Frank Gehry, Matthew Teitelbaum, and David Thomson
RECORD speaks with the architect, with the director of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and with the son of the late media mogul and art collector Kenneth Thomson about the Gehry-designed addition to the AGO.

Photo © Thomas Mayer

Newsmakers
Every week, Architectural Record presents brief interviews with the personalities making headlines in the architecture world. From noteworthy architects to clients to policy makers, we speak with the people shaping the profession.

Photo © Winda Berkowitz

SOM’s Carl Galioto and Paul Seletsky on BIM
Carl Galioto, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s partner-in-charge of the firm’s New York Technical Group, and Paul Seletsky, SOM’s director of digital design, are two of the architecture profession’s leading experts on building information modeling. The pair discuss how BIM facilitated a major redesign of the Freedom Tower; address common misperceptions; explain BIM’s potential benefits for smaller practices; point out how BIM can lead to increased compensation; and lay out the potential ramifications of BIM on the architect’s overall role in the realization of buildings.

Image © dbox Studio

Renzo Piano
In an interview with RECORD deputy editor Suzanne Stephens in preparation for the magazine¹s coverage of The New York Times Building, the architect reflected on the building and underscored certain concerns relating to architecture at the current moment.

Photo © Annie Leibovitz/courtesy Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Marshall E. Purnell, FAIA
Marshall E. Purnell, FAIA, was appointed the 84th president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) at a ceremony in December, taking the helm from outgoing president RK Stewart, FAIA. Purnell is the design principal of Devrouax + Purnell Architects, a 35-person firm that he and his business partner Paul Devrouax started in 1978 in Washington, D.C.

Photo courtesy American Institute of Architects

Bill Lacy
During a varied career, Bill Lacy, FAIA, has comfortably bridged the worlds of practice, academia, philanthropy, government, and art. Among his many leadership positions, he served as founding dean of the University of Tennessee’s architecture school, president of the American Academy in Rome and executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury. In addition, Lacy has been the principal of three design firms, and in 1988 launched a consultancy to advise corporations and institutions on architect selections and design issues.

Photo illustration by Kris Rabasca

Sir Peter Cook
Had Peter Cook’s career ended in the early 1970s, this founding member of über-influential Archigram would still be considered one of the most important architects of our time. But in the decades since Archigram disbanded, Cook has continued to inspire as a highly regarded teacher and is now working on a high-profile commission: the London Olympic Stadium. In this in-depth interview, Cook proves himself an engaging, witty raconteur, dishing out frank advice for architecture schools, discussing the architects and cities he admires, the cities (and Royals) he doesn’t, and much more.

Photo: Courtesy UCL Bartlett

Phil Bernstein
Phil Bernstein is vice president of AEC Industry Strategy and Relations for Autodesk. He formerly was an associate principal at Cesar Pelli & Associates and has a master’s degree in architecture from Yale University. Listen as Bernstein discusses Autodesk’s ongoing collaboration with the U.S. Green Building Council to develop technology that aids in green design and construction. Their research, presented at Greenbuild 2007 in Chicago, could eventually yield a sustainability analysis “dashboard” that works in tandem with the Revit platform and provides users with graphic feedback about the impact of design decisions on a project's LEED rating. 

Photo: © Jenna M. McKnight

Thom Mayne
Thom Mayne, founder of Morphosis and 2005 Pritzker Prize winner, rejects the notion that green buildings have to look a certain way and bristles at overly specific green building standards. A keynote speaker at the 2007 Greenbuild conference, Mayne practices ecologically sensitive design but refuses to be co-opted by any particular movement. LEED is far from perfect, in his estimation. A simpler system, grounded in bottom-line metrics and weighted toward a building's long-term performance, would be more to his liking.

Photo: Courtesy Greenbuild

Craig Robins
Craig Robins is the president of Dacra Development, a Miami-based company whose projects have always placed a high premium on design. In the late 1980s, Dacra played an instrumental role in the revitalization of South Beach. For the past seven years, Dacra has led the redevelopment of the Miami Design District, working to restore the area’s 1920s- and 1930s-era buildings. One of Robins’ most recent projects is also perhaps his boldest: Aqua, a community of 151 townhomes and mid-rise condominium units which is Robins’ attempt to “reconcile the rift between New Urbanism and Modernism.”

Photo: Courtesy Dacra Development/Craig Robins

Beverly Willis, FAIA
Beverly Willis, FAIA, began her own architectural practice and an impressive career in San Francisco during the 1960s, when a woman more likely was found matching upholstery to wall hangings than wielding blueprints at a construction site. But don’t call her a female architect. Architect and activist, influential and improbable, is fine.

