to the lower exhibition galleries, classrooms, and storage.

ERICA ALLEN

16 Studio Visit

The Architect’s Newspaper

Hed Tk Dek Tk.

Body Tk

COURTESY COEN+PARTNERS

On the Horizon Coen+Partners rises to great heights with a new generation at the helm.

Above: Coen+Partners team members walk across a dune at the Red Sands Sports Park in Saudi Arabia.

Right: Firm founder Shane Coen at the site of the Sports Boulevard in Saudi Arabia. He died in 2025.

In 1992, Shane Coen cofounded Coen+Stumpf in Minneapolis. Early works by the landscape architecture office include the Elliot Park revitalization project in Minneapolis and the St. Francis Peace Garden at St. Mary’s Hospital, Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota. The firm won myriad accolades and teamed up with architect David Salmela, among other talents. In 2000, the firm transitioned ownership to Coen; that year, it became Coen+Partners. More projects followed, and the studio grew. By 2019, Coen+Partners had almost 20 employees.

In 2025, Shane Coen passed away at 61 years old.

Today a new generation is leading Coen+Partners into the future, and in just the last few years, the firm has more than doubled in size from 2019 while still adhering to Coen’s commitment to “contextual minimalism.” (The phrase is also the title of Coen+Partners’ monograph, published in 2018.) The firm now has three partners (Thomas Doyle, Robin Ganser, and McKenzie Wilhelm), seven directors, and approximately 45 employees.

Coen+Partners has offices in Minneapolis and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the firm’s design for the “world’s longest linear park”—Sports Boulevard—is underway. Several workers are remote in cities such as Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. “Shane was a presence, and he is missed,” Doyle told AN. “But from an operations and design-ethos standpoint, we are continuing the mission.”

Ganser said that Coen+Partners underwent an “ownership transition back in 2022,” so the office was prepared for succession. The partners became equal owners of the firm in 2023. In 2024, the partners divided the office into three different studios for different types of specialized work. Moving forward, the goal is to break out more into the global market, with projects like Sports

Boulevard in Riyadh, and expand the scale and scope of the work Coen+Partners is able to take on.

Wilhelm affirme d t hat t he business partners Coen+Partners has made in Riyadh “have big ambition that is truly both context and landscape led. [Riyadh] is not interested in becoming the next Dubai, focused on shiny buildings,” she elaborated. “They’re focused on leaning into their roots in Najdi culture and the desert and understanding what it means to create a sustainable landscape in a place where planting is difficult and shade is important.” One Sports Boulevard–related project is the Red Sands Sports Park, which adds cycling tracks to a nearby desert landscape.

After more than a quarter century in business and the loss of its founder, Coen+Partners remains unwavering in its dedication to making great public spaces informed by community input that never compromise on aesthetics. DJR

COURTESY COEN+PARTNERS

September/October 2026

Peavey Plaza, 2019 Landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg completed Peavey Plaza in 1975. The space is considered the “living room” of downtown Minneapolis and is known for its sunken “conversation pit”–style gathering area. When Coen+Partners was tapped to rehabilitate the plaza in 2016, “we inherited a political minefield,” Ganser said. “Preservationists didn’t want it touched, and the Downtown Council

Crystal Bridges, 2025 said, ‘We need this space to be safer, more accessible, and highly programmable.’” During a 12-month design process, Coen+Partners had over 50 community meetings, typically “more than one a week,” Ganser said. The result was an award-winning project recognized by the Cultural Landscape Foundation and others for its weaving of historic preservation with modern needs.

Crystal Bridges opened in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2010 and was designed by Safdie Architects. A 114,000-square-foot expansion led by the firm and completed in 2025 expanded the institution’s footprint by approximately 50 percent. Wilhelm led the landscape architecture component of the expansion. Today a ravine cuts through the verdant campus; elevated bridges stitch buildings together for ease of egress and

ELIZABETH FELICELL A

The Shenandoah, Ongoing Today, Coen+Partners is collaborating with Olson Kundig and Marlon Blackwell Architects on a project site that spans 640 acres in Star Tannery, Virginia, about one hour west of Washington, D.C. Founded by Mike Marburg of Wellmore Partners, The Shenandoah, a future wellness and hospitality center, will have 120 guest rooms, a spa, and more facilities spread across a dozen single and 2-story buildings.

to make for a strong connection between inside and outside. “The landscape isn’t separate from the museum,” Wilhelm said. “We spent so much time at the site, getting to know the landscape of the Ozarks. There was so much coordination [with Safdie Architects], all the way down to the technical details and materials.”

TIM HURSLE Y

Sports Boulevard, Ongoing Ninety percent of the site is under conservation easement. The landscape by Coen+Partners takes on a “choreographed approach,” Ganser said; “bridges of intention” lead visitors to a “clearing in the woods” where the centralized campus is located. “We’re thinking about vistas and moments, trying to capture the true majesty of the land.”

COURTESY COEN+PARTNERS

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is a city of 8 million people. A high-voltage power corridor that cuts through the heart of the metropolis is being converted by Coen+Partners, in collaboration with Typsa and El Dorado, into Sports Boulevard to increase access to civic amenities. “It was a major infrastructure corridor that cut off neighborhoods from one another,” Doyle said.

Sports Boulevard measures approximately 77

miles in length, almost 19 miles of which are in Riyadh. The project will be a “game changer for quality of life here,” Doyle continued. The $23 billion project, led by Sports Boulevard Foundation, is part of Saudi Vision 2030, a $3 trillion comprehensive program for the country that is slated for completion in 2030. DJR

ABDUL MAJEED AL-RODHAN

TRANSFORMATIVE MATERIALS BUILT FOR BOLD ARCHITECTURE.

At Africatown Plaza in Seattle, BŌK Modern delivered a corten steel rainscreen facade and simple mount sunshades as a unified exterior metal system, working alongside David Baker Architects and GGLO to bring a community driven design to life.

AFRICATOWN PLAZA ARCHITECT: David Baker Architects / GGLO GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Absher CO

Photos by Ed Sozinho

INSTALLER: JL Exteriors

bokmodern.com | info@bokmodern.com

September/October 2026

HIGHER EDUCATION

19 Feature

As the Fall 2026 academic semester kicks into gear, we cover major campus improvements across the continent that benefit student study and socialization. First, two architecture schools offer new facilities through adaptive reuse: Fred A. Bernstein gets an early look at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning’s new home, a warehouse converted by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (page 21); and Stefan Novakovic tours a tower turned into an architecture school for the University of Calgary by hcma architecture + design (page 22).

Then, three new buildings offer thoughtful spaces for student learning: Pierluigi Serraino visits SOM’s Grimes Engineering Center at UC Berkeley (page 26); Frank Edgerton Martin crosses the Mississippi to see VJAA’s Fraser Hall at the University of Minnesota (page 24); and Novakovic reviews Indigenous House at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, designed by Formline Architecture & Urbanism and LGA Architectural Partners (page 28).

To start, read Ramiro Diaz Granados’s view on how to stitch together academia and practice (page 20).

These two trunks of the architecture tree have grown apart over the decades; a closer relationship between them would benefit everyone. JM

20 Feature

The Architect’s Newspaper

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE continued from cover what I will call architecture’s “dis-

ciplinary core”—the set of irreducible questions that the discipline is positioned to ask and that both practice and teaching, at their best, are engaged in pursuing. The confused distance between the two aspects of architecture is our current reality, which results in a professional practice that builds without disciplinary accountability and schools that teach without disciplinary formation.

My argument is not nostalgic, as I do not propose recovering what has been lost. The traditions that once sustained the disciplinary core have their shortcomings—their exclusions, their orthodoxies, and their dependencies on patronage and privilege. What is proposed instead is more demanding: to construct the disciplinary core anew, on more rigorous and more inclusive terms. The discipline of architecture is not an inheritance. It is a project.

SIX QUESTIONS Every discipline is defined not by a body of knowledge but by questions it alone can ask. Architecture’s questions arise from the act of making space for human inhabitation. They cannot be answered by engineering, sociology, political theory, or other fields. They require architectural thinking, which moves between the abstract and the concrete, the imagined and the built, the singular project and its larger cultural context.

Architecture’s six questions are irreducible.

The tectonic question: How do parts assemble into wholes? How does the way a thing is made relate to what it means? And what spatial, experiential, or symbolic effects does that joining produce? How a building stands is inseparable from what it stands for. The exposed joint is a cultural statement as much as a structural one, and a building that conceals its own logic of assembly is already making a position about the relationship between making and meaning.

The phenomenological question: What is the subjective nature of spatial experience? How do light, scale, sequence, threshold, and material constitute the embodied reality of a place? A room is not only seen; it is heard, touched, moved through, remembered. The quality of a threshold is not only a design decision; it is an event in the life of the person who crosses it, and designing it well requires a form of embodied knowledge that cannot be derived from drawings alone.

The typological question: How do buildings participate in the history of human institution making? What does it mean to make a house, a school, a civic building in this place, at this time, for these people? Building types are not constraints but condensed cultural knowledge. They are repositories of decisions made over time about how human life should be organized in space. A project that refuses its type is making an argument; a project that ignores it is simply unaware of what it is saying.

The urban question: What is the conceptual framework for understanding a city? How does every act of building constitute or take from the public realm? No building is an island. Every project is simultaneously an act of city making, with consequences that extend beyond the site and the program to the quality of collective life in the spaces between buildings. The civic responsibility implicit in every act of building is not a separate specialty but actually a necessary dimension of every design decision.

The representational question: How does architectural thinking become visible? What does each instrument of representation reveal that others cannot? The plan is a political device because it establishes territory, negotiates legal boundaries, and stakes a claim on the ground. The section is a geological device because it excavates structure and exposes the building’s relationship to earth and sky.

The rendering confuses realism with reality, offering a phenomenological access point that allows the viewer to locate themself in the world of the project before it exists.

Understanding what each instrument reveals and what it suppresses is not a technical skill; it is a form of disciplinary self-awareness.

The natural question: Where is the line between nature and culture? What does a building’s negotiation of site, climate, light, and nonhuman systems reveal about how human beings understand their place within the world?

Nature is not a backdrop for architecture but an active participant in it. A building that ignores this is not

How to rethink the discipline of architecture to reconnect academia and practice? merely environmentally irresponsible, it is architecturally incomplete.

Form is not a seventh question. It is the medium through which all six are posed and answered. A building that resolves its formal logic without engaging these questions has achieved composition. A building that engages these questions without developing a formal logic has achieved intention. Architecture requires both.

THREE FORCES OF DISPLACEMENT Against this framework, the three forces that have divided the profession can be diagnosed with greater precision.

Each is not simply a corrupting influence on a healthy discipline; it is a systematic evasion of one or more of the six irreducible questions. In each case, an external criterion of value has been substituted for a disciplinary one.

Understanding how each force evades specific questions is more useful than a general lament about decline.

The research ideal, imported into architecture schools from the 1960s onward, most directly evades the tectonic and phenomenological questions because these cannot be answered in print. A paper about materiality is not the same as a building that demonstrates it. A theory of threshold is not the same as a threshold that has been designed, built, and inhabited. When schools reward publication on esoteric topics far removed from building, the faculty who remain are those who have substituted academic production for disciplinary engagement. What matters is not whether faculty build, but whether their work—written, drawn, built, or speculative—directly or indirectly advances what architecture knows and how it knows it.

Ideological capture subordinates disciplinary judgment to political criteria, bearing most heavily on the typological and urban questions. When the measure of a building’s worth is whether it serves the right causes rather than whether it advances the discipline’s understanding of space, type, or city, architecture loses its capacity to evaluate its own work from within. The social and political questions are necessary but not sufficient: A building can serve the right population and still fail as a building, still fail to constitute the kind of spatial experience that the people it serves deserve. Sustainability is the clearest case, as it addresses precisely what the natural question asks, but answers through administrative compliance rather than disciplinary judgment. LEED certification measures resource consumption; it does not ask what relationship to the natural world a building proposes or makes possible.

Commercialization is the most pervasive force because it presents itself not as a philosophy but as the absence of one. It evades all six questions simultaneously by replacing them with market viability. The tectonic question becomes constructability. The phenomenological question becomes user satisfaction metrics. The urban question becomes zoning compliance. The representational question becomes the rendering designed not to think with but to sell with.

Social media plays a role, as platforms organized around the image reward architecture that performs well at the scale of the screen and the speed of the scroll. This has further prioritized the photogenic gesture, the visually legible move that communicates its ambition in a single frame. Students trained in this economy learn to design for the feed rather than for inhabitation, substituting the image of spatial experience for spatial experience itself.

RESONANCE WITHOUT RESEMBLANCE The argument here is not that schools should become more like offices or that offices should become more academic.

A school that resembles practice has already conceded the argument: It has accepted that the academic studio is a staging ground for the workplace and that the measure of a student’s development is proximity to billable competence.

The relationship should be one of resonance without resemblance. Educators should know, from the experience of building, which questions are genuinely irreducible.

They should design pedagogical encounters that make those questions available to students. How to deliver this knowledge is the curriculum’s specific work. It requires someone capable of performing it: a practitioner who knows what is being abstracted from and an educator who knows how to make it teachable. The practitioner who cannot perform this abstraction is a skilled visitor, not an educator. The educator who has never built cannot perform it either, because the abstraction requires knowing what it is abstracted from.

The curriculum that results is cumulative and sequential: Each encounter with the six questions should deepen and complicate the previous one, not repeat it at higher resolution. This idea is closer to the conservatory model than either the research university or the professional apprenticeship. Formation is understood as a long, layered process, and the measure of progress is not the accumulation of credentials but the development of judgment.

Progress means sharpening a student’s capacity to bring the six questions to bear on a specific problem, in a specific place, under specific constraints, and to produce an answer that knows what it is claiming.

Rules exist in architecture not to be followed but to be broken, and the quality of the breaking depends entirely on the depth of the understanding that precedes it. A project that refuses the urban question is taking a position, provided the student understands what they are refusing and can articulate what that refusal proposes. The same project from a student without that formation is not a position but an absence. Without this awareness, it isn’t an experiment but a novelty where the performance of difference occurs without the disciplinary resources to evaluate what the difference costs.

A SHARED OBLIGATION The disciplinary core proposed here is not a recovery of something lost. It is the construction of a new idea. It is partial, provisional, and addressed to practitioners and educators who will extend it, contest it, and pass it on in forms its authors cannot anticipate.

What it asks of the practicing architect is to understand every building as a position in a disciplinary argument, not only a response to a client’s program. Why this structure and not another? What does this threshold propose about the relationship between inside and outside? What does this building offer to, or withhold from, the city it joins?

What position does it take on its relationship to the natural world it displaces and inhabits? These questions do not slow practice down. They are what make practice mean something beyond its own completion.

What the disciplinary core asks of the teaching architect is to hold the six questions open against all three forces of displacement simultaneously while resisting academicism, political substitution, and market instrumentality.

Educators must evaluate student work by disciplinary criteria rather than by novelty, polish, or ideological alignment. They also ought to be explicit about the relationship between the core and the margins and in doing so make it clear that the experimental culture architecture schools prize is only as strong as the disciplinary foundation it is built on.

Ramiro Diaz Granados is a designer, educator, and founder of the Los Angeles–based practice Amorphis. He is currently full-time design faculty at SCI–Arc, where his teaching foregrounds experimental design methodologies, advanced representation, landscape, and infrastructure.

This essay was developed with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic). The arguments, positions, and editorial decisions are the author’s own; AI assisted in structuring and formatting the intellectual framework, which the author originated and directed throughout.

September/October 2026

IWAN BA AN/COURTESY MIT

STOREROOMS TO STUDIOS Diller Scofidio + Renfro completes warehouse renovation for MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning.

Two things came to mind when I saw the new 195,000-square-foot home of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, in a historic warehouse building. First, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), despite its success with ground-up commissions like The Broad in Downtown Los Angeles, the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center in Manhattan, and the Hamptons house known as Blue Dream, may be at its most creative when repurposing existing structures. Examples include the High Line, the V&A East Storehouse, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. In each case, DS+R’s architects—backstopped by the irreplaceable Ricardo Scofidio—went out of their way to make visible the most distinctive aspects of the original building, even when doing so made their job as renovators harder. DS+R would rather celebrate a problem than conceal it.

Second, the best architecture school buildings teach by example. From Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesins to the Melbourne School of Design by NADAAA and John Wardle Architects to the Clemson University College of Architecture

by Thomas Phifer and Partners, they make strong statements about materials, spatial relations, and uses of light.

Ideally, they give students as many ideas about architecture when they’re not in class as when they are.

Until now, the message MIT’s architecture students received from their surroundings was that awkward spaces aren’t fatal. The school was spread out across campus, with its center of gravity in Building 7, on the west edge of MIT’s vast, Neoclassical Main Group. Even after a 1991 expansion of the architecture library by Schwartz/Silver Architects and a 2004 renovation of the school’s teaching facilities by Leers Weinzapfel Associates (LWA), conditions were far from ideal.

Meanwhile, just a few hundred feet from Building 7, the Metropolitan Warehouse, a 500-foot-long redbrick storage facility, owned by MIT since the 1960s and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, sat practically unused. Designed by Frederic Pope, it was first completed in 1894, more than 20 years before MIT arrived in Cambridge. The warehouse, which then expanded westward with four subsequent additions by Peabody and

Stearns, the last in 1923, resembled a fortress, with 2-footthick brick walls, a “lookout” tower, crenellated cornices, and narrow windows. The interior was just as forbidding, with closely spaced columns supporting the weight of hundreds of small storage spaces. Turning that rabbit warren into light-filled classrooms and studios, something MIT had been considering doing for decades, required an architecture firm willing to take risks. In 2018 DS+R got the nod through an invited competition.

The scheme the New York firm developed, with LWA as associate architect, largely preserves the building’s campusfacing south facade. The architects augmented its tiny windows with larger panes while ingeniously maintaining the cadences of the original exterior. The trick was placing the new windows perfectly flush with the outermost layer IWAN BA AN/COURTESY MIT

of masonry, allowing the older windows, set into deep, shadowy openings, to dominate. (DS+R made a similar move at Lincoln Center.) Faculty offices and other compact spaces are arrayed behind those windows.

The treatment of the long, parallel north facade couldn’t be more different. The bricks enclosing four of the five buildings were taken down and replaced by 5-storyhigh, clear glass curtain walls. In one case, alongside an auditorium, some of the brick wall remains, giving way to glass along a diagonal line that traces the rise of the bleachers inside.

