POSTCARD FROM NEW YORK

In a city still mourning the loss of an architectural icon, the buzz these days in Manhattan is the much-anticipated Austrian Cultural Forum tower on 52nd Street, just east of Fifth Avenue. A decade in the making — architect Raimund Abraham won an international design competition sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Austria in 1992 — and under construction since 1998, it is already heralded by some of the city's cultural clerisy as the most important new work of architecture in New York in 40 years.

CONCEPT KITCHEN

The kitchen is often the heart of the family home and reflects changes in society, technology, and ecology. As methods of food preparation change and new technologies are quickly taken for granted, kitchens rearrange how we work and how we interact with family and friends. To explore this premise, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and furniture retailer MFI, organized a competition. The winner, ML Design Group, explains how a future kitchen may become fully integrated into the life style of its users. — Editor

INTERVIEW WITH AN EMERGING ARCHITECT

Few architectural commissions are more attractive than an art museum. So no one was surprised in 1999 when the design competition for the Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis, Missouri drew an international "who's who" of architects and firms — Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, Enrique Norton, Peter Zumthor.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN WOOD

Wood has been used as a building material for thousands of years. Throughout history, as illustrated by ancient Greek temple design, wooden buildings served as the predecessors and prototypes of architectural designs which were not carried out in stone until a much later date.

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