Architecture Technology: Innovation Design, Modern, Green

Buildings Show Off New Moves
To enhance environmental performance and create dramatic visual effects, architects devise facades that adapt to changing conditions.

Photo © Earl Carter

A Force of Nature
As design teams work toward harnessing air flows around buildings, they are producing some intriguing structures. But just how viable is wind power as a source of on-site renewable energy?

Photo © Peter Fairley

Renewed Promise
Two teams of architects employ very different strategies to reinvigorate a pair of ambitious 1960s apartment projects, one in the north of England and the other in Paris.

Photo © Keith Collie

Stitches in Time
A well-executed renovation, along with a few carefully conceived insertions, weaves together a museum's trio of stylistically distinct landmarks.

Photo © Elizabeth Felicella

Handled With Care
As schools for students with autism move from makeshift or retrofitted quarters to new buildings tailored to their specific programs, architects and educators focus on what makes the best places for learning.

Photo © Albert Vecerka/ESTO

Revival of an Icon
The United Nations renovation team brings back the long-faded luster of the Secretariat while satisfying ambitious performance goals.

Photo: Ezra Stoller © Esto

Wave of the Future
Designers behind the London 2012 Summer Olympics look well beyond the Games' closing ceremonies, creating venues that can be readily disassembled or adapted to long-term needs.

Photo © Morley Von Sternberg

Sculpting the Skyline
Architects, engineers, and contractors tackle a challenging geometry to build a supertall tower with a striking silhouette for a desert city.

Photo © SOM/Pawel Sulima

Second Skin
From high fashion to high performance: Two design teams work closely with fabricators to develop visually dynamic exterior wall systems.

Photo © Paúl Rivera /Archphoto

Off the Map
Geographic information systems put data in the hands of designers, relief agencies, and policy-makers, helping them plot recovery efforts, anticipate the effects of climate change, and create more livable urban environments.

Image courtesy of Esri

Lighting within Limits
Tightening energy codes and standards, along with new technology, present lighting designers with opportunities and challenges.

Photo © Warren Jagger

Performance Puzzle
Museum design teams juggle the sometimes-competing demands for preservation of collections, human comfort, and energy conservation.

Renderings courtesy the Barnes Foundation

Industrial Evolution
A move toward more comprehensive and accessible data on the environmental and health impacts of building products gains momentum.

A New Spin on the White City
A Cambridge, Massachusetts Architect Makes a 21st-century Addition to Tel Aviv's Tradition of Modernism

Photo © Amit Geron

A Fetish for Fabrication
In digitally sophisticated Los Angeles, the Southern California Institute of Architecture's new Robot House ups the ante.

Photo © Lawrence Anderson

One World Trade Center
Part monument, part speculative real estate venture, the nation’s soon-to-be tallest building takes shape.

Photo © James Ewing

Ed Roberts Campus
With its grand roof canopy and sweeping entry plaza, the Ed Roberts Campus welcomes everyone into its fold.

Photo © Tim Griffith

The Royal Conservatory
KPMB renovates and expands Canada's venerable music education institution.

Photo © Eduard Hueber

Green at Its Core
An innovative and robust seismic frame is a key part of a San Francisco office building's sustainable strategy and its bid for LEED Platinum.

Image: courtesy Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz

Masdar Institute
The first completed piece of a new city under construction about 20 miles outside of downtown Abu Dhabi merges traditional construction practices, passive climate control strategies, and high-tech features.

Photo © Nigel Young / Foster + Partners

Low Energy, but High Impact
The Passive House system, a design and construction concept with considerable traction in Europe, begins to take hold in the United States.

Working with Water
Coastal cities respond to the threat of rising sea levels with diverse design strategies at multiple scales.

Virtual but Vivid
A sonic rendering technique known as auralization helps acousticians make the sound of even unrealized spaces tangible.

Brooklyn Bridge Park
Designers Transform a Defunct Shipping Complex and Reconnect a City With Its Waterfront.

Zeroing In on Net-Zero Energy
With an office building for its Colorado campus, a national research lab aims to prove that super-green can be cost effective and replicable.

KAUST
An ambitious plan for a world-class research university in Saudi Arabia's desert spurs an unprecedented building project.

Live | Build | Sustain
A new green building program aims to push the design and construction industry well beyond current best practices.