But before the glass walls could be installed, the centers of the five squarish buildings had to be removed. Creating the desired voids meant shearing off the buildings’ steel beams and shallow ceiling vaults. The cross-sections, some brick and others terra-cotta, aren’t always pretty, and another firm might have tried to hide them. DS+R presents them like specimens on microscope slides.

The building is “going to be a living laboratory and a teaching tool for generations of students,” John Ochsendorf, the school’s associate dean for research, said. “Twenty years ago, MIT took me inside and asked if I could see a way to reuse the building. And I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ It was hard to imagine it could be as open and light filled as it is. That took heroics.”

Indeed, the floors and ceilings in four of the five buildings were replaced by concrete-on-steel trays that will house the architecture studios. Daringly, the trays are hung from the building’s roof beams. The steel hangers that do that work seem impossibly slender (kudos to the structural engineers at Silman, now TYLin), and for much of their vertical run they are split in two, a detail familiar to any devotee of Carlo Scarpa.

But the real “muse” behind the project is artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who studied architecture at Cornell in the late 1960s but found, after returning to a down-and-out New York City, that he preferred dissecting existing buildings to designing new ones. Matta-Clark’s work was social commentary: When he sawed a house in half, he was addressing the dissolution of the American family. When he cut a hole through the floor of a Bronx tenement, he was calling attention to society’s failure to provide adequate housing.

But Matta-Clark, who died in 1978, is now less known for his message than for his method, which involved pushing giant saws through many layers of material. The approach isn’t about cutting through wood or brick or iron—it’s about cutting through “building.”

Here, DS+R followed Matta-Clark’s lead almost exactly, using a large cylindrical saw to cut portholes in the building’s four-brick-thick west face. The incisions, made with Silman’s blessing, were so clean that the openings accommodate circular windows almost perfectly. If seeing 100-year-old layers of brick and mortar cut like cookie dough doesn’t give architecture students something to think about, what will?

Fred A. Bernstein is the winner of a 2023 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for exploring ideas in architecture and the 2009 Oculus Award from the New York chapter of AIA for excellence in architecture writing.

Above: The renovated Metropolitan Warehouse features 5-story glass curtain walls on its north facade.

Below: Incisions that reveal the original building skeleton recalls the architectural interventions of artist Gordon Matta-Clark.

22 Feature

The Architect’s Newspaper

hcma architecture + design transforms a downtown office building into an incubator for the University of Calgary’s architecture students.

On a Thursday evening in downtown Calgary, there are hardly any hints of campus life. This far north, the summer sun lingers in the sky past 10:00 p.m., revealing a commercial core all but emptied of life. Though it’s still light out, I have the streets to myself. It takes some getting used to. Amid the offices and hotels, I’m looking for a school. Just as natural light finally begins to fade, I spot the colors. When I look up at the 37-story Valentine Building, nine levels are lit in a vivid array of yellow, pink, red, and orange. This is no ordinary office tower.

The next morning I’m back. This time, I’m joined by Professor John Brown and hcma architecture + design principal Darin Harding, who take me on a tour through the unconventional new home for the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (SAPL), which has 1,200 students. We start on the ground floor, where an architectural model of the angular tower— completed in 1982 but vacant since 2013—offers a glimpse of the school’s 9-story presence. Miles from the lawns and quadrangles of campus, the 180,000-square-foot design hub knits faculty and students into the urban fabric.

For Brown, who’s served as SAPL dean since 2017, it embodies a civic ethos. “Just as a medical school is embedded into a hospital, our design school is embedded downtown. Doctors and clinicians learn at the bedside, and they do research at the bedside. That’s what we do too—except our bedside is the city, and our classrooms and studios are on the streets,” he told me, highlighting SAPL’s immersion in urban initiatives ranging from partnerships with nonprofit housing providers to businesses exploring the commercial activation of downtown alleyways.

Upstairs, the blond-wood office lobby gives way to a very different aesthetic. On the fifth floor, the elevator doors open to raw concrete and black hot-rolled steel.

At the heart of the floor plate, the exposed concrete core is marked by deep gouges and divots, as well as spraypainted construction notes of measurements and dimensions, with occasional graffiti left over from previous renovations. “There’s a big one that just says ‘BURP’ in bright orange,” said Harding.

For the school, the building was envisioned as a teaching tool. “We decided to take a light touch with the building,” Harding told me, describing a project completed in just 16 months. “We’re expressing the bones of the structure in an educational setting, one where people are learning to design buildings. And while it may look empty now, when it’s full of life—students, their creations and explorations—we want that energy to become the focus, so our architecture can fade to the background.”

On our July morning tour, the school is indeed still quiet, save for a few errant faculty members. Past the elevator core, steel walls take a cue from the building’s existing black ductwork as well as its sharply angular form.

The black steel serves as a divider, separating desks and study spaces from communal areas, as well as a giant pinup board, decorated with custom, hcma-designed SAPL supergraphics.

Throughout, polished-concrete floors and exposed ceilings anchor pared-down spaces, with long banks of desks arranged at 45-degree angles, creating a dialogue with the building’s form and the city beyond. “It’s aligned to the city grid,” said Brown, drawing my eye to the streetscape outside. Bookending these rows, crit spaces are delineated by unfinished 2-by-4-inch lumber framing. These simple wood skeletons, with their Home Depot vernacular, were designed to encourage students to clad the structure with their own creations, emphasizing a sense of agency and participation during crits and beyond.

As we climbed, an intuitive spatial logic became apparent. “We’ve got four levels of undergraduate space, with a social floor in between,” said Harding, adding that the upper stories are devoted to graduate studies and administrative spaces. On most levels, the floor plates are divided between rows of angled desks and classrooms on the building’s southwest side. The more active and communal classroom zones are accented by blocks of bright, Corbusian color along the northeast elevation.

Splashed across floors and walls, the bold hues create intuitive, energized wayfinding. Standing in a sea of red, I realized that this was one of the colors I glimpsed from the street last night; light reflected off the floor to cast an ambient evening glow.

In hcma’s design, classrooms are inserted into the floor plate as objects. Alongside traditional lecture halls, hcma incorporated a series of circular rooms, informed

by Indigenous teaching practices. In lieu of a lectern, these classrooms in the round draw on participatory and nonhierarchical oral traditions. For added flexibility, the circular spaces feature seamlessly integrated pivot doors, which slide open to create larger zones for informal learning and student exhibitions.

THE BUSINESS OF LEARNING

EMA PETER

23 Feature

September/October 2026

Architecture school also gets messy. While an office tower is reasonably well suited for studio spaces and classrooms, SAPL is also renowned for hands-on fabrication; the woodshop, model-making studio, and robotics lab are foundational. Given their complex HVAC, fire suppression, and loading needs, however, such uses are poorly suited to a high-rise commercial setting.

Fortunately, the tower’s 3-story annex fit the bill. Initially built as a conference center, the annex—connected to the tower via an elevated skywalk—was already equipped with an industrial loading dock and now houses the school’s makerspaces in a high-profile setting visible from the public realm.

It all augurs well for the school’s civic ambitions.

“Our goal is to be the most community-embedded design school in North America,” said Brown. You wouldn’t bet against it. SAPL’s lease also allows the school to host monthly programming in the lobby atrium. During my visit, part of the ground floor is closed for the construction of City Lab, a flexible gallery space that extends the program into the public realm. While the school quietly opened in January, this upcoming September welcomes a much grander opening, with plans for a party within the building and the neighboring park.

Yet, it’s also a product of opposing pedagogical impulses. Though the urban location brings the school much closer to the city and the communities it embraces as collaborators, it simultaneously ushers students away from the main campus, spatially and symbolically amplifying the notion of architecture as a hermetically sealed profession immune to interdisciplinary influence. If nothing else, architecture needs more practitioners who’ve taken a history class or read a Toni Morrison novel.

As a city-building exercise, however, SAPL introduces a compelling paradigm. Though the much-touted postCOVID boom of office-to-residential conversions quickly deflated, hcma’s design demonstrates that commercial towers—and the bulky floor plates poorly suited for apartment living—are a viable fit for campus. In Calgary, where downtown office vacancies hover near 30 percent, it offers an economic and cultural lifeline. So far, the architecture school remains the Valentine Building’s only tenant. Will it catalyze urban change? If nothing else, it makes a pretty exciting neighbor.

Facing page: Communal classrooms are delineated by bright splashes of color.

Left: The University of Calgary’s architecture program occupies 9 floors of the 37-story Valentine Building.

Below: Angular geometries reflect the streetscape beyond the building.

Bottom left: The vertical campus is divided up into spaces for graduate studies, administrative offices, undergraduate classrooms, and a floor for socializing.

Bottom right: Circular classrooms feature seamless pivot doors which lend flexibility to student activity.

EMA PETER

Stefan Novakovic is a Toronto-based architecture critic and a cofounder of Expo, a monthly essay series on Canadian design.

EMA PETER

EMA PETER

COURTESY HCMA

JASPER L AZOR PHOTOGR APHY

A COPPER BEACON VJAA designs for a new generation of chemistry students at the University of Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota has one of the few college campuses in the country that sits above a dramatic river gorge. Situated on the East Bank bluffs of the Mississippi River, Fraser Hall was designed as a new teaching center for undergraduate chemistry by local architecture firm VJAA. Reflecting years of faculty programming, the project is arguably the finest chemistry instruction building in the country.

Working with executive architect BWBR, VJAA incorporated the original Fraser Hall law school building, erected in 1929, into a new wing. The redbrick original now houses two lecture halls on the first floor and two teaching labs above. It looks east to the campus core and Northrop Mall, planned with City Beautiful grandeur by Minnesota-born architect Cass Gilbert. But VJAA’s new 121,718-square-foot building faces west with views across the Mississippi to downtown Minneapolis. After a century of campus growth and new buildings on the river, Fraser Hall completes a cohesive building wall along the bluff.

Clad in copper, it is a distinctly 21st-century building that respects the materials and scale of its neighbors.

VJAA’s reorientation of Fraser Hall to both the river and the campus core improves paths, lighting, grades, and circulation. By eliminating a jumble of additions to the old law school, VJAA’s project introduces new pedestrian connections west to the River Road parkway and the river.

Every approach to the building reveals student life—collaboration, tutoring, study, and gathering.

RIVERFRONT DESIGN Fraser Hall is set at an angle to its block, wedged between the street bordering the riverfront and the existing building. Its massing breaks into two bars, which reflects the river’s subtle curve. The move is best appreciated in its prominent western facade, which incorporates custom vertical, perforated-metal louvers that can block 40 percent of direct light in summer. Overall, the facade is 60 percent open, allowing ample daylight in the labs throughout the year, including the darker days of winter.

On a recent site visit, Jennifer Yoos, VJAA’s president, described the challenge of height restrictions in meeting programmatic and environmental requirements given the historic prominence of the context. To provide required

teaching labs and systems within the height limit, VJAA shifted from steel to concrete, which reduce floor-to-floor height by exposing structure and eliminating ceiling plenums.

The building’s vertical detailing makes subtle reference to the campus’s Neoclassical past. “We were particularly interested in the vertical textures and rhythms in the historic structures on Northrop Mall, from the intimate scale of column fluting to the depth of layered facades,” Yoos told AN. This historic fluting is evoked in the soft, rounded forms of the vertical louvers facing the river.

Yoos knows the campus well: From 2020 to 2026, she served as the head of the School of Architecture within the university’s College of Design. Its Rapson Hall stands nearby, to the east of Northrop Mall.

As we stopped along Fraser Hall’s southern face, she pointed to the wall system and noted, “You can see this historic reference in the development of these embossed, corrugated, textured copper shingles stacked between vertical battens.” The battens create a sense of verticality with a rhythmic echo of lines of columns. Perhaps only an architect would notice these details, but their effect lends character and patina for passersby.

THREE ZONES OF ACTIVITY The new Fraser Hall is divided into three linear zones: 15 teaching labs (along with three in the old law school) face the Mississippi to the west with adjacent collaboration areas and circulation space to the east. Whereas students once waited for their classes in a maze of narrow, confusing corridors, now Fraser Hall’s circulation spaces on the top three floors are wide, linear corridors that look east over the original Fraser Hall.

More than passageways, these halls are long public spaces that fill with morning sunlight. Students can wait there for teaching assistants to let them into the labs.

They can sit and study on wood-slatted benches that run the entire length of the building. Radiant heating beneath them warms occupants. Details like this matter in Minnesota winters when students arrive early in the morning from long walks outside.

Connecting all levels, the South Stair Tower features a 5-story integrated glass artwork by Dyani White Hawk,

JASPER L AZOR PHOTOGR APHY

JASPER L AZOR PHOTOGR APHY

a Minnesota-based Lakota artist whose solo show at the Walker Art Center coincided with Fraser Hall’s opening in late 2025. VJAA participated in the artist selection process, and students and staff contributed ideas for color and form. Yoos told me that White Hawk’s glass art “is such an important part of the building’s experience that it inspired our selection of interior colors and finishes.”

A BEACON FOR CHEMISTRY Designed for indoor-outdoor transparency, collaboration, and places to hang out, Fraser Hall is so welcoming that it encourages even students long intimidated by chemistry to take an intro course. At least that was the faculty’s idea.

After decades of outdated facilities, the chemistry department envisioned an inclusive campus hub where students would feel welcomed into the world of chemistry and encouraged to interact. David Blank, the Mr. and Mrs. George W. Taylor Distinguished Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor and the department’s associate dean, said that almost 15 years ago, faculty began to ask what kind of architecture might best serve students. They started to sketch out how the labs could be arranged adjacent to collaboration spaces for lectures and team projects. Over time, the faculty designed the teaching labs, and today the built result is very similar to their schematic concepts.

Set between the westward looking labs and the public spaces on the east, the learning spaces offer respite for group activities. They also provide nearby lockers for students to place their backpacks, laptops, and cold-weather gear. Following the faculty’s vision, BWBR led lab-planning workshops to coordinate lab design, course schedules, and workflows. Faculty feedback further refined flexible, efficient lab spaces and support areas aligned with teaching needs.

CYCLES OF MOVEMENT AND LEARNING Blank explains that “there is a lot of movement between the collaborative spaces [used for problem-solving, presentations, and planning experiments] and the labs for experimental execution.” Safety was a top priority and required clear sightlines for teaching assistants.

JASPER L AZOR PHOTOGR APHY

Facing page: Vertical fluting on the facade place the building in conversation with the campus’s Neoclassical past.

Top left: To improve circulation, the designers implemented wide, linear corridors on the top three floors.

Above left: VJAA incorporated the original Fraser Hall law school building into a new wing.

4 3

5

6

1

Above right: The South Stair Tower features a 5-story glass artwork by Dyani White Hawk.

Right: The expansion is set at an angle to its block and the existing building.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

2 7

1

Entry Circulation Informal student collab Tutoring Huddle Room South stair North stair plan LectureFirst-level 1hall Entry 2 Circulation 3 Informal student collab 4 Tutoring center 5 Huddle room 6 South stair 7 North stair 0 8 Lecture hall

5

8

8

1

20

COURTESY VJA A

This back-and-forth movement cycle can be repeated several times during a single class period. Moving from experiment planning to execution “is central to how we solve real-world problems and achieve our students’ learning outcomes,” Blank explained.

Today, he finds pleasure in seeing groups of students in the collaboration spaces “working together to decide their next move in the lab and other groups working in the lab figuring how to conduct the experiments they think will point them toward an answer.”

“The days of standing alone at a lab bench following a set of instructions are gone,” Blank said. Contemporary

teaching “is about learning how to ask good questions and then pursue those questions with well-designed experiments.” Learning chemistry is not a cookbook but a journey of reflection, planning, and execution.

“These next-level skills are central to the future success of our students,” Blank stated. “This is about learning how to think.”

Frank Edgerton Martin worked for ten years as a campus planner focusing on spatial adjacencies, changing pedagogy, and tying academic planning to long-term campus master plans. He has written for AN since 2020.

The Architect’s Newspaper

DAVE BURK /SOM

WHERE THE GRASS IS GREENER At UC Berkeley, SOM’s Grimes Engineering Center offers a new gathering space on Memorial Glade.

Architecture has the capacity to reset the environmental balance within highly charged settings. The recently completed Grimes Engineering Center does precisely that for UC Berkeley’s campus. It marks the assertive beginning of a new chapter on the campus, opening new vistas metaphorically and factually to the educational community and its future generations.

The task was clear: to construct a signature building to unify the discipline’s presence on campus. Although the engineering school occupies several buildings, its architectural identity was inconspicuous to the academic population. With growth projected in student enrollment, it was deemed imperative that the engineering school receive a more permanent, prominent home on campus. The green light came from the university’s Design Review Committee, which encouraged the architects to move forward with a bold gesture for the new facility as opposed to adopting a deferential attitude to its immediate neighbors. Skidmore, Owings & Merril (SOM) in San Francisco was in charge of both the architectural and the engineering design of the project. Commenting on his first site visit, SOM partner Michael Duncan stated: “There was no real face of the engineering school. That whole quad of the campus is all engineering, but there was not a lot of identity.” Partners Michael Duncan and Mark Sarkisian merged their respective site sensibilities

and their understanding of the program to generate a building of authority.

Occupying a prominent corner lot on Memorial Glade, the symbolic heart of UC Berkeley, the Grimes Engineering Center shifts the center of gravity of that vast landscaped axis. When the architects inherited the site there was already an existing building, the Bechtel Engineering Center. Completed in 1982 by notable modernist George Matsumoto, an Eliel Saarinen–trained architect, and equally celebrated landscape architect Robert Royston, the original Brutalist building featured a low-profile concrete edifice and an articulated rooftop.

However, despite the notable collaboration, the building lacked institutional distinction and a sense of presence on that prominent green lawn. Nonetheless, the building withstood four decades of student life, and its interior library spaces were heavily used. Of the previous structure, Duncan added: “It was well built.… Enough so that we could propose a plan that would preserve the whole base of the building, scoop off all the dirt and weight of that landscape and some of the concrete on top, and offset that with a superlight building to put on top of it, utilizing every footing that we could to build a new structure and not waste time tearing it down.”

