MOSHE SAFDIE'S NEW EXPLORATION PLACE

The Exploration Place Science Center and Children's Museum designed by Moshe Safdie and Associates along with architect-of-record Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey has recently opened. It sits on the Arkansas River in Wichita, Kansas and comprises a string of volumes along the river's bend. In this new science museum, Safdie's urban sensibility, which he brings to most of his design projects, is again evident, this time in the many public spaces created between the "island" building and the "land" building. Next week, architect Ganesh Nayak takes us on a tour of the museum's geometries.

SCHOUWBURG PLEIN MAKES WAVES IN THE NETHERLANDS

In Rotterdam, a new central plaza is being met with controversy. In the "Schouwburg Plein," landscape architect Adriaan Geuze, director of the firm West 8, seeks to negate the distinction between engineering and design and to diffuse the already artificial boundaries between landscape architecture, urban planning, and architecture. Geuze's approach to design is grounded in the engineering tradition of the Dutch "polder" (below-sea-level) landscape, which can only exist because of the country's engineered system of canals, dikes, and pumps. Landscape architect Anita Van Asperdt examines the plaza and the public's reaction.

SEATTLE CELEBRATES ARCHITECTURE WEEK

The past several weeks have given Seattle architects a chance to reach out to other design disciplines, construction groups, children, and students and to bring them together under the umbrella of architecture. A week-long cluster of events led up to the annual ceremony for the AIA Seattle Honor Awards for Washington Architecture. One of the four honor award winners was "The Brain," by Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen, a personal studio in the form of a loft-like cube. Next week ArchitectureWeek contributing editor Clair Enlow tells us about this building, more award winners, and other Seattle events.