Behind the Curtain Wall
Three residential buildings with highly innovative facades rise in New York City.

Beyond Limits
The Burj Khalifa's designers tackle extreme height and extreme climate to create a landmark for the 21st century.

More Than Skin Deep
An integrated facade strategy helps designers create more comfortable and better-performing glass buildings.

Reviving "Almost Nothing"
A multidisciplinary team of consultants tackles the tricky restoration of a pair of iconic Chicago towers.

Shattering Myths About Glass
As architects and builders put more faith in the structural properties of glass, its use has expanded to all areas of design.

Testing Timber's Limits
Designers push a traditional material to create longer spans, reach new heights, and find unconventional applications.

Control Freaks
Pervasive sensing and interactive building controls stand to radically reshape the human response to architecture, the city, and even the air we breathe. Call them the new controls.

Performing Arts
Read tech-focused supplements to our Project Portfolio and earn CEU credits.

Getting the Lay of the Land
With several projects nearing completion, Steven Holl Architects spreads out across the Chinese landscape.

Diving Into BIM
For two firms now fully immersed in digital modeling, a group of community libraries proved the ideal medium for trying out new technology.

Into Thin Air
While most structures are firmly rooted in the ground, some seem to float through the skies.

Quenching the Built Environment's Thirst for Water
An intricate array of CNC-milled components brings ceilings and walls to life.

When the Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts
An intricate array of CNC-milled components brings ceilings and walls to life.

An End in Sight for a Centuries-Old Building Project?
Don't confuse the high-performance glass facades of these new buildings with textbook examples from early Modernism.

Transparency: Literal and Sustainable
Don't confuse the high-performance glass facades of these new buildings with textbook examples from early Modernism.

RECORD presents a roundup of innovative, unconventional approaches to building preservation:

Continuing Education: Montpelier’s Shrunken State Is Fit for a President

LEED Looks Ahead With an Ambitious Overhaul
A number of structurally innovative towers defy convention, and gravity, by getting bigger as they get taller.

Tall Buildings Push Limits by Stepping Up, Not Back
A number of structurally innovative towers defy convention, and gravity, by getting bigger as they get taller.

Not-So-Pedestrian Footbridges
A portfolio of projects demonstrates that there is more to creating signature spans than connecting point A to point B.

Image © Shannon Images

"And the award for best sound effects goes to …"
Acoustics get a staring role in the design of a new performing arts center.

Photo © Chuck Choi

Three Buildings, Three Different Approaches
Bay Area projects demonstrate that the retro fit of existing structures demands as much seismic sophistication as new construction.

Image courtesy SOM

Model Behavior: Anticipating Great Design
Cutting-edge projects throughout the Middle East rely on a variety of simulation programs to inform design and predict building performance.

Photo courtesy Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

An Energy-Conserving Technology From Europe Makes Inroads in the U.S.
American architects and engineers are discovering the advantages of chilled beams, a mechanical device that provides cooling and heating. The energy-saving technology has been popular in Europe for more than a decade.

Photo © Peter Vanderwarker

Getting High Design from a Low-Tech Approach
Eschewing complex forms and technology, socially minded architects rely on age-old building techniques to create modern marvels.

Photo © Nicolás Cabrera Andrade

Some Assembly Required
Five firms explore the potential of prefabrication with digital tools, a diversity of materials, and varying degrees of on-site labor.

Photo © MOMA/Richard Barnes

Design Professionals Follow the Physician's Precept: "First, Do No Harm"
Innovative strategies improve air quality inside health care facilities so that patients don't end up sicker than when they arrived.

Photo © John Durant Photography

BAM’s Next Wave: A Forward-Looking Institution Updates Its Own Look with a Nod to the Past
Since the 1970s, Hugh Hardy’s work for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has run the gamut, spanning new cinemas and a café for the experimental film and performing arts venue to, most recently, a faithful restoration of the 1908 facade of its historic Peter Jay Sharp Building.

Pictured: Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM); Photo © Peter Mauss/Esto

Inside Beijing's Big Box of Blue Bubbles
A multidisciplinary design team employed an innovative digital process to produce a surprising, highly integrated envelope-and-structure combination.