The architects went for its adaptive reuse to capitalize on the carbon savings, expedite the construction schedule,

and reduce overall project cost. A structural analysis of the original student center determined that its load-bearing capacity made it an ideal podium for a 2-story, lightweight steel-frame pavilion. This was intended as a place where students could gather and experience the various facets of college life. It was designed to house student services as well as opportunities for entrepreneurial studies and other programs. In plan, the steel structure above the podium, all painted white, is laid out on a square module defining a rectangular footprint with three bays on the short side and six on the long one. The exposed steel columns became a colonnade that supports a thin louvered roof. The front side of the pavilion is recessed half a module on the south side to create a grand porch facing Memorial Glade. Fixed glass and white-metal panels— some flat, others fluted—define the exterior enclosure.

The result is a building with a strong civic presence: inherently welcoming, a beacon of light in the evening hours against the dark frontage of nearby Brutalist and classical buildings, and a gathering space for students and community members across Berkeley.

The building remains in conversation with its context.

On the east side of the lot sits the 1907 Hearst Memorial Mining Building by John Galen Howard, who masterminded the campus plan. A campus landmark, the building was a reference point, informing the design concept for the intervention. On the north side, Davis Hall, a 1968 SOM Brutalist massing, provides a solid concrete backdrop featuring refined, raked facade scoring. To the west is the classic-style McLaughlin Hall by George Kelham. In reciprocity with these established proximities, the architects adopted fluted metal panels in some areas of the building. Duncan added: “UC Berkeley has restrictions which call for classical architecture in the campus core.

We wanted to design something that respected that, but this is the engineering school.” The result is the decision to retain the old base while ensuring that the new addition remained within a classical register.

The site is also less than 800 feet east of the Hayward Fault, so seismic concerns are paramount. The SOM engineers wanted to distribute the load evenly on each of the columns placed on every footing. Additionally, along the exterior perimeter they located a series of lightweight cable structures to create lateral resistance, preventing the building from twisting. Damping devices inside, diagonal brackets, and all the engineering connections were purposely left exposed in the architecture. The intent was to express all the engineering they could by putting on display the raw steel and its associated technology to provide a character consistent with the academic interest of that community.

Duncan wanted to adopt cables to make the building as stable as possible. The challenge was that steel eventually fails after multiple sequences of stresses. To circumvent that problem, SOM implemented the first known application of the pioneering shape-memory alloy technology. He recounted: “We used along the perimeter a series of lightweight cable structures to keep the building from twisting. There are some damping devices inside with diagonal brackets. If you look up at the top of these cables, there is a device for each cable. Shape-memory alloy is like a rubber band. When the building shifts in one direction, it stretches, slows down the motion, goes back in the opposite direction, it stretches again, but then it returns to its original shape.” The idea of having a building returning to its shape after a seismic shock galvanized the engineering professors involved in reviewing the project. Partnering with Tri Pyramid, SOM developed this system with input from the school’s own engineering faculty as well. Testing occurred nearby in Davis Hall.

While inventing a product was an unplanned occurrence, SOM is currently exploring the development of this system for future projects.

In its restrained elegance, the building is both a teaching tool for innovative seismic-engineering technology and a lively social space. Many types of seating arrangement are provided to what had been a fragmented community of domestic and international students, each staying in their own world. Quiet spaces on top, tables, collaboration, and other amenities all contribute to the bigger space.

Grimes Engineering Center portends future campus improvements that are on their way to Berkeley. Evans Hall, which partly obscures the facade of the new building, will be torn down in the coming year. SOM is bringing back John Galen Howard’s vision of an unspoiled campus green. When Evans Hall is demolished, Duncan said, “it becomes a much more frontal building. There is a greater landscape life to come.”

Pierluigi Serraino is a California-based practicing architect and author.

September/October 2026

DAVE BURK /SOM

DAVE BURK /SOM

COURTESY SOM

1

2

3

DAVE BURK /SOM

4

DAVE BURK /SOM

Facing page: Grimes Engineering Center provides iconic architecture for the college’s engineering department.

Top left: The south side of the building features a recessed pavilion designed to create a porch that faces Memorial Glade.

Lightweight Steel Structure with Colonade Roof

1

Shape-Memory Alloy Lateral Tension Rod System

2

Infill Addition and Additional Floor

3

Existing Cast-in-Place Concrete Building & Foundation

4

Top right: The building is topped with a white steel colonade roof.

Above left: The student center was designed as a gathering space for students across departments.

Above right: A series of lightweight cable structures keep the building from twisting during an earthquake.

Left: The two-story podium was placed on top of the existing George Matsumoto–designed building.

28 Feature

At the University of Toronto’s Indigenous House, Formline Architecture + Urbanism and LGA Architectural Partners fold Indigenous pedagogies into the design.

ROOTED IN RECONCILIATION

The Architect’s Newspaper

Toronto is a city of ravines. Though lush, verdant networks of plant and animal life unfold below the city streets like veins and arteries, you’d almost never know it from above.

For newcomers, it can take years, even decades, to discover these majestic terrains, which are announced by little more than a wooden staircase or an unmarked dirt path at the end of a street. This is also a colonial city, one whose urban and architectural fabric bears little connection to the land or its history. However, on a suburban corner of the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus a ravine now rises to meet the metropolis.

From afar, the Indigenous House enters the vista as a great earthen mound. Amid an asphalt sea of parking lots, a rounded roof is framed by sloping greenery that climbs above the horizon, rising to nearly touch the mottled array of cedar shingles. Up close, the form gradually reveals itself as a 2-story building, enveloped in the landscape and ringed by an elevated walkway and an array of angled mass-timber columns that support a cantilevered roof.

Designed by Alfred Waugh of Vancouver’s Formline Architecture + Urbanism in collaboration with local firm LGA Architectural Partners, the project was conceived as a social, academic, and spiritual hub for Indigenous students, as well as an aesthetic expression of the university’s broader commitment to reconciliation, which includes the creation of Indigenous spaces, new faculty and staff, and new curricula and research programs. For Waugh, a citizen of Fond du Lac Denesuline Nation of Saskatchewan, these ambitions also translate to fluid, nonprescriptive spaces that dissolve institutional—and colonial—hierarchies.

“It’s all conceived a little bit like a village,” he said.

The ovoid, 10,700-square-foot building integrates a flexible array of classrooms, study spaces, and social areas with offices for the university’s Indigenous Initiatives

DOUBLESPACE

29 Feature

staff. Offices, meeting spaces, and restrooms are clustered in the building’s center, with a similar program on the lower floor. Downstairs, a commercial kitchen is paired with a small library. Meanwhile, a small double-height atrium and staircase sit at the heart of the ovoid form, creating the closest thing to a main entrance.

Waugh noted that the wigwam—a dome-shaped Indigenous dwelling used by Eastern North American tribes like the Anishinaabe and the Huron—was a point of inspiration. “It’s a structure clad with peeled bark and held together by bent saplings. A two-way orthogonal grid creates a really intimate setting inside the dome, with a fireplace and a little hole in the ceiling. And sometimes, they extended these structures into a longer, kind of cavelike setting,” Waugh explained.

The Indigenous House stretches the wigwam to the civic scale. The upper story is bookended by two striking circular classrooms topped by a twin-domed roof, which evokes the wigwam form. In both classrooms, an intricate, curved roof of glue-laminated timber nods to compositions of saplings and braided bark. Standing in the middle of either room, the natural acoustics mean even a whisper can be heard by everyone in the circle. Lit by a pair of skylights, the larger of these modern wigwams is the building’s marquee space, opening out to a majestic view of the wooded ravine.

As Waugh explained, the position of the room guided the design approach. “When we were first hired, there was already a program in place from the university, with a requirement for the main gathering space to be on the second floor so that it would look out over the ravine and into nature,” said Waugh. “I didn’t fully agree with that, because I thought that the gathering space should spill out onto the landscape.”

September/October 2026

For Waugh and the design team, maintaining a direct connection to the outdoors was paramount. Fortunately, a compromise emerged. “Instead of fighting them on it, we started thinking about how to make it more accessible to the public,” he recalled. “We saw a gentle slope in the site already, dropping away from the road. This led us to building a ramp to the second story, which in turn seeded the idea of the building merging into the landscape.”

To craft the elevated garden and surrounding green space, landscape specialist Public Work collaborated with Nikibii Dawadinna Giigwag, a program creating pathways for Indigenous youth in landscape architecture, urban design, and conservation. The team wrapped the west elevation of the building in a raised berm of tall meadow grasses, shrubs, and perennial plants. In the July heat, the place is abuzz with bees and pollinators. The public realm extends out onto the wraparound terrace. Even in a 2-story building, both levels feel like the ground floor.

Yet, the integration into the landscape is more than an aesthetic conceit, reflecting both Indigenous pedagogies and the project of reconciliation.

This direct intro into both circular classrooms allows visitors to bypass institutional settings. While this is already a building without a security booth or a concierge desk, an immediate connection to nature further dissolves a sense of barrier—a particularly notable acknowledgement for Indigenous groups confronting long histories of institutional racism. By the same logic, the circular rooms are a conscious departure from typical classrooms.

“There’s a sort of robotic approach, where you’re sitting there facing the chalkboard and the teacher is an authority figure. When I engage with various Indigenous nations, they really tend to not like that, especially given the history of residential schools,” said Waugh. Indeed,

DOUBLESPACE

DOUBLESPACE

Facing page: Public Works partnered with Indigenous organization Nikibii Dawadinna Giigwag to wrap the west elevation in greenery.

Left: Circular rooms offer a conscious departure from traditional classrooms.

DOUBLESPACE

these colonial schools were a crucial element of forced assimilation and remain a source of profound trauma.

It’s not the only way to teach. “In Indigenous traditions, it’s more about sharing knowledge through conversation and storytelling and engaging the people around you,” said Waugh. “If you’re a student, the circular room conveys that you’re a part of something—that you’re not just being dictated to.” Moreover, Waugh noted that these intimate spaces welcome types of education historically excluded from the curriculum, from dance lessons to craft and sewing classes.

Even in its most quotidian spaces, the place quietly serves Indigenous ways of knowing—and being.

Bathrooms feature oversize rooms for changing into regalia, while the HVAC system is designed to accommodate smoke-filled smudging ceremonies without the need to flip a switch. The whole building is equipped with operable windows. Alongside each office and boardroom, discrete plywood-veneer door panels have acoustic baffles incorporated that allow fresh air to pass into the hallways.

For the university, Indigenous House is a departure—and a radical one, at that. In a corner of campus dominated by parking lots and new-build corporate architecture, the place looks and feels profoundly different from anything around it. It’s right where it’s supposed to be. From just a few steps away, the cedar shingles and timber columns almost meld into the meadow grasses and the ravine woodland beyond. It doesn’t disappear. It just becomes a part of something greater. SN

Above left: An elevated walkway rings the exterior of the building.

Above right: The classroom’s curved roof is made of gluelaminated timber, and was designed to evoke the wigwam form.

COURTESY FORMLINE ARCHITECTURE + URBANISM

Below: The building features two domed classrooms at either end.

Outdoor Spaces

32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50

David A. Rubin BIG, One Architecture, and MNLA in New York City Public & Streetscape Furniture Transforming Philadelphia’s Streetscapes Pavers & Decking EskewDumezRipple and Hargreave Jones in New Orleans Lighting Surfacedesign and Aidlin Darling Design in Napa, California Residential & Hospitality Furniture Landscape Directory

Outdoor Spaces September/October 2026

ADAM ROUSE

32

In cities and towns nationwide, local leaders are working to counter a worrying rise in loneliness, isolation, and polarization by bringing people together—physically and socially. Across the country, municipal officials and health specialists are seeing evidence of Americans’ widespread social disengagement and its serious toll on public health, local economies, and civic involvement. A recent and rapid rise in loneliness was charted in a landmark advisory by the U.S. surgeon general in 2023, which documented loneliness as worse than smoking or obesity in contributing to premature death. This mass drift toward withdrawal has multiple causes: pervasive digital devices and media channels that reinforce biases; widening income and education gaps; and exclusions by race and other demographic factors. Not least is the physical remoteness designed into our communities today that locks many people into car dependency and leaves them with few ways to walk or wheel around safely. Americans in these barrier-rich environments also lack parks and other shared public spaces where people have traditionally gathered.

Public spaces promote health and happiness. And landscape architects are tasked with working alongside local leaders to create the civic spaces and parks that serve as the connective tissue within our society. If we can design community environments that encourage comfortable kinds of adjacency, the people of that community are more likely to engage in conversations with other people they don’t necessarily know. There’s a lot of meanness in society, but meanness is overcome by kindness, and kindness comes through understanding. And the only way we’re going to understand each other is to promote conversations between people, particularly at a time of deepening isolation and, in many respects, xenophobia. For leaders hoping to create greater cohesion in their communities, the energy and investment put into new or upgraded public spaces more than pays off.

The surgeon general’s advisory emphatically credited parks and public spaces as vital “social infrastructure” that “facilitate[s] bringing people together” in its solutions for reducing loneliness. Concerted efforts have taken place nationwide to strengthen the role of these places in helping people feel rooted and connected to others in their neighborhoods. Successful projects are being led by major philanthropies with local and regional planners. One project, led by the Knight and Kresge foundations, among others, has focused in several cities on developing public spaces to help build intangible civic assets such as trust, community involvement, equity, and stewardship. Cities like Akron, Ohio; Lexington, Kentucky; Macon, Georgia; and San Jose, California, are taking part. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has funded development of a “Winter Cities Toolkit” to help residents overcome the isolation of cold, snowy months in Buffalo, New York; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; and Leadville, Colorado. For the tool kit, the Wellness Institute of Greater Buffalo helped launch an extensive program to clear snow (famously, often by the foot) and activate parks with winter programming. It has also built tools to make the outdoors more accessible—for example, a real-time map to show residents open park routes they can follow safely.

Safety is imperative to landscape architects.

In all the spaces we design, we’re required by law to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Health and safety rules are straightforward; in parks, we ensure that visitors don’t fall over edges, get electrocuted, or play in toxic soils, and we consider ways to prevent crime.

Our commitment to the public’s welfare, meanwhile, is something we approach more broadly and with nuance.

One project that brought this idea into focus for me was designing the Commonground at Eskenazi Health Hospital in Indianapolis.

Hospitals are often viewed only as places of treatment and urgency, but they are also places where people experience fear, hope, waiting, and human connection. On any given day, the

In Parks, a Less Lonely Nation Gathers David A. Rubin reflects on shaping civic spaces that reflect community need.

SAHAR COSTON-HARDY/ESTO

SAHAR COSTON-HARDY/ESTO

SAHAR COSTON-HARDY/ESTO

Top: Land Collective designed the Commonground at Eskenazi Health Hospital to support wellness and belonging. Middle: Franklin Park serves as social infrastructure, inviting community members to gather.

Above: In Land Collective’s Allentown project, oversized benches invite people to linger.

Outdoor Spaces Eskenazi campus brings together an extraordinarily diverse cross section of the city’s population— patients, families, caregivers, and staff—many of whom might never otherwise encounter one another. We approached the landscape not just as an amenity but as a welcoming civic environment designed to support wellness and belonging.

Importantly, spaces like this can also serve people with no direct connection to the hospital: neighbors seeking a quiet place to sit, workers passing through, or anyone looking for moments of respite and connection. Spaces for gathering, quiet reflection, and shared experiences become as meaningful to healing as the clinical care taking place inside the building itself.

Crucial to successful public spaces, however, is accessibility for all. Our colleagues and collaborators speak regularly of “park poverty” to describe places—often but not always in economically challenged neighborhoods—that lack accessible, safe areas where kids can play or adults can walk, exercise, or sit and read. For mayors and city councils, these are blanks to fill in on their maps. In our frequent roles as planners, landscape architects analyze whole towns and regions to find areas where more park space is needed; ideally, people in cities and towns should have a park (or two) no farther than a 10-minute walk. And beyond the regulatory requirements of universal access, it should be reachable for the people most vulnerable to isolation—especially young people, seniors, or people with chronic illness—whether they arrive on foot or using a walker, wheelchair, or stroller.

A holistic approach to accessibility extends beyond location, however. Offering flexible seating options, for example, can make parks more amenable to all users. Seating is crucial.

Ensuring that benches are comfortable means that people can linger.

And an oversize bench means a person can invite others to join them—there’s graciousness designed into the flexibility and adaptability of the seating we design.

In recent years, there’s been a renaissance of new parks and public spaces in cities where local leaders are capturing their timeless appeal toward sometimes novel social ends. Frederick Law Olmsted understood the public health benefits of shared open space in creating Central Park in New York in the 1850s—as a real estate speculation, it would provide relief from the dense, frantic city. Today, civic improvers from Seattle to Memphis, Tennessee to Raleigh, North Carolina have been asking landscape architects to help create parks because they understand that excellent public spaces increase business, attract talent, bolster the tax base, and reduce crime.

Alongside those inherent benefits, I emphasize to local leaders the importance of participation among the individuals who inhabit our cities. There’s a productive kind of abrasion that happens when cities bring people together. The city’s grit and verve allow us to polish our edges with each other—something less likely amid the segregation we find in more remote, homogenous places. We expand our potential as humans as we move fluidly among others in the public realm. Our random mixing with people of myriad backgrounds and experiences makes us naturally more accustomed to cultural differences, more tolerant and open-minded, even more curious about the ways people move through the world. We are drawn out of ourselves and our own cultural spheres and often find ourselves altered for the better. The public realm is a realm of unexpected everyday magic, but it’s a magic we have to coax into existence and cultivate with investment, with care, and, not least, with faith in the fundamental good of social harmony.

David A. Rubin is the founding principal of DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, a landscape architecture, urban design, and planning studio committed to practicing socially purposeful design.

Prairie Stone™ Ashlar in Black Limestone with Chisled finish

DESIGNED TO MIX. BUILT TO STAND OUT.

NEW! PRAIRIE STONE™ Hanover’s NEW Prairie Stone™ Series combines square and rectangular Prest® Brick units in multiple sizes that work seamlessly together or independently for custom layouts. Available in a wide range of colors and textures, Prairie Stone™ gives you the flexibility to create a space that reflects your unique vision.

HANOVERPAVERS.COM >>

NEW! Chestnut

NEW! River Rock

NEW! Sedona

34

Outdoor Spaces

Stewardship

IWAN BA AN

Rounding the U The East Side Coastal Resiliency project bolsters New York City’s waterfront with updated flood infrastructure and new opportunities for recreation.