Photo: Courtesy the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation

Gary van Deursen
knows a thing or two about innovation. Before starting his own consulting business last year, he was the head of product design for General Electric, Black & Decker, and The Stanley Works.

Photo: © Jaime Beauchamp / McGraw-Hill

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, founder and chairman of Grimshaw Architects, has gained recognition worldwide for his seamless integration of complex technological systems into striking, modernist structures. He started his practice in the late 1960s and today has offices in London, New York City, and Melbourne. Hear him speak about “Embedded Intelligence in Architecture” at the 2007 Innovation Conference.

Photo: © Jo Reid and John Peck

William Mitchell
William Mitchell is director of the MIT Design Laboratory, where he heads up the Smart Cities research group. The team is investigating how buildings and cities can respond more intelligently to their inhabitants. One of their recent projects is the CityCar Concept, a program involving stackable, electric vehicles that can be shared by urban residents. Hear Mitchell speak about “Technologies of Smart Sustainability” at the 2007 Innovation Conference.

Photo: © Franco Vairani

Chuck Hoberman
Chuck Hoberman is the founder of Hoberman Associates, a multidisciplinary practice that specializes in creating products and structures that have the capacity to change in shape, size and function. His vast and varied project portfolio includes everything from toys and medical equipment, to deployable shelters and retractable domes. On Oct. 10, Hoberman will speak about “Transformative Structures” at the 2007 Innovation Conference in NYC.

Image: Courtesy Hoberman Transformable Design

William Zahner
L. William Zahner, AIA, is the president of A. Zahner Company in Kansas City, Missouri. His firm has designed and fabricated stunning metal façades for high-profile projects by Frank Gehry, Morphosis, Herzog & de Meuron and other notable architects and firms. On Oct. 10, Zahner will speak at the 2007 Innovation Conference in NYC. The title of his presentation: “Torqued, Punched, and Folded: Making Metal Building Skins.”

Photo: Courtesy A. Zahner Company

Alexander Gorlin
Alexander Gorlin, FAIA, has wanted to be an architect since the age of seven, when he would fill the floor of his parents’ living room, in Queens, New York, with model cities—complete down to the toy cars and miniature people that populated them. Now aged 52, Gorlin notes that his career has marked a “seamless” progression in scale. As the principal of his own atelier, he designs everything from individual residences to community master plans.

Photo: by James Murdock

Frank Stella
While best known as a painter, architecture has been a serious focus of Frank Stella’s now for nearly 20 years—and his achievements in this area, in the eyes of curators at the world’s most prestigious museum, merited a solo exhibition: “Frank Stella: Painting into Architecture,” which recently ran at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for three months.

Photo: by Steven Sloman; Image Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tom Kundig
Tom Kundig, FAIA, is one of the four partners whose names grace the marquee of Seattle-based Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects. He’s best known for his residential work throughout the Pacific Northwest: small houses that open themselves to the surrounding environment, be it a natural or an urban one. This year, Kundig—along with three other designers—was honored with an American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award.

Photo © Benjamin Benschneider

Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci, one of the most acclaimed Conceptual artists of all time, turned his back completely on the world of galleries and museums 20 years ago to focus his creative energies exclusively on architecture and design.

Photo courtesy Acconci Studio.

Annabelle Selldorf
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute has selected Selldorf Architects to renovate its museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Renowned for its collection of French Impressionist paintings, as well as American paintings by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Mary Cassatt, the Clark occupies a neoclassical structure designed by American architect Daniel Perry in 1955.  

Photo © Frank Krems

Alan Maskin
The Skirball Cultural Center opens a new children’s exhibit about Noah’s Ark this week. Although this Los Angeles institution is dedicated to exploring Jewish history and culture, the new 8,000-square-foot gallery explores themes common across humanity. Alan Maskin, a principal of the Seattle-based firm Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects, led the design team that created the exhibit. Before becoming an architect, he had worked as an art teacher.

Images Courtesy of Grant Mudford.

Chad Oppenheim
In our newest Web-exclusive feature, we will regularly sit down to talk with some of the most interesting figures working today in the field of architecture. Up first, Chad Oppenheim, a Miami-based architect who has made his reputation with condominiums that combine a sleek Modernism with the tropical (and hedonistic) atmosphere of their surroundings.

Image Courtesy Oppenheim Architecture + Design