AMAZING BUILDINGS
George Lucas’s Passion Project
As one of the world's most successful filmmakers and boasting a net worth of more than five billion dollars, George Lucas enjoys a rare kind of creative freedom. If he is struck by a fancy, he can see it through without real impediment. But when he announced his grand...
New York’s New Icon: The Rise of One Vanderbilt
Even if you've never set foot in Manhattan, you can name some of its most notable buildings: the Empire State, the Chrysler, the Flatiron, 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Everyone knows about the Guggenheim's great spiral and Grand Central's breathtaking ceiling, and everyone...
Shocking Growth! Tesla’s Nevada Gamble
For decades, the title of "largest building" in the world by volume has belonged to the same owner: Boeing. Their factory in Everett, Washington employs more than 30,000 skilled workers, producing airliners from start to finish on vast assembly lines that buzz around...
Reverse Development: The River’s Disappearing Act
One of the great goals of contemporary American architecture has been to create meaningful harmony between buildings and their natural environment. Some structures incorporate lines and forms from their surroundings while others aim for minimalism and transparency to...
New Growth Buildings: Green Architecture Branches Out
In the rapidly renewing Porta Nuova district of Milan, two brand new residential towersone 250 feet and another 360 feet-stand well above the terracotta roofs of their ancient neighbors. Their stark white balconies jut out from what can be seen of the buildings'...
From The Ground Up! An Ancient Technique Finds New Applications
When it comes to contemporary sustainable design, no maxim is more apt than “what’s old is new again.” We’ve reached a period of reassessment, asking fundamental questions about the cities we live in, the buildings we inhabit, the materials we use, and the...
Green As Grass: An All-Bamboo Building Inspires in Bali
When it comes to sustainable design, our thoughts often turn to the marvels of technology. Ultra-efficient LED lighting, cutting-edge photovoltaic solar panel systems, and wind turbines have all transformed the design landscape and feel pulled directly from the pages...
London’s Stadthaus and its Ancient, Cutting Edge Wonder Material
In 2009, construction was completed on the Stadthaus, a nine-story, 29-apartment building in the rapidly gentrifying Shoreditch neighborhood of London. From a distance, the structure would have seemed to be a rather unremarkable postmodern addition to the...
Amazontown: Jeff Bezos Disrupts the Urban Workspace
After the Second World War, one major trend seemed consistent and assured in the United States: suburbanization. In droves, Americans left cities for less-dense communities across the country for the promise of more room to raise their families. And in many cases,...
Space-Age Architecture: Apple’s Mothership Lands in Cupertino
This past fall Apple went bigger than ever, expanding their iPhone 6 offerings in size to satisfy a market hungry for screen space and digital content. But it’s not just their devices that are growing. In Cupertino, CA, a gargantuan new headquarters—called, naturally,...
One Giant Room: Gehry and Facebook Open Up the Office
We’ve all heard the stories from the Bay Area. From the lavish, ego-driven spending of the young techies to the stark income rifts developing in San Francisco real estate, no Gold Rush comparison feels unwarranted. And so in 2012, when the poster child for the current...
Planning The World’s Next Giant: Adrian Smith’s Kingdom Tower
There are buildings that quietly serve their function utilitarian and sometimes even elegant. There are buildings that push the envelope with their design striking onlookers with their unique perspective or form. And then there are buildings that cement a legacy....