On a Tuesday afternoon along the Lower East Side’s swath of the East River, a small group gathers in an amphitheater abutting the riverfront. Farther upstream, a mother stands over a smoky grill. And under the Williamsburg Bridge, a fisherman casts a line into the river, awaiting a fish’s tug. On the sloped lawns overlooking the river and Brooklyn across the way, dogs prance on the grass and sports fields are abuzz with after-school activity. Bikes whiz along the paved greenway through the linear park that will eventually fully span from Montgomery Street, just south of the bridge, up to East 25th Street. In this park, the programming is a clever, publicfacing disguise for the substantial infrastructure underneath it. It’s all part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project, a vision to bolster Manhattan’s Lower East Side from future flooding and to deliver park space to the more than 100,000 residents who call the neighborhood home.

Resilience and Recreation The ESCR project was born out of necessity. When Hurricane Sandy blasted New York in October 2012, it downed trees, uprooted houses, and damaged public infrastructure—including roadways, tunnels, and parks—causing an estimated $19 billion in damages. What New York learned from Sandy has taken over a decade to put into practice, and there’s still work to be done.

The origins of ESCR lie in the 2013 competition Rebuild by Design, which was launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as an early attempt to bolster the Eastern Seaboard against the next Sandy. BIG, ONE Architecture, ARCADIS, Buro Happold, and others won the competition for the site in Lower Manhattan with the BIG U, a proposal to protect the coastline of Manhattan from West 57th Street

down to Battery Park and up to East 42nd Street.

Federal funding for the project came soon after.

In 2014, through an RFP, the city assembled a team responsible for delivering the ESCR project, bringing on many of the BIG U consultants as well as landscape architecture firm MNLA to make what the BIG U envisioned a reality. Feasibility studies followed, options were weighed and revised, and all the while, public input was solicited. Programming was guided by what was suggested in community board meetings and in conversations with residents, while FEMA rules dictated what was needed to keep floodwaters at bay.

The project occupies the original site of East River Park, a Robert Moses–backed initiative from the 1930s. The park, which stretched from Montgomery Street to East 12th Street, offered Lower East Side residents ample lawns for recreation, sports courts with accompanying field houses, and an amphitheater. It closed for construction in spring 2020.

Last summer, after a five-year wait, a stretch of the revamped East River Park opened to an eager public. New amenities include the Corlears Hook Pedestrian Bridge, six additional tennis courts, and an amphitheater. Most impressive, however, was the important infrastructure embedded in the renovation. In anticipation of the next 100year storm, predicted to hit sometime after 2050, ESCR physically raised the parkland, installed floodwalls and berms, and made improvements in the existing sewer system to allow for more efficient stormwater capture.

“A lot of times infrastructure is kept separate from people,” MNLA principal Molly Bourne told AN. “Our whole concept was to merge them together.”

The park’s design was also shaped by floodmitigation strategy. For instance, per FEMA, trees can’t be planted within 15 feet of a floodwall, so

the design solution was to locate sports fields above where floodwalls would be situated. Current predictions put the sea level rise at 2.5 feet by 2050. However, the infrastructure was adaptively designed to accommodate up to 2 feet more of elevation should sea levels rise even higher than projected.

A More Connected Coastline The BIG-designed Corlears Hook and Delancey Street pedestrian bridges join an eventual trio (one at East 10th Street will open in 2027) of elevated walkways reconnecting residents safely with the waterfront and park space. Gone are the original park’s switchback-centric ramps faced with chain-link fences. Instead, a curved design language apparent in the bridge’s crossbeams and brackets celebrates the bridges of New York’s boroughs at a neighborhood scale.

“Historically, reaching the park meant going far down the FDR to then navigate a zigzag of narrow ramps to cross over the highway,” BIG partner Daniel Sundlin told AN. “We proposed bringing each bridge entrance deeper into the neighborhood and widening the paths to comfortably accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists, completely changing the relationship between city and park.”

BIG added that the bridges are designed for maximum structural efficiency, with arched beams carrying cables that support the pathway, which is wide enough for pedestrians, bikers, and emergency vehicles.

Tennis players and runners eagerly await the opening of bathroom and locker pavilions for their respective sports. The facilities, designed

by BIG, are scheduled to open in 2027, along with bathrooms at 10th Street and two maintenance canopies.

In September 2025, Solar One Environmental Center, an educational facility for the eponymous environmental education nonprofit, opened its riverfront classrooms in a wood-clad building designed by BIG in Stuyvesant Cove. These new digs sit on the former site of a concrete plant, the same factory that provided the material that built StuyTown. For 20 years the organization, tasked with managing the surrounding park space and running an education center, operated out of what Solar One CEO Stephen Levin affectionately dubbed a “donated shack.” Today, the new facility, topped with solar panels and faced with wood, sits within the floodplain. Because of this, everything on its “ground floor” is floodable or made of breakaway materials—think gabions and pilotis.

“We tell people that the floodwall is meant to protect Manhattan from the next Sandy, and we’re on the water side,” Levin said, noting that the structure’s design was informed by its location in the flood zone.

Up the stairs, Solar One’s office and classroom space is small. They overlook the river and a small garden used for teaching. Students learn how to build batteries, make tiny model solar houses, and study up on wind turbines. Although the nonprofit stewards the land, maintenance of the linear park is largely the responsibility of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Instead, with these expanded facilities, Solar One seeks to provide opportunities for environmental education as well as to serve as a hub for spreading awareness about New York’s climate future.

The BIG U Ahead Today, the BIG U is being constructed in several sections. In Lower Manhattan, parts of East River Park and Wagner Park are now equipped to withstand the next Sandy, while work in other parts of the Battery and in South Street Seaport is still underway. This summer, construction fencing went up around some of Battery Park City’s coastline as part of the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project. Work here includes flood barrier system alignment. And phase one of the Battery Coastal Resilience project, which rebuilt and elevated a section of a wharf promenade in the Battery, was completed in June. Construction on the second phase is anticipated to conclude in 2027. An extension of Hurricane Sandy’s ongoing legacy, these projects are reshaping New York City’s coastline to ensure a more resilient future.

Kristine Klein is the former web editor of The Architect’s Newspaper.

DESIGN ARCHITECT: BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group &

ONE Architecture

ARCHITECT OF RECORD: Office for the Next

Environment

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: MNLA

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: Hardesty Hanover ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: Wesler-Cohen

CIVIL ENGINEERING: AKRF & KSE, Arcadis,

Jacobs, Hazen & Sawyer

SIGNAGE/WAYFINDING: Pentagram

ADVISORY AND COST ESTIMATION: Siteworks

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS CONSULTING: Hortus

Environmental Design

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: FHI Studio

PLANNING & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: Starr

Whitehouse

ECONOMICS ADVISORY: James Lima Planning +

Development

35

Outdoor Spaces

JONATHAN MOREFIELD/ FIELD CONDITION

FOAD SARSANGI/COURTESY BIG

MAT THEW L APISK A /DDC

Facing page: The new park sits on the site of the former East River Park.

Top: New amenities include six additional tennis courts.

Above left: The Solar One Education Center offers waterfront classrooms in a wood-clad building designed by BIG. Above right: ESCR created a 2.4-mile long flexible flood barrier with its updates to the parkland.

Left: Floodwalls and landscaped berms were installed in anticipation of sea level rise.

Center: Park programming was created in response to community meetings.

COURTESY BIG

MAT THEW L APISK A /DDC

36

Outdoor Spaces

Public & Streetscape Furniture The right outdoor furniture encourages connection and engagement in parks, streets, and other common areas.

These pieces stand up to the rigor of public use while also elevating typically overlooked spaces. KP

Link Rail | Landscape Forms landscapeforms.com An expansion of the Link modular-seating system created in collaboration with designer Jess Sorel, Link Rail adds a perch-friendly rail top and a hangout-ready bar top.

Sedan | mmcité mmcite.com Sedan is a collection of modules that offer virtually unlimited possibilities, from linear seating to organic forms, enclosed backrests to open-air arrangements.

FARI | Vestre vestre.com

Prospect Truss Seat | Botton + Gardiner bottongardiner.com

Designed by Studio Føy, this lounge chair and table collection takes inspiration from a Safari chair, retooled to make public spaces more inviting and comfortable.

An interlaced steel truss anchors this bench, supporting a cantilever seat to bring a contemporary and architectural edge to public spaces.

ALL IMAGES COURTESY THE RESPECTIVE MANUFACTURERS

Spin | Sandler sandlerseating.com

Post & Vine | Tournesol tournesol.com

720 Double Wide Lounge Chair | Maglin Site Furniture maglin.com

The spiral seating, designed by Brogliato Traverso, can be looped together to create sinuous swirls or left as singular seats—either option elevates seating into sculpture.

Post & Vine is a new Greenscreen ecosystem, a modular system of steel structures, Greenscreen trellis, integrated bench seating, and coordinated planters designed to create a stronger sense of place easily.

The latest seating from Maglin expands the width of a typical lounge chair and integrates a small table, making soaking up the outdoors with others simple.

38

Outdoor Spaces

City Circuits In Philadelphia, a series of projects reshaping streetscapes aims to promote culture and connectivity by creating green corridors.

These include projects that aim to revitalize the city’s beleaguered Market Street, which received attention two years ago when the Sixers proposed and then bailed on building a stadium downtown. They also include necessary street redesigns to promote safety and calm traffic. Writer Meredith Lindemon provides a round-up of the projects slated to reshape Philadelphia into a denser, more walkable city.

TR AK TEAM MEDIA

AveArts 2.0 The new AveArts 2.0 project seeks to transform South Broad Street, otherwise known as the Avenue of the Arts, which bisects city hall and runs north to south, to Washington Avenue. The $150 million, multiyear plan led by Gensler and OJB seeks to transform the stretch and is modeled after the Avenue des Champs-Élysées project in Paris.

This project offers one of the most pivotal civic opportunities in Philadelphia, said Carl Dranoff, board chair for Avenue of the Arts.

He told AN, “Imagine connecting the two great streets of Center City into a single, linear ribbon of green: a tree-lined, pedestrian-oriented promenade that runs from the Avenue of

CHARLIE SCHUCK /COURTESY MEANTIME

Market East Revival In July, Philadelphia announced it received funding to begin planning and design along the Market East corridor.

The Market East Revival project falls under the purview of the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems and the Department of

the Arts through the wide sidewalks around city hall and east along Market Street, where worldclass architecture and a thriving arts scene give way to landmark hospitality, the Reading Terminal Market, and an emerging wave of retail and residential.”

Phase 1A, which opened in June, tests the design vision in the center of the boulevard, isolating the median as the core expression of the boulevard idea before Gensler splits the work into two phases, starting with the median and then bringing that design onto the sidewalks to the building edge.

Oliver Schaper, principal at Gensler and project lead, explained, “We realized quickly that we needed to come up with a flexible solution that introduces a family of like elements [that can take] a different configuration on every block so the avenue is supported as one corridor.”

Planning and Development (DPD). It is Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s coordinated effort to create a safer, more connected commercial corridor that links businesses to the arts.

A city grant for $1.85 million funded new bus shelters, transit headhouses, trees, murals, lighting, and plantings coordinated by the Center City District. The project is being overseen

by DPD alongside the public-private Market East Corridor Advisory Group. The project has yet to commence.

Federal grant funds totaling $2.5 million were released in July to support planning and public engagement efforts to inform improvements to Market Street’s sidewalks, curbs, and roadways.

Currently, public engagement, research and analysis, and outreach to peer cities and subject matter experts continue, and a plan to bring back the corridor will be announced at the end of the year.

COURTESY THE CIT Y OF PHIL ADELPHIA

Market Street Old City Improvement Project The $16 million Market Street Old City Improvement Project, which began construction in 2024, opened to the public this June. The Philadelphia-based planning firm Urban Engineers led the project to modernize the four-block corridor between 2nd and 6th Streets. Ground Reconsidered led the landscape architecture and design, and Julie Bush, principal, led the project.

Her team developed a strategy to enhance the site’s grid by using materials to make lane separations and curb bump-outs more legible.

DEL AWARE RIVER WATERFRONT CORPOR ATION

The Washington Avenue Connector Commissioned by the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, the Washington Avenue Connector is a $9.5 million urban improvement effort that

Julie Bush, a principal at Ground Reconsidered, said the team chose plants for the project like blue star flower (Amsonia blue ice), purple coneflower, wood spurge, and geranium Rozanne, which provide seasonal interest and can withstand drought and intense heat.

“One of the nice things about aggregate concrete is that it goes with the granite pavers you find along Market East,” she said of the material decisions Ground Reconsidered made for the project’s interventions. “In terms of the bike lane separation and the curb bump-outs, all of that is language that can be carried on to city hall.”

will transform a half-mile stretch of Washington Avenue into a safer, greener multimodal route.

The project started in April 2025 and is slated to open to the public this fall. Andropogon, a firm that specializes in ecological design and sustainable landscape architecture, is leading the design of the project. The planting strategy relies on native trees, hardy shrubs, and perennial plants designed to handle urban conditions while managing stormwater runoff.

A new multimodal, shared-use path along the southern side of Washington Avenue connects directly to the curb-protected Delaware River Trail. Curb bump-outs at the intersections slow traffic and improve visibility. Median islands act as pedestrian refuges in the middle of Washington Avenue. New signals with pedestrian push buttons allow the city to coordinate signals to slow traffic to a consistent speed.

COURTESY HARGREAVES JONES

Penn’s Landing Park Penn’s Landing Park is part of a new $329 million urban revitalization effort known as the Interstate 95 Central Access Philadelphia (CAP) Project.

The project officially began construction in 2023 and the structural highway cap is expected to be completed in 2029, with the final park opening to the public by 2030. The internationally recognized firm Hargreaves Jones is responsible for the overall site plan, grading, and green space configuration for the 11.5-acre cap park.

As a part of the CAP Project, PennDOT is installing the South Street Pedestrian Bridge extension over Columbus Boulevard. This

bridge, which is slated to open in 2027, will allow pedestrians and bikers access to the Delaware River Waterfront. Hill International is leading the design project. The impressive construction plan for the bridge includes installing the arched structure overnight, using trucks which will roll the bridge across the six-lane highway and place the bridge on pre-installed piers. With this addition, Philadelphians will gain increased accessibility to the city’s waterfront green spaces as well as a new piece of iconic architecture.

Meredith Lindemon is a journalist who covers commercial architecture and interior design.

made in usa

40

Pavers & Decking

Outdoor Spaces

Viking Stone | ABC Stone abcworldwidestone.com

Sendero | TileBar tilebar.com

Reclaimed Flint Street Brick Pavers | Chief Bricks chiefbricks.com

Quarried in Norway and shaped through traditional handfinishing techniques, each piece is individually split, dressed, and selected to preserve the stone’s natural character.

Sendero brings together the natural beauty of limestone, sandstone, and granite in a collection of pavers defined by soft color variation and organic texture.

These pavers offer an antique look with real reclaimed material underfoot and the original Flint Co stamp marking, suitable for driveways, historic restoration projects, courtyards, entryways, patios, and more.

Travertini | Belgard belgard.com

London Collection | Porcelanosa porcelanosa.com/en

Fiberon Novus | Fiberon fiberondecking.com

Travertini resembles the natural texture of travertine, finished with top texture for nonslip surfaces, and it can be installed using a pedestal system for rooftop and plaza applications.

The London Collection is a premium wood-effect ceramic and porcelain tile series offered in different hues, textures, and structural variations.

This fused composite decking lends the look of cedar and Brazilian hardwoods, while a proprietary thermoset shell helps resist scratches and dents.

41

Outdoor Spaces

A connection to nature, whether through reclaimed and renewable materials or biophilic design, grounds these updates and latest releases. KP

Gravelpave2 | Invisible Structures invisiblestructures.com Invisible Structures’ low-maintenance, porous paving solution is now offered in granite and four other colorways, enabling architects to color-match aggregates to create natural-looking gravel surfaces.

Nomak | Cosentino cosentino.com

Woods | Kronos USA kronos-usa.com

Using Dekton technology, Nomak is defined by subtle veining, calm tones, and near-zero porosity, making it suitable for high-moisture areas.

This collection brings the appearance of natural timber into porcelain pavers, inspired by wood’s grain, tonal richness, and visual warmth.

ALL IMAGES COURTESY THE RESPECTIVE MANUFACTURERS

Trex Transcend Lineage Decking | Trex Company trex.com

MOSO Bamboo Thermo Decking | MOSO North America moso-bamboo-outdoor.com

Harvest+ Collection | TimberTech timbertech.com

Now offered in a 1-inch-by-4-inch board profile, Trex Transcend Lineage Decking supports multiwidth surface designs, drink-rail applications, and other custom detailing for low-maintenance outdoor living.

This sustainable decking is made using renewable bamboo strips and engineered using high-temperature compression, which won it an AN Best of Products Award in 2025.

Harvest+ offers a refined wood-grain visual with subtle, lowgloss patterns and a Class A Flame Spread rating, which is expected to be compliant with the wildland urban interface.

42

Outdoor Spaces

A Front Porch for Everyone

TIM HURSLE Y

With Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park, EskewDumezRipple and Hargreaves Jones complete New Orleans’s waterfront revitalization.

Even if the newly opened Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park in the heart of New Orleans had been nothing but a ho-hum stretch of green grass, it would still be a transformational asset for the city. By replacing a decommissioned warehouse that once housed massive quantities of plastics, the 6-acre green space, which connects two preexisting parks, knits the riverfront together, providing over 2 miles of uninterrupted public access. Codesigned by local architecture firm EskewDumezRipple and landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Jones, it was funded jointly by the City of New Orleans and the Audubon Nature Institute, which runs the nearby aquarium. Providing something for everyone—tourists, locals, kids—the project has become popular with those seeking relief from the city’s infamous heat and humidity in the form of cool riverfront breezes.

Hargreaves Jones principal Mary Margaret Jones called the park “a series of rooms.”

