HAPPY EQUINOX FROM ARCHITECTUREWEEK

All of us at ArchitectureWeek wish you a warm and cheerful Spring Equinox. (And an equally cheerful autumnal equinox to our friends in the Southern Hemisphere.) To celebrate this day of solar equilibrium, ArchitectureWeek No. 91, to be released in late March, will include two articles from Paris, the city celebrated for its lovely springtime.

A NEW SCHOOL IN PARIS

The long, narrow urban site proved too complicated for the construction of apartments, so the City of Paris ran a competition to find an architect able to fit an elementary school there. Architect Gilles Margot-Duclot, who won the commission, also had to link the two diverse structures that met at site boundaries and to protect the school's long southern exposure from overheating without shutting the classrooms off from their surroundings. In the course of design, numerous external regulations and internal functional requirements also helped determine the shape of the building. Writer Christian Horn will describe the results, from the outside in.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION AT MOUNT VERNON

The Small Dining Room of George Washington's historic home, Mount Vernon, has been remodeled many times over the years, including several times by Washington himself. In a 1775 upgrade, he replaced the decorations in the ceiling and above the fireplace with fine stucco work. But over the centuries, those details were damaged and covered up. Historians working on a recent restoration found 24 layers of paint in some areas. Now, after almost a year’s work, the room is again fully furnished and open to the public. P. Gardiner Hallock, manager of the restoration, will tell the story of the team's research, repair, and reconstruction.

NEW TOOLS IN A SPECIAL SCHOOL

At the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture of Paris, as in architecture schools worldwide, students and professors have been trying for years to figure out the proper role of digital media in the curriculum. Sometimes computer rendering is appreciated as an expressive or exploratory tool. Sometimes computer media are dismissed as crutches that enable students to avoid thinking about architecture. Professor Jacques Pochoy, of the Ecole Spéciale, has come up with an approach that embraces digital tools without discarding traditional media. His students present their design ideas in HTML Web pages, which can combine hand drawings with text and other media. The discipline of explaining a project through these storyboards brings a certain clarity, and in the end the winner is design education.