Magazine
The Interactive Learning Pavilion at the University of California, Santa Barbara received the most votes in our poll for US Building of the Year 2023. Designed by Seattle's LMN Architects, the classroom building consists of two volumes astride an open-air “street” that,
The Center is a combination Central Kitchen, Instructional Farm, and Education Center that supports daily food production for every student in the Oakland Unified School District in West Oakland, California. The design of The Center by Palo Alto's CAW Architects features shaded outdoor spaces,...
The Interactive Learning Pavilion opened at the University of California, Santa Barbara earlier this year as the campus's first new building dedicated to classroom space in more than fifty years. Partner Stephen Van Dyck and the team of architects at LMN Architects answered a few questions...
The Chicago Park District welcomed employees and the public inside its new Headquarters in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the city's Southwest Side in June. The bold design by John Ronan Architects is a circular building that sits within a new park. Ulf Meyer visited over the summer and...
In 2019, voters in Flint, Michigan, northwest of Detroit, approved a bond for the renovation of its then 61-year-old library. Two and a half years later, in May 2022, the renovated Flint Public Library opened to the public with much fanfare. OPN Architects answered a few questions about the...
This small office building at 1729 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California — just a five-minute drive to Venice Beach — stands out thanks to its fluted-brick facade punctuated by a dark horizontal window along the sidewalk. Architect Mark Bittoni answered a few questions about...
As the name implies Church Hill North Community Hybrid has a diverse program that combines numerous community functions: housing, a culinary school, a community office space, and a destination restaurant. O'Neill McVoy Architects answered a few questions about the project.
Subsequently leased to a famous tech company, The Brick + The Machine was designed as a speculative office development in Downtown Culver City. The name of the project reflects the palette of its three- and four-story halves, which arose from zoning constraints, among other considerations....
Located in North Central Washington, Winthrop is a small town of over 400 residents that is widely known because of its downtown, which has an American Old West design stemming from the town's Westernization program. Seattle's Johnston Architects followed the program in their design of the...
Since 1996 the ‘r kids Family Center has worked with vulnerable foster children and their families toward re-unification in New Haven, Connecticut. Located just west of the Yale University campus, the new home of ‘r kids literally builds upon a nearly 20-year-old one-story brick building. The...
The sculptural off-white exterior of the Health Futures Center on Arizona State University's innovation campus is striking but also functionally responsive to the desert climate, as explained in this short interview with CO Architects, the Los Angeles firm that designed the building with...
This ADU, or "Accessory Dwelling Unit," is the second such project featured as a US Building of the Week in 2022, evidence of the growing popularity of the typology and the increasing number of jurisdictions making them legal means of adding density to residential neighborhoods. The architects...
Located on axis with the famous clock tower of Clemson University's Tillman Hall and directly across the street from the equally iconic Bowman Field, the new Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business features a design influenced strongly by its site conditions. LMN Architects answered a few...
With curved walls making a welcoming embrace and forming a large green space, the L. Gale Lemerand Student Center acts as a gateway to Daytona State College, accentuated by a large bronze portal aligned with the main campus drive. Ikon.5 architects answered a few questions about the project.
The large campus of Morgan State, a historically black public university (HBCU) in Baltimore, Maryland, is broken up into five distinct campus zones. Anchoring the Morgan Commons in the center of campus is the new Calvin & Tina Tyler Hall, which was completed in September 2020 but wasn't...
Located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the Walter Anderson Museum of Art is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of artist-philosopher Walter Anderson (1903-1965). In May the museum opened the Courtney Blossman Art Cottage, the renovation of a 19th-century house and the first stage in...
Originally built as a gatehouse for the Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, the century-old Schiff House now serves as daycare center for the City College of New York. Stone outside and wood inside, the small building was renovated by Michielli + Wyetzner Architects and opened in 2020....
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission often requires that rooftop additions to landmarked buildings are invisible from the street. Such is clearly not the case with this building overlooking Union Square Park. BKSK Architects added a glass dome to the historic home of Tammany...