Entering the green space from the access point closest to Jackson Square, the historic center of New Orleans, visitors first encounter earthen mounds, each sprouting a different mix of local flora. Concrete pedestrian pathways beckon visitors further within. For EskewDumezRipple managing principal Christian Rodriguez, who led the project, this is “the most urban part of the park,” given its significant helping of hardscape. It is a trenchant description coming from Rodriguez, a New Orleans native, since the space is “urban” in a quintessentially New Orleanian way, combining city grit with tropical lushness. These plantings set amid hardscape evoke the city’s abandoned buildings that get covered in Grandpa Ott morning glory, a dense jungle vine that pops with iridescent pink-purple

ombré blossoms, beauty sprouting from the ruins. Alongside the mounds are a series of metal cooling misters—Jones dubbed it a “fog fountain”—that can be activated by users via a nearby button.

Just past this section stands the main architectural feature of the park. Officially titled the NOLA Front Porch, it is the result of preserving part of the existing plastics warehouse while removing portions of its lower walls. The remains were then reclad with a see-through metal mesh that gets lit up at night to create what Rodriguez called a “gossamer effect” when visitors walk by it. The roof, which harvests rainwater to irrigate the park’s plantings, was reinforced to withstand hurricanes, which can now blow straight through the structure rather than against it.

“We always called this ‘the Cultural Shed,’” Rodriguez told me as we sat beneath its shading canopy on movable wood-and-metal furniture designed by Vestre. The table and chairs were unusually sturdy pieces, specially built not to blow away in a storm. On this summer afternoon we shared the shade with a surprising number of parkgoers despite the 94-degree weather and the tropical storm heading toward the city. I had first experienced this structure months before, on a beautiful spring day, watching octogenarian soul legend Irma Thomas belt out a set beneath the structure’s overhang at a

free music festival. I caught the concert from the bandstand’s great lawn, which Hargreaves Jones graded on a subtle angle to afford concertgoers in the back a decent view of the stage.

Past this festival lawn is what Rodriguez called the “kid zone”—a playground dotted with oversize bayou critters set on springy safety turf. “They’re not straight off the shelf,” Jones told me of the climbable menagerie of frogs, fish, and alligators that had been commissioned from Kompan, a U.S.-based playground equipment fabricator. Beyond the playground, the park continues with a relaxation lawn set up with posts where visitors who bring their own hammocks can attach them. Then the green space terminates at another redeveloped warehouse, whose park-facing wall has been clad to match the facade of the Front Porch. Crucially, a concrete path continues along the riverfront connecting the green space to the next park.

During our interview, Jones emphasized what is most unusual about this project: “You’re over a river.” The old plastics warehouse sat upon a wharf that straddled the levy and the river; it was supported by concrete piers that extended several feet out into the Mississippi.

The new park still sits on them. Today, every inch of the third-of-a-mile riverfront section of the park is set with benches, some of which have shading structures above. From this vantage point people can look out over the river and

43

gaze at New Orleans’s downtown. Because the Crescent City is indeed crescent-shaped, viewers are oriented directly toward the buildings of the Central Business District even though they are downriver from them.

Easily accessible by foot, streetcar, bicycle, and car (a taxi/rideshare drop-off area has been cleverly carved out from an old warehouse loading dock), the park has experienced a popularity that has exceeded initial projections. The reconnected riverfront is popular with joggers, cyclists, and saunterers alike.

The designers seem to have learned by doing, since the previously built Crescent Park, another EskewDumezRipple and Hargreaves Jones collaboration, is harder to access. Heavily used railway tracks cut that park off from the city, and two of its three main access points are staircases. One is equipped with an elevator, but every time I’ve taken it, it has smelled of urine. Rodriguez told me I was lucky to even find it working at all. “Everyone steals the copper,” he lamented. Another access point to that park is the “Rusty Rainbow,” a sculpturally striking but urbanistically impractical structure designed by Adjaye Associates that is so arduous to cross that my friend recently trained on it to hike the Alps.

New Orleans is a place slow to embrace change, and a quarter of the way through the 21st century, there is nothing revolutionary about a city converting a declining industrial waterfront

Outdoor Spaces

TIM HURSLE Y

TIM HURSLE Y

TIM HURSLE Y

TIM HURSLE Y

into a successful recreational one. But the new Goldring Woldenberg Park is a particularly thoughtful and elegant take on this—and a crucial one for New Orleans. It is the missing link the city has needed for decades.

DESIGN ARCHITECT: EskewDumezRipple

Daniel Brook is the author of several books on urban history, including A History of Future Cities and The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin. His writing on architecture and urbanism has appeared in publications including Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Architectural Record.

LIGHTING DESIGN: HLB Lighting Design

ARCHITECT OF RECORD: EskewDumezRipple LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Hargreaves Jones

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING: Morphy, Makofsky ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: Salas O’Brien CIVIL ENGINEERING: Morphy, Makofsky AV/ACOUSTICS: Salas O’Brien

SIGNAGE/WAYFINDING: RSM Design

GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Broadmoor

CLIENT REPRESENTATIVE: Audubon Nature Institute CLADDING: Morin, Zinsel Glass

WINDOWS: Wojan Fixed Window ROOFING: Holcim, Morin WATERPROOFING: Henry

INSULATION: Johns Manville

LIGHTING: Landscape Forms, BK Lighting FURNITURE: Landscape Forms, Vestre TREES: Mullin Landscape

PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT: Kompan

Facing page: The NOLA Front Porch repurposed an existing warehouse, removing lower walls and cladding the building in a metal mesh.

Top left: The opening of the 6-acre park connected existing greenspaces to provide 2 miles of uninterrupted public access to the New Orleans waterfront.

Top right: Misters that are located beside landscaped mounds offer cooling relief from New Orleans’s warm climate.

Above left: The park, which is built on piers, extends over the Mississippi River.

Above right: The playground’s climbable animals were designed by Kompan.

44

Outdoor Spaces

Lighting From solar-powered luminaires to crashresistance options, innovation informs the latest in outdoor lighting solutions. KP

Stretto | Cyclone Lighting cyclonelighting.com Stretto is a sleek, linear outdoor luminaire designed for contemporary urban environments; it features more than 14 distribution types as well as directional optic flexibility.

Dots Glass | Vibia vibia.com

Bellevue Slim | Luminis luminis.com

Dots Glass generates a warm, 360-degree glow with a pulsating, ambient effect, ideal for transitional or walkway lighting.

Sharply rectilinear, Bellevue Slim is a family of lights and pole mounts where solutions can be tailored through compositionally flexible heads, all in refined forms.

ALL IMAGES COURTESY THE RESPECTIVE MANUFACTURERS

CELESTIA | Staria Technologies stariatechnologies.com

FOLLOW | Fonroche Lighting America fonrochesolarlighting.com

This solar-powered bollard ensures light for every night of the year. It’s equipped with an astronomical clock that automatically adjusts the light schedule to each season and anticipates weather conditions.

This solar-powered lighting, which does not require any trenching, cabling, or external power, can illuminate parking lots, plazas, and public gathering spaces with a light, minimalist form.

45

Outdoor Spaces

ORDX5 Open Rated Exterior Downlight | Amerlux amerlux.com

Colorscaping Deck and Patio Fixtures | WAC Group wacgroup.com

The Amerlux ORDX5 is a sealed downlight intended for open or uncovered canopies with direct exposure to the elements. It’s available with 1,400 lumens, and it can be configured with a choice of beam spreads.

This smart lighting-control system enables white and full-color-spectrum technologies; each fixture can be controlled individually for maximum customization.

Streetleaf BLVD | Streetleaf streetleaf.com

Dyna Drum Gen 3 | Acclaim Lighting acclaimlighting.com

Streetleaf BLVD is a solar-powered streetlight built for collector roads, two-lane streets, parks, and parking lots where higher output and broader coverage are needed.

The expanded Dyna Drum Gen 3 family delivers dramatically increased output, advanced modular electronics, and enhanced durability.

B17 | RAB Lighting rablighting.com

AE275-K4-900 | Ontario Bollards ontariobollards.com With 25 LEDs, this crash-rated, automatically retractable bollard features an integrated electromechanical operator that can stop an almost 15,000 pound truck traveling at 30 miles per hour.

This bollard offers fieldadjustable light and a 50,000hour LED lifespan in a slim form, topped with a conical tip.

46

Outdoor Spaces

Back to the Land Surfacedesign and Aidlin Darling Design’s renovation of Robert Mondavi Winery’s vineyard campus blurs the boundaries between landscape and architecture.

MARION BRENNER

When guests arrive at the Robert Mondavi W i n e r y i n C a l i fo r n i a’s N a p a Va l l e y, t h e y are greeted first by wildflowers. Thanks to S a n F ra n c i s c o – b a s e d l a n d s c a p e s t u d i o Surfacedesign, which recently overhauled the historic estate in collaboration with architecture firm Aidlin Darling Design and interiors studio BAMO, banks of California poppy, scabiosa burgundy beau, and yarrow blooms streak across the new gravel parking lot. Wine tasters can follow the flora along meandering pathways to the winery’s restored 1966 entrance: a monumental gabled arch and weather vane–topped bell tower. Designed in the Spanish Ranch style by late Southern California architect Cliff May, these landmarks have become symbols of the premier wine region, which rose to prominence in the 1970s after a group of visionary winemakers tapped Napa Valley’s rich agricultural soil for the production of world-class grapes.

Despite stacked odds, this group gained the wine world’s respect after it beat out top French wines in a blind tasting dubbed the “Judgment of Paris.” One of the innovators who helped build the region’s reputation was Robert Mondavi.

Mondavi had the To Kalon vineyard to his advantage. Its terroir (which includes a spectacular alluvial fan) plays host to historic vines, some of which were first established in 1945.

Acquired by Constellation Brands in 2004, Robert Mondavi Winery now owns 440 of the vineyard’s 825 total acres. It remains the highlight of the tasting room, cellar, and production facility Mondavi had built around it. “The vineyard was one of the most renowned in the world,” said Aidlin Darling Design cofounder David Darling, a San Francisco–based architect who originally hails from Sacramento, California.

Over time, however, “it lost its leverage. The genesis of this project was the need to turn the page.” To do so, the design team peeled back many ad hoc additions and brought architecture, landscape, and winemaking back into harmony.

Now, in every new—and historic—space on the nearly 94-acre property, nature is foregrounded.

The clay tile-roofed arch, which stands 14.5 feet tall, frames the volcanic Mayacamas Mountains and invites visitors to choose their own path across the winery grounds. Surfacedesign carefully devised the campus topography so both intimate and wide views of the mountains

47 and the vineyards in front of them are on offer, depending on where one chooses to sit, stand, or sip. Granite outcroppings are integrated into the site and architecture, as if they were always there. A large, empty lawn has been replaced by seasonal, pollinator-friendly tapestries of grasses, flowers, and trees designed to colormatch the vines throughout the year. These gardens culminate in a paved amphitheater surrounded by oaks.

“The beginning and end of the architecture and the landscape in this project is extremely blurry,” said Surfacedesign cofounder Roderick Wyllie, who grew up visiting Napa, his father’s hometown, as a child in San Francisco. “In a kind of modernist tradition, there’s a fundamental openness.”

The most enclosed space is the reception area, which sits under an original May-designed roof and features an adobe plaster fireplace and walls, an ode to his midcentury style. Otherwise, the new south wing’s walls are glazed and operable—supported by blackened steel I-beams whose references lean toward international modernism—encouraging passive ventilation.

A covered courtyard and a few outdoor stairs separate the reception, with its tasting bar and retail space, from the main tasting and culinary rooms. The former features large, retractable glass doors, a butterflied ceiling built of oak staves from wine barrels, and bathrooms enclosed by rammed earth walls made of construction waste and local aggregate. The latter, where pizzas and other house-made snacks are prepared and served, sits adjacent to the kitchen’s edible garden. Both spaces are surrounded by sweeping vineyard vistas—the architecture team chose the elevation to hover visitors’ eyelines just above the vines. However, guests must go outside to move from one room to another, engaging constantly with the natural surroundings.

While Wyllie described the design as “a celebration of a California landscape,” that doesn’t mean every plant is native, or needs to be.

Informed by the region’s oak savanna habitat, drought-resistant flora is prioritized. Bee balm, California melic grass, hummingbird mint, and more build the hardy understory, while trees like eastern redbud, hornbeam, and cork make up the canopy. The landscape itself also acts as a bioswale, a subtle reminder that “the future of winemaking is dependent on responsible use of water,” emphasized Darling. Similarly, the south wing’s butterfly roof is not just a playful inverse of the original gabled building it links; it collects stormwater for reuse. Its water feature, a reclaimed concrete slab inlaid with an abstraction of the Napa River, doubles as a cistern.

Though hints about the project’s ecologyminded design are present, the designers avoid didacticism. “Fundamentally, it’s experimental and experiential,” said Wylie When the 215,844-square-foot project reopened in April after a three-year closure for renovation, the landscape was already thriving, thanks in part to scientist-led soil reclamation. “Some of what we’re doing is a shift in the aesthetics of sustainability,” realizing that the presence of “pests” like insects, birds, and animals signals a healthy ecosystem and, subsequently, better terroir for the vintages, adds the landscape architect.

For the winery, whose estate vineyard has been certified organic since 2023, the quality of its world-famous cabernet sauvignon is now more visible outside its own production and tasting facilities. “To rekindle the legacy of Robert Mondavi and his pioneering spirit, we didn’t have to create something over-the-top,” said Darling. “This project is more about the landscape than it is the buildings—and the proof is in the pudding.”

Elizabeth Fazzare is a New York–based editor and journalist who covers architecture, design, culture, and travel for publications including Architectural Digest, Dwell, and Interior Design. She was previously the senior architecture and design editor at Cultured and an editor at Architectural Digest.

Outdoor Spaces

MARION BRENNER

DESIGN ARCHITECT: Aidlin Darling Design

ARCHITECT OF RECORD: BAR Architects & Interiors LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: Surfacedesign FF&E: BAMO

STRUCTURAL & CIVIL ENGINEERING: Summit

Engineering

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING: TEP Engineering LIGHTING DESIGN:

Eric Johnson Associates

ENVIRONMENTAL GRAPHICS: Contagious

HISTORIC CONSULTANT: Architectural Resources

Group

GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Cello & Maudru

Construction

CLADDING: Richlite GLASS: Garibaldi

WINDOWS: Blomberg

DOORS: Blomberg, Portal DOOR HARDWARE: FSB

DOOR HARDWARE: Rocky Mountain Hardware ROOFING: Kynar, Duro-last

FIRE PROTECTION: Alpha Fire Suppression

Systems

TILE: Fireclay

FELT SCREENS: FilzFelt

CASEWORK AND CUSTOM MILLWORK:

Acosta & Sons

CUSTOM MILLWORK: Trinity Engineering

MARION BRENNER

WALL PANELS: Richlite

CUSTOM STONE BAR AND COUNTERTOPS: Davinci

Marble

CUSTOM STONE BAR AND COUNTERTOPS: Fox Marble RECLAIMED WOOD SOURCING: Arborica

LIGHT FIXTURES: Concreteworks and Boyd

Lighting

FLAGSTONE: American Soil & Stone

Facing page: The renovation involved updating the winery’s iconic entrance, which features a wind vane– topped bell tower.

Top: The new south wing features glazing that offers sweeping vineyard vistas.

Middle: The 94-acre property invites visitors to choose their own path.

Right: Seasonal pollinator-friendly grasses, flowers, and trees form a landscaped tapestry.

MARION BRENNER

48

Outdoor Spaces

Residential & Hospitality Furniture Quiet luxury and minimalism continue to rock residential and hospitality outdoor spaces.

These latest entries do so with an eye toward practicality and repose. KP Sensu | Extremis extremis.com

Horizon Swivel Lounge Chair | Tuuci tuuci.com

This collection highlights a floating shade that opens horizontally and has a variety of positions—a minimal form with maximal design opportunities.

The Horizon Swivel Lounge Chair brings 360-degree movement to the outdoors and is available with either classic or deep seating depths.

Ithaca Collection | Gloster gloster.com

MAGNA | iSiMAR isimar.es/en

Shore Outdoor Sofa | Poliform poliform.com

Created by Michele De Lucchi’s AMDL Circle, Ithaca honors the natural strength and beauty of solid teak and the mastery of Gloster’s craftspeople across seating types and coffee table.

Inspired by the Mediterranean Sea, MAGNA, designed by ILMIODESIGN, is defined by a generous seat, minimalist form, and serene presence.

Designed by Jean-Marie Massaud, Shore Outdoor Sofa incorporates a handwoven rope structure and curved, shelllike forms to evoke the movement of waves.

ALL IMAGES COURTESY THE RESPECTIVE MANUFACTURERS

Buoy Rocking Chair | ORCA orcaliving.com

UZ Deck Chair | YAAZ yaaz.com

ELIO | Tribù tribu.com

An assembly of simple, cantilevered forms made from cedar in Los Angeles, the Buoy Chair rocks with a comforting sweep of movement.

Designed by Angelettiruzza Design, the UZ Deck Chair is a foldable lounger crafted from solid teak with a clean, harmonious silhouette and a handwoven fabric seat.

Designed by Yabu Pushelberg, this collection is all about lounging, grounded with soft curves, low profiles, and modular possibilities.

50

Landscape Resources This listing combines outdoor companies and products featured in our coverage, case studies, product highlights, and awards.

CONSULTANTS 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 that specializes 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 that guides projects toward environmental sustainability for residential, commercial, and governmental sectors.

Brookwater brookwater.com An irrigation consulting and design specialist, Brookwater assists with water management for parks, transportation, and residential projects for a wide range of clients.

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 offers 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 and has 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.

Climate Positive Design climatepositivedesign.org

Regenerative Environmental Design redbeyondgreen.com

Climate Positive Design is a consultant that offers guidance in greenhouse gas reduction for the exterior built environment and supporting biodiversity in landscaping.

RED partners with project teams to protect healthy ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes, providing robust regenerative solutions.

DataBased+ databasedplus.com

RWDI rwdi.com

DataBased+ is an innovative building systems design firm offering sustainable planning services and climate analysis.

RWDI is a global consultancy with climate and environmental engineering services for landscaping projects.

Fluidity Design Consultants fluidity-design.com

Stanley Consultants stanleyconsultants.com

Fluidity features a multidisciplinary team of architects, designers, engineers, and technologists devoted to fountain and water design for many types of projects.

Stanley Consultants is a global consulting engineering firm rooted in sustainable and energy-efficient solutions for diverse markets.

Outdoor Spaces 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. It has 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, and it provides forestry consultant services.

OUTDOOR KITCHENS & BATHS

Novara novara.es Novara is an outdoor kitchen supply company with bespoke and customization capabilities.

