THE BIG APPLE GOES FOLKSY

The new American Folk Art Museum casts a golden glow across West 53rd Street in midtown Manhattan as the sun catches glimpses of its variegated whitish-bronze facade. Hailed as the first new museum building in New York in nearly 40 years, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects’ creation just west of the Museum of Modern Art more than holds its own next to that bastion of high design. Next week ArchitectureWeek contributing editor Michael J. Crosbie will show how, much like a piece of fine folk art, the new museum is inviting yet a bit mysterious, engagingly transparent yet full of surprises and aesthetic rewards.

THE HOUSE THAT EAMES BUILT

In the mid-1940s, as the United States faced the postwar challenge of housing three million returning soldiers, a few architects in Southern California rejected the idea of identical houses in suburban developments. The Case Study House Program enlisted Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, and others, embracing the belief that modernist ideals could be part of the postwar home. One of the Case Study houses was designed by and for the talented team of Charles and Ray Eames. Next week their grandson, author Eames Demetrios, will tell the story of how the house was designed and built.

TRANSFORMING THE PROFESSION

As electronic media evolve, how will they change architectural practice and education? The profession has been slow to embrace digital technologies and, by concentrating on drafting productivity, has missed out on the radical transformation enjoyed by other groups, graphic designers for instance. Next week Pete Evans will explain his views on how virtual reality, rapid prototyping, and artificial intelligence technologies can offer opportunities to discover new forms of architecture and new relationships to the built (and unbuilt) environment.