BUILT FOR THE GODS

This year's Religious Art & Architecture Award winners included new buildings, sensitive additions, and renovations. Many of these projects impressed the awards jury with their sense of resourcefulness — making the most out of "found" space in existing buildings, or saving an older facility from an ignoble end. Next week ArchitectureWeek contributing editor Michael J. Crosbie will show us the results of the awards program sponsored by Faith & Form magazine and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, & Architecture.

WOOD AS MASONRY

Artist James Harrison built a room-size sculpture by stacking short lengths of 2x4 wood. "The premise," he said, "was to take a banal material, cut it into a module based on the width of the body, and by repeating that module lay up a lumber wall as if it were masonry. By corbelling the material it is possible to get a high degree of plastic deformation." Next week he will explain how he built his creation, which went on display in Seattle at the Center on Contemporary Art.

GREEN BUILDINGS CONFERENCE

With sustainable design assuming an ever-greater presence in mainstream architecture, timing could not have been better for the first conference of the U.S. Green Building Council. Held in Austin, Texas in November, the event brought together over 2,000 architects, builders, scientists, ecologists, and other sustainability-minded professionals. Next week writer Brian Libby will describe the conference events, from a keynote address by Canadian author and scientist David Suzuki to a presentation of the first speculative office project in the United States to achieve LEED certification.