Rbrohant rbrohant.com Rbrohant is a bathroom product manufacturer that designs premium outdoor baths and showers.

TOTO totousa.com 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.

Arhaus arhaus.com

QuadroDesign quadrodesign.it/en

Arhaus is a sustainably sourced furniture and decor company with outdoor kitchen and furniture lines.

QuadroDesign manufactures stainless steel faucets and accessories with essential and timeless design.

Belgard belgard.com

Outdoor Shower Company outdoorshowerco.com

Belgard is a California-based outdoor products company with a large outdoor kitchen collection.

Outdoor Shower Company offers outdoor showers and accessories that meet the needs of both residential and commercial customers.

BlueStar bluestarcooking.com Bluestar, a 140-year-old Pennsylvaniabased kitchen appliance company, offers design-forward products, including many in customizable colors.

Brown Jordan Outdoor Kitchens brownjordanoutdoorkitchens.com Brown Jordan Outdoor Kitchens makes powder-coated stainless steel outdoor kitchen cabinets designed for all weather.

Dacor dacor.com

OUTDOOR LIGHTING Acclaim Lighting acclaimlighting.com Acclaim Lighting transforms spaces with lighting solutions that enhance environments with sophistication and innovation.

Acuity Brands acuitybrands.com Acuity Brands provides a wide range of sustainable outdoor lighting solutions.

Dacor provides high-performing kitchen and refrigeration appliances for indoor and outdoor spaces.

Ambientec ambientec.co.jp

Danver danver.com

Ambientec is a Japanese lighting design brand that specializes in portable, rechargeable, waterproof LED lamps.

Danver is an outdoor stainless steel cabinet and kitchen manufacturer based in Connecticut.

AMEICO ameico.com

Fisher & Paykel fisherpaykel.com Fisher & Paykel is a luxury kitchen appliance company with a large product line of outdoor grills.

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.

51

Outdoor Spaces

Artemide artemide.com

Luminis luminis.com

WAC Group wacgroup.com

Carnegie Fabrics carnegiefabrics.com

Artemide is an illumination brand with products for architectural lightscapes in public and private outdoor spaces.

Luminis creates functional and modern luminaires for diverse applications.

As a leader in the lighting industry, WAC Group prioritizes innovation in automation and controls to deliver smart, sustainable, beautifully designed products.

Carnegie manufactures environmentally friendly textile, wallcovering, and acoustic solutions for outdoor applications.

B-K Lighting bklighting.com B-K Lighting provides high-quality sustainable lighting fixtures and power supplies for the outdoors.

Bover bover.es/us/en Bover designs products focusing on natural lighting and well-being, combining traditional craftsmanship with contemporary design.

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

Modern Forms modernforms.com Modern Forms offers outdoor luminaires, including 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 Lighting rbw.com RBW is a New York–based independent design and manufacturing company that focuses on sustainable energy in its exterior lighting line.

Selux selux.us Selux designs timeless lighting fixtures for exterior settings, with modular design allowing for smart functions.

Stickbulb stickbulb.com

Diabla is an avant-garde Spanish outdoor furniture company with a range of lamp products.

Stickbulb manufactures architectural and custom outdoor luminaires and repurposes salvaged pin oak from the NYC urban forest in its TREELINE collection.

ERCO erco.com

Tala talalighting.com

Erco is an international specialist in architectural lighting with LED technology.

Tala is a London-based company that creates low-carbon and design-forward sustainable exterior light fixtures.

Flos flos.com Flos is a European company that designs luxury 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.

CF Stinson cfstinson.com

Streetleaf streetleaf.com Streetleaf provides thoughtful, cost-effective solar-powered street lights for residential, commercial, and municipal applications.

Fonroche Lighting America fonrochesolarlighting.com Fonroche Lighting America delivers reliable solar lighting that performs in every environment.

OUTDOOR TEXTILES Bernhardt bernhardt.com Bernhardt offers a large catalog of highperformance 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 easyclean finish options.

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 that creates 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 that creates unique residential indoor and outdoor rugs, carpets, and accessories.

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.

RAB Lighting rablighting.com From floods to traditional wall-packs, RAB Lighting offers thoughtful lighting for all outdoor situations.

Ontario Bollards ontariobollards.com Ontario Bollards has more than 30 years of combined experience in providing products to the construction industry.

scapestudio.com

New York | New Orleans | San Francisco

52

Outdoor Spaces

Landscape Resources continued HBF Textiles hbftextiles.com

Duradek durakdek.com

Matter Surfaces mattersurfaces.com

Fiberon fiberoncladding.com

HBF Textiles provides a large inventory of textile products, including water-repellent and weatherproof textiles in multiple finishes, and a new line, Paint by Number by Liam Lee.

This 50-year-old company is a pioneer in the vinyl decking industry; it provides sheet vinyl waterproofing solutions for all sorts of decks and has a wide network of distributors and applicators.

Matter Surfaces offers commercially rated, slip-resistant matting and flooring solutions for high-traffic outdoor spaces that are engineered to withstand weather.

Fiberon offers eco-friendly composite decking and railing as well as composite cladding and rainscreen applications that completely protect and enhance building exteriors.

Millboard millboard.com

Trex trex.com

Italian company Florim offers porcelain stoneware surfaces for outdoor flooring and cladding.

Millboard is a composite deck and siding company with products made of oak that are built for enhanced durability and to ensure fire resistance.

Since 1996, Trex has perfected the composite deck, becoming the world’s largest manufacturer of wood-alternative decking products.

Gardenia Orchidea gardenia.it/en

Monocibec monocibec.it/en

MOSO moso-bamboo.com

Gardenia Orchidea is a tile manufacturer with ceramic flooring products for outdoor settings.

Italian stoneware company Monocibec provides quality ceramic flooring for outdoor settings.

MOSO Bamboo Products offer a natural alternative for flooring, decking, wall-covering, beams, boards, and worktops.

Glen-Gery glengery.com

Neolith neolith.com

Kronos USA kronos-usa.com

Glen-Gery is a manufacturer with a large collection of porcelain and brick pavers for architectural landscaping projects.

Neolith is a leading sintered stone surface manufacturer that features kitchen and bathroom products suited for the outdoors.

Based in Tennessee, Kronos USA provides contemporary, high-quality porcelain pavers.

Hanover Architectural Products hanoverpavers.com

Nicolock nicolock.com

Hanover Architectural Products presents a wide range of innovative pavers for diverse architectural outdoor spaces.

Nicolock manufactures retaining walls, pavers, and other concrete outdoor flooring products for residential projects.

Invisible Structures invisiblestructures.com

ORCA orcaliving.com

Invisible Structures provides glass and gravel porous paving solutions for sustainable landscaping.

ORCA is a landscape design firm that also offers a large collection of specialty pavers, tiles, and outdoor accessories.

Kebony kebony.com

Pioneer Landscape Centers pioneerco.com

Kebony is a modified-wood brand with an innovative, patented technology that enhances traditional timber, allowing it to take on characteristics of tropical hardwoods.

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.

Keystone Hardscapes keystonehardscapes.com

Shildan shildan.com

Keystone Hardscapes manufactures durable pavers and specialty permeable pavers that reduce water run-off.

Shildan provides UV- and frost-resistant terra­ cotta deck and pavers for commercial and educational facilities.

La Nova Tile lanovatile.com

Unilock commercial.unilock.com

La Nova Tile is a Texas-based slab and tile company that delivers contemporary tiling solutions from Spain and Italy to the Houston architecture and design industry.

Unilock is an architectural hardscape product manufacturer that offers pavers, slabs, and roof decking products for the outdoors.

Kravet kravet.com Kravet is a fabric, carpet, and wallcovering manufacturer dedicated to durability in outdoor living spaces.

Kvadrat kvadrat.dk/en Scandinavian textile brand Kvadrat offers quality contemporary textiles and textilerelated products for the outdoors.

Link Outdoor linkoutdoor.com Link Outdoor designs fabrics, trim, and rugs that are 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 momentumco.com Momentum 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.

PAVERS & DECKING ABC Stone abcworldwidestone.com ABC Stone is a stone company that offers paving in a variety of designs and composite materials.

Alaplana Ceramica nuevaalaplana.es Alaplana 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.

Florim florim.com

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.

Wausau wausautile.com Wausau Tile manufactures premier tile and architectural pavers that are available in a variety of textures and looks.

TileBar tilebar.com TileBar provides outdoor tiles and pavers made of durable materials with styles ranging from natural stone to porcelain and concretelook designs.

Cosentino cosentino.com Cosentino offers a wide portfolio of surfaces specially designed for outdoor floors and stairs, facade cladding, outdoor furniture creation, and even pools, available in multitude of colors, finishes, formats, and thicknesses.

Porcelanosa store.porcelanosa.com/us Porcelanosa is an international porcelain company for interiors, facades, and landcapes.

PLANT NURSERIES & SUPPLIERS Bailey Nurseries baileynurseries.com Bailey is a plant breeder and nursery that helps 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 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.

53

Outdoor Spaces

Intrinsic Perennial Gardens intrinsicperennialgardens.com

Berliner berliner-playequipment.com/us

Richter Spielgeräte richter-spielgeraete.de/en

Forms+Surfaces forms-surfaces.com

Intrinsic Perennial Gardens is a Midwest breeder of perennials and North American native plants.

Berliner is a 160-year-old international creative playground equipment company that manufactures play structures for educational, urban, and landscape settings.

Richter Spielgeräte designs and manufactures unique play spaces made of wood from sustainably managed forests.

Forms+Surfaces makes site-specific furniture for public outdoor space crafted with a range of durable materials.

Iseli Nursery iselinursery.com Iseli Nursery is a wholesale landscape plant grower that specializes in conifers, Japanese maples, and ornamental trees and shrubs.

Moss Greenhouses mossgreenhouses.com Moss Greenhouses is a fourth-generationrun bedding plant producer and wholesale distributor located in Idaho.

OMNI Ecosystems omniecosystems.com OMNI delivers complete soil ecosystems for green roofs and planters as well as other landscaping services.

Peat & Son peatnson.com Peat & Son Nursery in Westhampton, New York, carries a wide range of plants and hard goods for landscaping needs, with regional delivery available.

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 colorchoice.com Proven Winners Flowering Shrubs specializes in hydrangeas native to North America and distributes nationally.

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 that crafts 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.

Read Custom Soils readcustomsoils.com Read Custom Soils provides precision soil for a diverse range of landscaping projects in New England.

Landscape Structures playlsi.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 that ship nationally to landscapers and retail garden centers.

PLAY & RECREATION BCI Burke bciburke.com Burke designs and manufactures commercial playgrounds, outdoor fitness and recreation equipment, and accompanying site amenities.

Amop grupoamop.com 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.

Botton Gardiner bottongardiner.com Designed in Australia and built in the U.S., botton+gardiner’s public space furniture is built to last, making it a perfect choice for durable, design-oriented public spaces.

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 public outdoor locations.

Maglin Site Furniture maglin.com Maglin Site Furniture is a public and contract furniture company offering furnishings with customizable, UV-resistant finishes.

Durbanis durbanis.com Durbanis creates contemporary street and outdoor furniture for public spaces, with products made of recycled and recyclable materials.

Kompan kompan.com Kompan manufactures commercial playground equipment and outdoor fitness solutions, offering colorful playgrounds made of 95-percent-recycled material.

Soil Retention soilretention.com

PUBLIC & CONTRACT FURNITURE

Landscape Structures is a commercial play manufacturer with an extensive catalogue of play equipment for residential, educational, and commercial clients.

Lappset lappset.com Lappset is a Finnish playground and outdoor fitness fabricator that offers 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 and has a wide selection of products, programs, and services.

made in usa

54

Outdoor Spaces

Landscape Resources continued MDT-Tex mdt-tex.com

Victor Stanley victorstanley.com

Emeco emeco.net

Poliform poliform.it/us

MDT-Tex creates individual, large-scale designer weather and sun protection systems for public spaces.

Victor Stanley engineers and manufactures standard site furnishings for public spaces, distributed across North America and Canada.

Emco is a chair designer and manufacturer that creates timeless outdoor seating crafted from recycled materials and sustainable resources.

Poliform is an international furniture company crafting modern appliances for residential exteriors, including seating and dining furniture, textiles, and outdoor kitchens.

Extremis extremis.com

Room & Board roomandboard.com

Belgian-based furniture company Extremis designs a wide variety of sleek contract furniture.

The modern and contemporary furniture retailer features a diverse range of outdoor kitchen furniture.

Fermob fermob.com

Talenti Outdoor Living talentispa.com

Barlow Tyrie teak.com

Fermob is a French furniture company designing colorful and creative outdoor lighting and furnishings for garden and poolside spaces.

Talenti is a recognized Italian outdoor furniture company that designs kitchens for commercial and residential projects.

Barlow Tyrie produces practical and contemporary outdoor furniture crafted with British teakwood, steel, and aluminum materials.

Fritz Hansen fritzhansen.com

Blu Dot bludot.com

Danish company Fritz Hansen creates contemporary outdoor furniture made of certified wood and durable materials.

Miramondo miramondo.com Miramondo designs unique contract furnishing lines in various styles and materials, with calculated CO2 values for ease in sustainability evaluation.

Mizetto mizetto.se/en Mizetto is a Scandinavian furniture company with an outdoor site furniture collection that includes modular planting systems and dining fixtures fit for parks and schoolyards. mmcité mmcite.com/us Mmcité creates quality furniture for urban public areas and has 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 it offers a variety of concrete color and texture combinations for unique public spaces.

Sandler sandlerseating.com Sandler combines quality craftsmanship with innovative European designs to make furniture that is both functional and stylish for hospitality and corporate 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.

RESIDENTIAL & HOSPITALITY FURNITURE Andreu World andreuworld.com Andreu World is a seating and table furniture company creating high-end outdoor furnishings for residential and hospitality settings.

Blu Dot is a Minneapolis-based furniture designer that produces modern outdoor seating, tables, and decor for residential patios and decks.

GANDIABLASCO gandiablasco.com

Trueform Concrete trueformconcrete.com Trueform manufactures prefabricated and custom concrete tables, benches, and mantels for the outdoors.

Tribu tribu.com

GANDIABLASCO manufactures bohemian outdoor furniture that’s available through retail stores and online.

Tribù’s collections celebrate refined outdoor living. Natural materials, soft textures, and timeless design bring elegance and ease to an outdoor retreat.

Gloster gloster.com

Tuuci tuuci.com

Carl Hansen & Son carlhansen.com

Gloster is a global leader in high-end teak outdoor furniture that features cutting-edge design for residential, commercial, and hospitality spaces.

Tuuci designs outdoor lifestyle furnishing and shade products for exterior commercial, hospitality, and residential environments.

Carl Hansen & Son is a Danish company crafting outdoor furniture for daily life and maintaining traditional Scandinavian design.

iSiMAR isimar.es/en

Cassina cassina.com

IsiMar offers a collection of outdoor furniture made of metal that meets all the requirements needed to complete an outdoor space.

Vaarnii is a furniture company that designs objects from Finnish pine; its outdoor collection features sophisticated wooden seating and dining tables.

Kettal kettal.com

Vondom vondom.com

Kettal Contract has a wide range of commercial-grade outdoor furniture solutions for hospitality, corporate, and public spaces.

Vondom is an avant-garde indoor and outdoor furniture company that partners with designers to create unique pieces for hospitality, workplace, and residential spaces.

Bosquet bosquet.us Bosquet builds unique and durable outdoor furnishings from sustainably sourced North American wood.

Italian outdoor furniture company Cassina possesses a vast product range to satisfy a broad spectrum of styles for residential and hospitality settings.

Dedon dedon.de Dedon crafts contract furniture for diverse environmental settings, with specialties in beach and dining furniture. 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.

Vestre vestre.com/us

Division Twelve division12.com

Vestre crafts sustainable public furniture with a lifetime anti-rust warranty. It offers customizable accessories like LED lighting and game surfaces.

Divisions Twelve’s outdoor furniture collection includes colorful, durable chairs made of weatherproof bent metal.

Knoll knoll.com Knoll creates sculptural furnishing for residential exteriors, with both midcentury modern and contemporary collections that are 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.

Vaarnii vaarnii.com

YAAZ yaaz.com YAAZ offers elegant furniture that transforms outdoor living spaces, ushering in warmer seasons.

SPECIALITY Anova anovafurnishings.com Anova creates outdoor contract furniture installations made of recycled materials to help customers achieve their goals in sustainability and LEED certification.

55

Outdoor Spaces

ArborStakes arborstakes.com

Greenspoke gogreenspoke.com

Olev olevlight.com

Thermory thermoryusa.com

ArborStakes crafts elegant below-ground tree stake solutions constructed from U.S. sourced wood and equipped with locks made of plantbased resin.

Greenspoke designs and fabricates bike parking and bike repair stations for parks and communities, as well as outdoor bike storage rooms for residential projects.

Olev is an Italian lamp designer that uses smart LED lighting systems in its indoor and outdoor lighting products.

Thermory’s decking, cladding, porch flooring, and sauna systems are distributed to landscapers across the U.S.

Delta Fountains deltafountains.com

ICON Shelter Systems iconshelters.com

Ortal ortalheat.com

Timberlab timberlab.com

Delta Fountains partners with clients to design, manufacture, and install outdoor water feature displays across the U.S.

ICON Shelter Systems manufactures industry-

Ortal designs and builds contemporary frameless gas fireplaces for residential interiors and exteriors, as well as traditional outdoor fireplaces.

Timberlab constructs and designs environmentally conscious mass timber projects for the U.S. commercial market.

Fancy Fence East fancyfenceeast.com Fancy Fence East provides standard and custom gate configurations made with an exclusive, patented system, and it works with installation partners to offer gates for design and security.

Firmitas firmitas-structural.com Firmitas is a full-service design and consulting firm with structural engineering services for landscaping needs.

Fountain People fountainpeople.com Fountain People provides clients with highquality equipment and design services for water features in outdoor commercial,

standard shelters, gazebos, and transit/bus shelters for outdoor 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 and works with both public and private clientele.

Magnuson Group magnusongroup.com

recreational, and residential settings.

Magnuson Group manufactures contract furniture for commercial facilities, with an extensive collection of outdoor accessories and furniture in its product line.