The Algin Sutton Pool opened to the public last month in Los Angeles's underserved Vermont Vista neighborhood. The design by Lehrer Architects LA reimagines the existing Palladian building through the addition of dynamic forms and colorful surfaces. The architects answered some questions about...
Old buildings need not be grand or architecturally significant to be reused. Take a diminutive machine shop in Seattle's trendy Ballard neighborhood that was transformed into a cannabis shop. Graham Baba Architects answered a few questions about their transformation of an industrial building...
The New Mexico School for the Arts in Sante Fe occupies no less than ten buildings that served as a lumber mill, bookstore, and mini-mall, among other uses. A variety of facades, outdoor spaces, and exposed structural systems remind students of the site's history. Lake|Flato Architects...
Our focus on adaptive reuse projects for this year's US Building of the Week feature takes us to the Bronx and a charter school housed in an old industrial building. KSS Architects renovated the building and added a gymnasium, the latter of which gives the school a strong presence in the...
From cheese to culture: The Momentary is a new contemporary art space housed in a former Kraft factory in Bentonville, Arkansas. The cultural venue with galleries, theatre, and dining spaces is a satellite of the popular Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,
In summer 2019, debartolo architects moved into a 1930s warehouse located "on one of the grittiest streets east of downtown Phoenix." Their conversion of the building responds to the context with dark steel walls facing the street, while inside it maintains the openness of the space capped by...
The ICA Watershed opened in a formerly condemned industrial space in East Boston, a short ferry ride from ICA Boston's main building across the harbor. Like other museums, the Watershed temporarily closed during the pandemic, but it tapped into its industrial roots by transitioning to a food...
Three functions intertwine in this adaptive reuse of an old industrial building in San Francisco's South of Market (SOMA) area, placing an art gallery and artist studio on the ground floor, and a residence upstairs. Dumican Mosey Architects answered a few questions about the project.
Two years after the firm's McDonald’s Chicago Flagship signaled a new green direction for the fast-food giant, Ross Barney Architects has completed a flagship McDonald's at Walt Disney World...
The aptly named Lantern Studio, which houses a scooter workshop and other spaces for a creative couple, glows at night through a wall of slatted wood. Flavin Architects answered a few questions about the backyard retreat in suburban Wellesley, near Boston.
LR2 Residence sits on a hillside in Pasadena, California, a city northeast of Los Angeles. Montalba Architects exploited the location by lifting the living spaces to the top of three floors to take advantage of panoramic views. The architects answered a few questions about the house.
Dearborn Homes is a public housing development on Chicago's South Side, just north of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The homes sit astride Williams Park, which has a new fieldhouse with an iridescent skin courtesy of STL Architects. The architects answered a few questions about the...
Named for the nearby Frio River, this house in Texas Hill Country is broken up into four buildings, giving it the feel of a camp rather than a contemporary dwelling. The forms of the buildings and the materials covering them furthers this impression. Tim Cuppett Architects answered a few...
This century, micro breweries are big business. Trailbend Taproom, which occupies the ground floor of the new three-story Klotski Building in Seattle's industrial Ballard area, boasts 42 taps by local, national, and international microbreweries. Graham Baba Architects designed both Klotski and...
Wineries are often a setting for high-profile architecture, enough that numerous books are devoted to them. This equipment barn for Saxum Vineyards in California's San Luis Obispo County shows that architectural attention can also be given to the industrial structures that lie beyond the...
The always free Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago opened its new Searle Visitor Center in November as the latest piece in its Pride of Chicago capital campaign. Topped by angled planes of metal, the building makes for a striking gateway to the zoo from the east. Ross Barney Architects sent us some...
While the tech sector in the United States is synonymous with California's Silicon Valley, other parts of the country are making investments to teach and train tomorrow's computer scientists. The new Gates Center at the University of Washington caters to the thriving sector in Seattle, which...
Located on the eastern edge of the Charleston Historic District, just steps away from the planned International African American Museum, Williams Terrace is the South Carolina city's first dedicated low-income senior housing project. David Baker Architects sent us some text and images on...