Photo © Iwan Baan

A Sleek Skyscraper in San Francisco Raises the Profile of Performance-Based Design
The nearly complete tower demonstrates multiple benefits of a nonprescriptive approach.

Let the (Indirect) Sun Shine In
A highly collaborative design process and In-depth analysis produce daylighting systems for two expanding art museums on opposite coasts.

Crimps, Facets, and Folds
An ingenious Y-shaped mullion supports a quartz-like facade on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.

Rapidly Renewable Materials' Complex Calculus
Evaluating the environmental impact of alternative building products is more involved than a straightforward examination of the length of planting and harvest cycles.

Learning to Live on Alternative Energy
Three landmark projects show us how to integrate renewable-energy strategies into architecture, without compromising design.

Mutsuro Sasaki
Interviewed in his Tokyo office, the Japanese structural engineer reflects on the dramatic turn his work has taken since Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque, nearly eight years ago.

In Canada, a rammed-earth wall for the ages
The relationship between architecture and nature rarely gets more explicit than with rammed-earth construction.

Groups advance two sets of high-performance building standards
In the not-too-distant future, there could be two U.S. standards for green buildings.

Pictured: Chandler Airport Commerce Center in Chandler, Arizona; Photo courtesy Green Building Initiative

Aiming at super-tall market, Mitsubishi opens record-breaking elevator testing tower
Inazawa City, Japan, is the home of Mitsubishi Electric’s elevator division, and accordingly, the city skyline includes six small peaks—all towers that the company uses to test its product.

Photo courtesy Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Microalloy promises better steel structures
The U.S. Army, in conjunction with private industry, is involved in a multiyear research project that could yield stronger, lighter, and longer-span structures, for both civil and military applications. The research is examining the benefits of adding vanadium to steel.

Photo courtesy Simpson Gumpertz & Heger

Book Reviews
We review two recently published books: One tracks the relationship between the practice of medicine and architecture from ancient times to the present, while the other discusses the urgent need to reinvent medical facilities so they are better for patients and the environment.

Behind SANAA’s illusion of weightlessness
Now that the New Museum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is complete, and its structure enclosed, there is little evidence of the system that supports the seven-story building that seems to be made up of nothing heavier than precariously stacked cardboard boxes.

Diagrams courtesy Guy Nordenson and Associates

Multifaceted structure supports audaciously sculptural BMW Welt
The 172,000-square-foot roof that seems to hover over Coop Himmelb(l)au’s BMW Welt in Munich does more than keep out the elements.

Looking Back and Moving Forward
Postoccupancy evaluations offer a systematic process for assessing completed projects, pointing the way to better-performing buildings.

A base-isolated makeover for Pasadena's historic City Hall
Structural base isolation—effectively "floating" a building on rubber pads to safely ride out an earthquake—is nothing new in California.

California hospitals get a seismic reprieve
The California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) moved in December 2007 to allow the reclassification of potentially hundreds of seismically questionable hospitals in the state to avoid possible closure due to code noncompliance.

Architecture, Hot and Cold
The collaboration between two Australian firms on Melbourne's new Council House 2 shows off the design possibilities for building-integrated HVAC.

Fashioning an aural architecture
How do you protect a concert hall from extreme desert heat and noise generated by planes flying overhead? We examine how Barton Myers Associates and Architekton solved this problem in their roof design for the Tempe Center for the Arts.

Building Even Better Concrete
Manufacturers, scientists, and designers strive to reduce a vital material's environmental footprint while exploiting its many beneficial qualities

Photo courtesy Portland Cement Association

"Smart Glass" on the Verge
After languishing for years outside the mainstream, "switchable glazing" is poised to become a viable alternative and could soon have a significant impact on facade design.

Hanging Loose
Perhaps the most famous cantilever in America is one of the shortest: Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1935 design for the exterior concrete terraces at Fallingwater, the longest of which extends a mere 15 feet to hover over the rush of Pennsylvania’s Bear Run stream.

Chuck Hoberman wants buildings to change
Chuck Hoberman has a vision of Buckminster Fuller. As the New York–based artist, mechanical engineer, and product designer expands his projects to large-scale architecture, he is integrating his mechanized elements to develop a new strain of sustainable and flexible structures that conceptually relate to what the late Fuller had imagined, but never realized, decades before.

Rendering Courtesy Foster + Partners