Global Drain Technologies globaldraintech.com

Most Dependable Fountains mostdependable.com

Global Drain Technologies is a manufacturer of drainage system products and drainage solutions for the outdoors to effectively manage water run-off.

Most Dependable Fountains is a contract and public furniture manufacturer specializing in outdoor drinking fountains and bottle fillers.

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.

Watertronics watertronics.com Watertronics develops landscape and agricultural water pumping systems and maintains a comprehensive line of pumping solutions for golf courses, commercial landscaping, and municipal applications.

Weltevree weltevree.eu Weltevree is a Dutch design brand that manufactures 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.

56 Marketplace

The Architect’s Newspaper

Airport by Jeff Goldberg/Esto Skyscraper by David Sundberg/Esto Library by Lara Swimmer/Esto University by Albert Vecerka/Esto Home by Michael Vahrenwald/Esto Factory by Christopher Payne/Esto Landscape by Sahar Coston-Hardy/Esto Established 1939 by Ezra Stoller/Esto Esto.com

FINE ART PRINT PUBLISHERS 37-18 Northern Blvd Suite LL009 Long Island City, NY 11101 718-786-5553 info@vandeb.com www.vandeb.com

RICHARD PASQUARELLI

Vexation 3. Pos I. Aquatint. Plate: 14.5 x 14" Paper: 22 x 21"

POWE RE D BY

ADVERTISING INDEX

Request information and learn more about our partners, products, and services through AN Library

COMPANY

PAGE

3A Composites 3acomposites.com .......................................................... 13 Aluflam North America aluflam-usa.com .................................................9 BŌK Modern bokmodern.com ..................................................................... 18 Florim USA usa.florim.com .................................................................39 & 53 Hanover Architectural hanoverpavers.com.......................................... 33 Kingspan IP kingspan.com ..............................................................................2 Landscape Forms landscapeforms.com ..............................Back Cover Maglin Site Furniture maglin.com ............................................................30 mmcité mmcite.com/us ..................................................................................67 Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope obe.com ......................................................3 SCAPE scapestudio.com ................................................................................ 51 Schweiss Doors bifold.com ......................................................................... 56 Tournesol Siteworks tournesol.com .........................................................37 Vitrocsa USA vitrocsa.com ...................................................................5 & 56

library.archpaper.com

Presented by

The 14th Annual

BEST OF DESIGN AWARDS

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.

Submissions open through Friday, September 18, 2026 Enter today at: archpaperawards.com/design26/

58 Marketplace

The Architect’s Newspaper

2026 Sponsors. Photo by Chrissi Hernandez.

Palm Springs, California

October 15-18, 2026 Tickets on Sale

February 11-21, 2027 Tickets on Sale November 1

Tickets and Information at modernismweek.com Civic Presenting Sponsor

Civic Sponsors

OCTOBER 29-31 EXPERIENCE WHAT’S NEXT... NOW IN DESIGN + FURNISHINGS 150 Exhibiting Brands | Panel Talks | IIDA Awards | Rebuilding L.A. Zone | Opening Night Party

COMPLIMENTARY TRADE REGISTRATION AT

WESTEDGEDESIGNFAIR.COM

NOVEMBER 8-9, 2026 JAVITS CENTER, NYC

DESIGNED TO BE REMEMBERED

Every finish, fixture, texture, and decision helps shape the experience they carry with them.

The next unforgettable stay begins at BDNY.

AN readers: Enjoy a free expo pass with code ARCHNEW100 *Offer not valid for non-exhibiting manufacturers or manufacturer representatives

bdny.com

61 Happenings Exhibitions

September/October 2026

Lee Benson Latin American Collection at University of Texas at Austin comprise a show that displays the aesthetic significance of monasteries built in central Mexico.

By Josh Ilano

Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1000 5th Avenue New York, New York 10028

October 22, 2026–February 7, 2027 Spanning from the 1890s through the 1920s, this show highlights the prolific output of Louis C. Tiffany, whose impact has long permeated the zeitgeist of American decorative arts. Drawings and artworks from Tiffany’s studio that were thought either lost or altered have been rediscovered and are on view. The show displays works from stained-glass windows to interiors of private homes during the Gilded Age.

Walker Design Triennial: Beyond Materialism COURTESY BARNES FOUNDATION

The Barnes Foundation's Noguchi to Asawa exhibition showcases works from Asian American sculptors and designers.

Stools

Georgia O’Keefe: Architecture

A83 83 Grand Street New York, New York 10013

Detroit Institute of the Arts 5200 Woodward Avenue Detroit, Michigan 48202

Opens September 25

September 11, 2026–January 3, 2027

Barkow Leibinger and PIN-UP magazine present a collection of around 30 stools by New York designers. The show was first staged in Berlin, with the intent of pushing the boundaries of what the archetypal seat can be. The stools span from functional to abstract, experimental to ornate.

Georgia O’Keefe is best known for her floral paintings, but in this exhibition the Detroit Institute of the Arts explores her preoccupation with the built environment. In more than 30 paintings from 1920 to 1960, O’Keefe experiments with the geometry and contours of subjects from countryside barns to the skyline of New York City.

Haegue Yang: Through Dia Beacon 3 Beekman Street Beacon, New York 12508

Opens October 10 Haegue Yang is a South Korean artist who explores familiar household objects and reconfigures them in ways that allow her audience to engage with them with new perspectives. This show installs a chorus of venetian blinds. The installation investigates the fluidity and geometry of these objects, playing with direction and light.

Ocatilla: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Desert Masterpiece Chandler Museum 300 South Chandler Village Drive Chandler, Arizona 85226

Opens October 27 In 1929, Frank Lloyd Wright constructed Ocatilla, an experimental camp in the Arizona desert. The Organic Architecture and Design Archives have constructed a show that collects archival materials, original objects, and a full-scale reconstruction of Wright’s Ocatilla office cabin for visitors to experience.

American Remediation Canadian Center of Architecture 1920, rue Baile Montreal, Quebec H3H 2S6

October 1, 2026–January 3, 2027 The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration preserves and molds the history of American expansion. Through documentation of U.S.-funded initiatives, this exhibit displays the archive of American agitprop through interactive reel-film showings and familiar technological interfaces.

Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America Barnes Foundation 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19130

September 20, 2026–January 10, 2027 Isamu Noguchi, George Nakashima, Leo Amino, S. Neil Fujita, Kay Sekimachi, artist Ruth Asawa were Asian American sculptors and designers who were affected by the dislocation of the U.S. Japanese- American incarceration program during WWII. This exhibition reconsiders their works against the backdrop of their hardship and their impact on today’s cultural landscape.

Shelter from the Storm: An Artist’s Eye with Stan Allen and Polly Apfelbaum National Academy of Design 519 West 26th Street, 2nd floor New York, New York 10001

September 17, 2026–January 16, 2027 The Artist’s Eye exhibition series has, since 1992, invited a member of the National Academy to curate an exhibition pulling from the academy’s collection. Architect Stan Allen and visual artist Polly Apfelbaum collaborate on a show that grounds itself in spatial politics and abstraction, respectively.

Shadows on Stone: Portraits of Colonial Mexican Architecture Blanton Museum of Art 200 East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Austin, Texas 78712

October 10, 2026–February 14, 2027 Architectural historian John McAndrew’s photographic archive and materials from the Nettie

Walker Art Center 725 Vineland Place Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403

October 17, 2026–February 14, 2027 The Walker Art Center’s new Design Triennial series examines how design shifts culture. Titled Beyond Materialism, the exhibition brings together 26 designers from around the world to engage with how contemporary design engages with societal challenges and opportunities.

Dark Matter U: Justice, Pedagogy, Design Center for Architecture 536 LaGuardia Place New York, New York 10012

October 1, 2026–March 27, 2027 Since its founding in the wake of the Black Lives movement in 2020, Dark Matter U (DMU) has been an antiracist model of education that seeks to transform and critique the systems of design and its practices. This exhibition curates three dimensions of its counterinstitutional framework that encapsulate DMU’s commitment to an equitably designed future.

Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial Smithsonian American Art Museum G and 8th Streets Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20004

September 18, 2026–April 18, 2027 For decades, the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) funded photographic grants to document the American landscape, from the heartland of Kansas to New York City. The Smithsonian showcases the photos in a new survey exhibition.

Events

ASLA 2026 Conference on Landscape Architecture The Los Angeles Convention Center 1201 South Figueroa Street Los Angeles, California 90015

September 16–18 The ASLA conference is one of the largest annual landscape architecture gatherings. The conference offers sessions, professional development, and networking opportunities for the industry’s newest developments in landscape architecture.

The Armory Show

Javits Center 429 11th Avenue New York, New York 10001

September 24–27 Since 1994, the Armory Show has provided New York City’s leading public symposium on art with engaging public installations. This event includes thought leaders and art professionals guiding attendees through the fall art season’s landscape.

Shaping Contemporary Realities: Architecture and Beyond Multiple locations in Chicago, Illinois

September 24–26 More than 35 architects, urban planners, philosophers, artists, and others convene in Chicago to embark on a multivenue exploration of the contemporary built environment. The event is meant to foster lively exchange and bridge the gap between critical meeting points in architecture and beyond.

Art in Odd Places 2026: UTOPIAS 14th Street New York, New York

September 26–27 For several decades, the grassroots project Art in Odd Places brought exhibitions and performances to unexpected public spaces. This year’s theme, UTOPIAS, will transform New York’s 14th Street with outdoor exhibitions.

Atlanta Design Festival Multiple locations in Atlanta, Georgia

September 26–October 4 Between spheres of design, architecture, technology, and advertising, professionals can engage with the creative communities of Atlanta.

The weeklong event hosts installations, exhibitions, and film screenings and cements Atlanta as a global powerhouse in design innovation.

Desert Design Week Multiple locations in Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona

October 6–11 Set in the Sonoran Desert across Phoenix and Scottsdale, this event brings together design professionals from across the Southwest.

Designers and architects meet attendees at curated exhibitions, talks, and tours that spotlight emerging talent and established voices.

METALCON Orange County Convention Center 9899 International Drive Orlando, Florida 32819

October 7–9 Since 1991, MetalCon has been the leading annual event dedicated to the application of metal in design and construction. The event partners with industry leaders and AEC professionals in exploring the newest technologies in metal fabrication and forming lasting partnerships among peers.

Archtober Multiple locations in New York, New York

October 1–31 Archtober 2026 takes over New York City, partnering with cultural institutions to stage architecture and design talks, tours, and programs across all five of the city’s boroughs.

Check archpaper.com/calendar for updated listings and other exhibitions and events.

62 Q&A Architecture’s Kinships How can architecture participate in building systems of interdependency and coexistence?

Architecture’s Kinships, a new book edited by Ignacio G. Galán and published by Actar, is a collection of writing on human and more-than-human alliances in architecture that offer an unprecedented understanding of togetherness. With contributions by architects, designers, theorists, and scholars, the book is a societal and environmental assemblage that reflects on architecture and its various forms of individual and collective practices as a means of reworlding.

Valerio Franzone: The subheading of Architecture’s Kinships states that the book is a reflection on “projects and programs towards an architecture of interdependencies and coexistence.”

What is the impetus behind such critical reading in this historical moment?

Ignacio G. Galán: The book invites us to stop thinking of architecture as a container and a representation of existing social relationships and to consider it instead as a medium to shape them. Architecture connects people, institutions, technologies, materials, and environments. Built structures are entangled with the social, cultural, and ecological processes within which they perform and gain meaning. And they result from design processes involving collaborations, negotiations, and conflicts that bring together individual and collective decisions and different forms of expertise. The book foregrounds all these interconnections, while acknowledging that architecture also reinforces social boundaries and hierarchies and severs ecosystemic interdependencies—something our field is increasingly sophisticated at recognizing. The book asks how architecture can repair as much as it breaks and provides a platform for discussing how architecture is involved in negotiations of kinship. In a moment marked by polarization, ecological crisis, and extractive forms of development, I’m interested in whether architecture can contribute to nurturing alternative forms of relationality grounded in interdependence, hospitality, and coexistence and what I call “motley associations.”

MODEL AND PHOTO BY PABLO SAIZ DEL RIO AND VIVIAN ROTIE

Your use of the term “kinship” encompasses societal systems that extend beyond the traditional and exclusive forms of care within the patriarchal family. The book subverts the term’s established definition to break down crystallized gender, racial, social, and economic boundaries that still shape societal statuses.

Usually, kinship refers to relationships grounded in family and ancestry. It has helped define discriminatory forms of care and belonging and naturalize the heteropatriarchal

The Architect’s Newspaper

family and the nation as homeland as exclusionary communities. Architecture has played an important role in giving form to those constructs. But kinship has also been reclaimed by feminist, queer, disability, Black, Indigenous, and migration scholars and activists to describe relationships of mutual aid, allyship, and shared vulnerability that are built rather than inherited. So, the book asks: “Can architecture support spaces of gathering across difference?”

Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco’s contribution, for example, examines a residence for sex workers in Mexico City that constructs a deliberately flexible and messy form of collective support outside the heteropatriarchal family structure. And the project Beyond-the-Family-Kin, which I designed with OZAETA-FIDALGO, explores how architecture contributes to sustaining intergenerational forms of care beyond the nuclear family to support its aging occupants.

You address more-than-human realms, hijacking the word’s meaning again. But there’s no separation because the human and more-than-human realms are deeply intertwined, also in defining new forms of kinship. Thus, you quote Ivan L. Munuera: “HIV was the biological agent that allowed kinship to form among its carriers, acting as both kin and the apparatus by which kin was created,” presenting the deeply political mix between the biological and the societal.

The book is in conversation with many voices who question the assumption that the social and the biological belong in separate worlds. I’m interested in how ecosystemic relationships are built, just as social and political coalitions are, since they are participatory infrastructures, technologies, laws, patterns of extraction, and forms of care. Conversely, our social lives are mediated by biological and material factors, which intervene in cultural and political constructions of community and identity. Ivan L. Munuera’s work is key for this analysis, as he argues that a virus might not only operate within biological realms but can also reorganize forms of solidarity and conviviality. And this is something that disability scholarship and activism have contributed to exploring, and the book brings such discussions, for example, in Kevin Gotkin’s discussion of coziness.

While we used to think of architecture as separating the inside from the outside, humans from nature, the book gathers contributions exploring it as an infrastructure of mediation. Marina Otero Verzier’s text, for example, considers architectures within which water provides the very materiality of conviviality. And Your Restroom Is a Battleground, which I developed with Munuera and Matilde Cassani for the 2021 Venice Biennale, examined the restroom as a node where bodies, regulations, technologies, and ecosystems intersect with cultural norms and politics.

How does kinship in the construction of the built environment oppose the current societal and environmental crises and the problematic political and economic neoliberal structures causing them?

Many of the ecological and social crises we face today can be considered to emerge when the relationships that sustain collective life are ignored or broken. To address them, architecture has to challenge rather narrow understandings of context that have been frequent in the field and become more attentive to the relationships projects establish or interrupt.

That’s why Andrés Jaque’s notion of “transscalarity” is so relevant, for it recognizes that architecture operates across multiple scales simultaneously. In the book, he argues that architectural details are never mere technical decisions but places where architecture’s compositional capacities become political.

Other contributions to the book address that question from different perspectives. David Gissen focuses precisely on the property line, often taken as a neutral definition of a building site, and develops a “disability critique of property,” which questions the connection between private property, individual autonomy, mobility, and bodily capacity. What he calls “disabled communalism” opens up alternative ways of thinking about collective life. These questions also inform Fragments of Disability Fictions, a project that I developed with Gissen and Architension’s Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro for the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The project asks how architecture operates across media and scales in building worlds in which different bodies and forms of dependence are understood as constitutive of collective life. If architecture is involved in negotiating relationships across bodies, institutions, ecologies, and infrastructures, then design can engage in articulating forms of coexistence.

You are a practicing architect, historian, educator, and curator, and I am always more interested in how different forms of practice equally inform architecture, rather than considering design as an independent and absolute practice. How do these intersections happen in your work, and what is the value of collaborations?

Contemporary challenges require both critical historical analysis and design speculation. I see the diverse media and spaces I engage with as interconnected ways of investigating architectural questions and intervening in the world. That approach informs the book, which brings together various modes of inquiry and production. Still, my goal is not to flatten their differences but to create a platform where they can enrich one another. Many contributions to the book operate across forms of analysis and speculation, while others take on architectural practice itself as their focus. For example, Emanuel Admassu’s figure of the “black cyborg architect” advances new forms of solidarity to build “a liberatory realm defined as transhuman.”

The book also foregrounds the relevance of collaborations and the understanding that architectural projects emerge through negotiations among different and contested forms of knowledge and expertise. Several projects in the book have been developed in that spirit, and Hashim Sarkis captures this in the epilogue when he appeals to “socializing authorship.”

Aging Against the Machine, for example, which I developed with Neeraj Bhatia and Karen Kubey, grew through conversations with historical local initiatives, community organizations, and environmental psychologists seeking to define a community-based approach to aging. Working in solidarity with different agendas and in dialogue with different actors is a way to make community not the result of a project but part of the design process.

IST VAN VIR AG/KUNSTDOK

Let’s reflect on the limits, potentialities, and roles of architecture.

What is its agency and that of architects?

One of architecture’s limits is thinking of buildings as isolated objects. But built structures are always connected to larger social, political, economic, technological, and ecological processes. Architecture can make these relationships visible, collectively contested, and transformed through design.

Acknowledging these wider interdependencies emphasizes architecture’s mediating capacities and foregrounds how it participates—whether architects want it or not—in the most relevant debates of our times. This acknowledgment defines both a space of agency as well as a realm of responsibility and accountability.

Ignacio, thank you for your contribution. This rich multiplicity of diverse approaches is very much needed in architecture.

Ignacio G. Galán [ igg—office for architecture ] is an architect, historian, curator, and assistant professor at Barnard College and Columbia University, focusing on the entanglements of architecture, politics, and the making of society. He won the AIA New Practices New York 2025.

Valerio Franzone is an architect. The director of OCHAP | Office for Cohabitation Processes, his work spans design and research projects, teaching, and publications on how architecture tackles the current societal and environmental urgencies through interdisciplinary and interpractice approaches.

Left: Detail from a model in Your Restroom is a Battleground, which was featured in the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Above: The New World Embassy: Rojava at the Oslo City Hall, by Studio Jonas Staal and the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava, November 2016.

63 Review

September/October 2026

Architects of Liberation: Modernism in West Africa MoMA Through January 2, 2027

RINALDO OLIVIERI. RINALDO OLIVIERI ARCHIVES, VERONA

In Act II of the long-running Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, a group of missionaries, uniformly white American men, declare, “Africans are African, but we are Africa!”

Both critics and cast members have argued that The Book of Mormon renders its African characters as line drawings, reserving the dignity of three dimensions for its white ones.

I don’t disagree. But in the show’s limited defense, it does purport to be a satire. A new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, however, centers the West in an underproblematized tale of African self-determination—without the same ameliorating irony.

Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa explores the role of architecture in western Africa’s transformation from a collection of colonies to an array of sovereign states. To this end, drawings, photographs, architectural models, and other paraphernalia have been sorted into seven thematic alcoves with pastel-colored walls and titles such as “Networks of Modernization” and “Landscapes of Education.” Each alcove orbits an epitomizing building, such as the Gare de Bessengué in Douala, Cameroon, or Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. And most feature a basswood model of that building, built by students and recent graduates of the Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and commissioned specifically for this exhibition. The exhibition also features four maroonhued interludes, each dedicated to an individual architect.

MoMA describes Architects of Liberation, organized by Martino Stierli and Ikem Stanley Okoye with Mallory Cohen, as the first major effort to explore modernism in the postcolonial, western African context. Visitors are greeted by jaunty West African music and another ambitious statement on firstness; the exhibition will emphasize “the first generation of professionally trained African-born architects.”

Despite this soundtracked promise of continental talent, an eye test (and a retrospective accounting of the exhibition checklist) tells a story of importation. The sum of the exhibition’s placards reveals that these revelatory contributions to Africa’s postcolonial architecture come from a cohort composed mostly of men from the Global North.

To be clear, MoMA is not responsible for the historic dearth of African architects. It’s not MoMA’s fault that modernism emerged as a multipurpose tool for unifying profoundly heterogeneous populations bound together by Berlin Conference–era borders. Nor that Ghana’s first architecture school was founded in 1957, the same year as Ghana itself.

These are just two good reasons, out of several, for these particular objects to have found themselves in the Robert B. Menschel Galleries.

But rather than use these 450-odd objects to tell a more equivocal story, the exhibition suggests a straightforward march toward decolonization. It skirts around the contradiction of newly independent nations having to turn toward the West—and often toward the very countries that colonized them—for the architects with whom to engineer an Africanized identity. It avoids naming the series of unfortunate colonial events that could allow the Frenchborn Armand Salomon to become the “de facto architect of the Cameroonian government.” It mentions the 80,000 Ghanaians who were displaced by the 1961–65 construction of the Akosombo Dam as a “great cost” of modernization but

stops short of platforming their perspectives on their own displacement or their place in the Ghanaian political project.

Instead, the full weight of western Africa’s ambivalent architectural condition makes itself known in obfuscated ways. The interlude for Cheikh Ngom describes him as one of “the very few” Senegalese architects to receive architectural commissions in the country—the wall text notes that French architects typically got preferential treatment over their Senegalese counterparts but doesn’t get into why that was.

And when African architects receive attention in this exhibition, their work, more so than their Western peers’, is accompanied by that purgatorial ambiguity called “unrealized.”

The sidelining of Africanization, as experienced by Africans, is made material by a section titled “Identities.”

The marquee structure of this portion of the exhibition is the Musée des Civilisations Noires, a pan-African museum originally commissioned by Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. A broad architectural drawing of the Musée’s first floor shows a series of circular pavilions, themselves circling a central courtyard. In the illustration, one might see an island universe, populated by all that Black people are and could be.

But Senghor’s dream went unrealized. And “Identities” is the only section that does not feature a custom basswood

miniature of its central building, though it does offer a speculative model of the Musée from the 1970s.

Honestly, the speculative model is more alive than the specially commissioned basswood that can be found elsewhere in the exhibition. For one, the mini Musée, empyrean, has been painted—bronze and various shades of green cut against the section’s taupe walls. And unlike the basswood models, which focus strictly on the buildings themselves, this model includes trees, tiny cars on tiny roads, and even tinier museum patrons.

But unlike the society-rending machinations of colonialism itself, what to display, and where, was well within MoMA’s control. To refrain from presenting an extant building in the section about African identity formation is to intimate that Africans don’t have much to say about themselves. A supposed mutism that’s belied by about 70 years of postcolonial thought and the eventual realization of an alternative Musée in 2018, designed by the Senegalese architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa.

The final piece of the exhibition is Kader Attia’s Indépendance Tchao. Standing in a black room is the artist’s reconstruction of Senegal’s Hotel Indépendance, using metallic boxes from the French colonial administration. The last word belongs to an African.

I can pick up what the Algerian French artist is putting down. Decolonization is messy, piecemeal, curvilinear. But the thesis that Attia posits is undercut by the strained sanguinity of all that came before.

If I could respond to sanguinity with optimism, then optimistically, the actual architects of Africa’s still-forthcoming liberation are designing new works at this very moment.

What are their names?

Ekemini Ekpo is a writer from the American and Nigerian souths. She mostly writes about arts, culture, and the built environment.

Above: Construction of La Pyramide in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which was designed by Italian architect Rinaldo Olivieri.

Below left: The exhibition is sorted into thematic alcoves that gather paraphernalia, drawings, photographs, and models.

Below right: Maroon-hued rooms were dedicated to specific African architects who contributed to the modernist movement.

Bottom left: Basswood models created by Cooper Union architecture students are featured throughout the exhibition.

Bottom right: Artifacts illustrate the architectural boom that occurred after independence movements swept the African continent.

MARTIN PARSEKIAN

MARTIN PARSEKIAN

MARTIN PARSEKIAN

MARTIN PARSEKIAN

64 Research Old Is New Again D’Arcy Jones explores the intelligence of historic ordinary buildings.

We are interested in ordinary buildings and forgotten ways of building. Much of the intelligence that developed around their construction developed slowly as people made do with what they had. Techniques were tweaked as they passed down through generations. What survives is not always a style or a recognizable architectural language, but rather what was the most practical method.

Buildings are records of this process. Joints, repairs, alterations, and additions preserve decisions about materials, labor, climate, and use. Many of these buildings changed continually, making adaptation and maintenance part of architecture rather than something that happened after the buildings were finished.

The research behind these observations grew out of doctoral experiments, expanded through Prix de Rome work in Switzerland and Norway, and continued during a visiting scholar appointment at Montana State University.

Models and essays from this study were recently exhibited as What Buildings Say at the university's School of Architecture. Each isolates a single building idea drawn from Switzerland, Norway, or Montana. Many were viewed at the Ballenberg Swiss Open-Air Museum in Hofstetten bei Brienz, Switzerland, and the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo.

These are nine of the things we found: 1 Dowels, Not Nails This building was a combined animal barn, hayloft, and residence. Its main framework was built with posts and beams, connected using wood dowels and notched joints. The lower walls of the farmhouse, easily maintained from the ground, were not enclosed with wood cladding. Instead, wood planks were slotted into grooves in the exposed posts and beams, becoming an integral part of the structure. If a piece of wood rotted, it could be replaced without a ladder.

At the upper levels, where framework repairs would have been more difficult, thin wood cladding was installed, draping the structure like a modern curtain wall or oversize fish scales. Each piece of cladding was attached to the building’s frame with two dowels. The dowels were intentionally set proud of the cladding boards to prevent moisture from entering their twin holes. Water rots the dowels, so bit by bit, the extra length is sacrificed to the rain, like a candle marking time. The bottoms of the boards were scalloped, adding a decorative detail that encourages water to drip off.

To us moderns, the farmhouse’s dowels and scallops seem both unfinished and overly ornate. However, these details create a balance that shows an economy of effort.

Like shoelaces or denim rivets, they evoke a sense of selfassurance and deftness in their quiet mastery of materials.

2 Tiny Roofs This building is the oldest in Ballenberg’s collection. Its design is surprisingly rational and relatable for a 690-year-old house, partly because the exterior corners were formed by stacking timbers, exactly like a modern Strickbau knitted construction. The building’s shell is further strengthened by notching the interior walls into the exterior ones. Timber protruding through the exterior walls subtly reveals the interior’s layout to anyone outside. These interior walls were not notched into the exterior walls at every timber layer, unlike the corners. Instead, builders used just three notches: one near the floor, one halfway up, and one near the ceiling. The reason for this is not known, but the system’s structural efficiency is logical and timeless.

The exposed timber ends of the protruding interior walls were prone to weathering, so they were typically curved or angled to prevent rain from pooling on top and causing decay. The farther the ends were from the overhanging roof,

the more they aged. Sometime before or after this building was carefully dismantled and reassembled at the museum, the most vulnerable timber ends near ground level had a piece of angled wood attached, each resembling a tiny roof.

This building’s use of wood caps to protect its timber ends adds no new material, allowing the repair to blend seamlessly with the original structure. When this tiny roof inevitably decays, a new one can be installed in minutes.

3 Wooden Stairs Every house with more than one story needs stairs, yet their ubiquity can make them invisible to most people. Modern architecture has given stairs a lot of attention. In a culture where nearly every aspect of construction is governed by zoning and building regulations, stairs remain one of the last blank canvases for expressing personality or status. Trends come and go, from the bravado of floating treads to the drama of frameless glass guards.

Even though contemporary construction might seem to have mastered the basics of stairs, it is eye-opening to realize that humans once built stairs better. Today, the typical stair starts with at least two stringers, usually cut from 2-inchby-12-inch lumber. Sawtooth notches are carved into the stringers for horizontal treads and vertical risers. However, these cuts weaken the stringer, making notch depth and spacing critical. It seems absurd to build modern stairs by cutting wood stringers almost to the point of failure.

Human anatomy has always shaped stair design. The natural motion of walking and the rounded profile of our heels make it comfortable for each step to overhang the one below, increasing a tread’s usable surface area. By keeping the stringers as solid, uncut sloping timbers, this design from 1780 avoids structural compromise. Integrating rise and run into cascading triangular forms strengthens the assembly through simplicity while poetically expressing the essence of a stair as a rhythmic stack of blocks.

4 Half-Round Roofing From a distance, this stacked-log cabin appears to have a corrugated metal roof. But upon closer inspection, it is revealed to be built entirely of wood.

Using whole logs for the walls and split logs for the roof, the cabin is rooted in its forest setting and blends with it.

A one-room building, it is the smallest examined in these chapters, yet it feels larger because of the roof’s expressive, primal craftsmanship.

The roof is a rustic variation on Norwegian wooden-plank roofing, where overlapping 1-inch-thick cut boards follow the slope, like board-and-batten wall cladding. Although staggered half logs may seem primitive, their innovation lies in adapting lessons from plank roofs with less effort.

Plank roofs were installed with the boards’ durable heartwood facing up, encouraging planks to cup into one another as they dry. This creates subtle concave valleys that direct rainwater down the slope before it can get under each cap board.

Split logs shaped with an axe do not curve as much as sawed planks because the wood fibers are separated along the natural grain. The extra wood of a log’s half circle resists the kind of cupping planks are prone to, ensuring a HalfRound Roof can remain tight and true over time.

The lessons of the half-round roof are both contradictory and visionary. The materials are handmade and preindustrial, yet the pine tar anticipated bituminous coatings—the petroleum-based compounds used on nearly every contemporary building’s roof.

5 Loft Post In rural Norway, raised storehouses or lofts were built to safeguard food, valuables, and unmarried women when the main farmhouse overflowed with seasonal workers. Over time, these buildings were raised on short, stumplike posts, lifting them above the ground to keep rodents out and stored food cool and dry. Eighteenthcentury Norwegians led simple lives and wasted nothing.

Archival photos of rural lofts in their original locations show that the raised space beneath them was used to air-dry lumber and store tools.

Houses and barns from the same era were not built on posts, which made the lofts stand out from other buildings on a farm. These structures indicated a farmer’s standing within the community.

The loft’s stump-post structure is an example of forgotten historic ingenuity. Rot from the moist ground is prevented by placing large interlocking beams on stones. Those corners are held tight by cutting slots into an enlarged post, so each stump base is like a tree’s root ball or an oversize eagle’s claw. The connections stay tight by tapering the beams and slots so that as the beams dry and shrink, gravity makes

The Architect’s Newspaper

the connections even stronger. No other cross-bracing was used, even in tall 2-story lofts. Surviving loft buildings have a visceral sense of strength without being overbuilt.

Since these storehouses were essential working parts of the farm, early Norwegian farmers likely considered them less like buildings and more like tools.

6 Stave Post Before the Black Death in the 1300s, between 1,300 and 2,000 stave churches were built in Norway. Even though they were made of wood, 28 still stand today because of the specific timber-harvesting techniques used by their builders. Live trees were topped and their limbs were removed, prompting the heartwood to produce extra resin in an attempt to heal. Two years later, they were cut down and turned into the posts and sills for the churches.

Stave construction uses vertical planks that fit into notches at posts and sills, unlike solid-log building, which stacks logs horizontally. For stave churches, the frame of beam-and-post bays had to be tightly joined to withstand wind and lateral forces. Beams under the floors were notched together like saddle-notched logs and set on rocks to prevent rot.

The rounded ends of this stave church’s corner posts resemble stone column bases from Ancient Greece, but historians believe they were inspired by the tall masts of Viking ships, whose ball-shaped bases made them easy to roll into place.

The design of these resin-rich spherical bases partly explains why stave churches last so long. Rainwater quickly drips to the ground without soaking into the wood, especially at the end grain and at beam connections. This functional roundness gives the buildings a smooth, effortless look, fitting for an architecture of the divine.

7 Square-Set Timbering In the 1800s, mine collapses were common and often deadly. Supports, if used at all, were usually just logs jammed in place. In 1860, in Virginia City, Nevada, German-born engineer Philip Deidesheimer developed square-set timbering. He got the idea from bees’ honeycombs. His system made mines safer, modular, and easy to extend.

Deidesheimer’s idea was a repeating pattern of equallength timbers. Vertical posts had horizontal beams on top, and side girts turned the whole thing into rigid cubes. These cubes could be assembled into a three-dimensional grid, adjustable to suit any underground space. Unlike wood cribbing, where overlapping, interlocking timbers are stacked, each timber in a square set was fitted precisely with custom mortise-and-tenon or half-lap joints.

The type of wood joint used depended on a mine’s rock and soil conditions. At the High Ore Mine in Montana, which was prone to collapse, the vertical posts touched at the three-way connections because wood is strongest when end grain abuts end grain. Dampness and groundwater caused the timber connections to swell and tighten, so no extra fasteners were needed.

The original square-set system stands out as a smart and elegant way to harness wood’s natural strengths—especially when geometry and joinery are done right.

8 Hog Trough Corner The hog trough corner is a distinctive way to build log structures, popular when the West was first settled. It got its name because it resembled livestock feeding troughs. Instead of complex, individually fitted joinery like dovetails or saddle-notches, this method involved simply nailing together a pair of vertical 2-inchby-8-inch boards to form an L-shaped corner. Logs were cut to length and nailed directly onto these corners, making it quicker and easier for untrained carpenters to put up a basic structure.

This approach had its downsides. The corners weren’t as strong or solid as those made with traditional log-building methods. The slender L-shaped corner couldn’t support as much weight, especially under heavy snow loads, which thus had to be carried down to the foundation. Nails driven into the ends of the logs sometimes loosen over time, causing the corners to settle or warp from wind, moisture, and sun.

The hog trough detail reflects the economic realities of Montana in the late 19th century. Light wood framing was becoming more common as mills supplied the resulting building boom. However, milled lumber remained costly and difficult to transport, whereas nearby trees could be sourced at lower cost or even gathered for free. The hog trough bridged traditional log construction and newer stud framing, signaling the decline of solid log techniques as the dominant building method.

65

September/October 2026

1

2

3

Farmhouse (#641), 1680 Wila, Zurich

Dwelling (#751), 1336 Schwyz, Switzerland

Vintner’s House (#611), 1780 Richterswil, Zurich

4

5

6

Lumberman’s Cabin (#177), 1800–1900 Kilde, Åmot, Østerdalen, Norway

Farm Storehouses, 1300–1800 Various locations, Telemark County, Norway

Haltdalen Stave Church, 1170 Holtålen Municipality, Trøndelag County, Norway

7

8

9

High Ore Mine, 1880–1900 Butte, Montana

Kohl’s Cabin, 1882 Virginia City, Montana

Assay Office, 1862 Bannack, Montana

In the gold-mining town of Bannack, Montana, the corner post was adapted to local needs. At the Assay Office, builders didn’t carve grooves into the posts but nailed milled wooden cleats onto the two faces where timber abuts the posts, creating channels for the horizontal logs. Though milled lumber and nails were relatively rare and expensive, this construction was faster and required much less skill. Unfortunately, there were trade-offs. The nailed cleats weren’t as strong or durable as solid, mortised posts made from a single piece of wood.

Like the hog trough corner, the cleated post marks an experimental transition from traditional log building to the modern nailed frame that dominates North American construction today.

D’Arcy Jones is a writer and principal of Vancouver, Canada– based D’Arcy Jones Architects. His current research examines how overlooked details and historic construction can inspire contemporary ideas. Jones is an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary and an assistant teaching professor at Montana State University.

9 Cleated Post Corner-post construction was a common building technique in early North America, introduced

by French settlers in the 1500s and later adopted by Métis communities. Its use of modular hewed log segments made it popular for fur-trading posts and military forts.

The corner-post technique improved on traditional saddlenotched or dovetailed log walls. Builders set vertical posts at each corner and at the midpoints of exterior walls. These posts had mortises, grooves to hold the logs in place, reducing the need for careful corner joints and precise measurements. Horizontal logs were slid between these posts to form the walls. This method allowed the structure to settle as fresh wood dried without altering the overall frame.

The models were made by Pierce Morley and Logan Bohler.

Shane Hauser took the photographs. Editorial assistance came from Robert Ferguson, and Montana wisdom was generously supplied by Professor Emeritus Maire O’Neill.

66 Comic

Amelyn Ng is an architect and educator based in New York City.

The Architect’s Newspaper

WO D Design: David Karásek, Radek Hegmon

NATURE AS A PRINCIPLE.

O Y USA@mmcite.com

Elevate Every Moment.

Scenic: Placemaking redefined for everyday life outdoors.

Landscape Forms | A Modern Craft Manufacturer