ENGINEERING SIDRA TREES The Education City Convention Center on the outskirts of Doha, Qatar, designed by Arata Isozaki, includes a giant structure resembling two intertwined trees to support the building's exterior canopy. Used in lieu of vertical columns, the 250-meter- (820-foot-) long, doubly curved steel tree structure forms the signature entrance to the convention center, currently under construction. — Published 2008.0227
	NORTHERN STAR Creating dramatic architecture can be challenging in an icy climate where people prioritize function over flamboyance and where the natural environment can satisfy their desire for beauty. The state of Alaska has breathtaking vistas of mountains, snow flats, and the dancing aurora borealis, but its urban landscapes have tended to remain resilient and simple. — Published 2007.0502
	KUROKAWA ART CENTER According to architect Kisho Kurokawa, the new National Art Center Tokyo is a perfect expression of his philosophy of symbiosis. Rather than trying to iron out irregularities and resolve contradictions into what he calls a "dull, flat harmony," his distinctly non-Western idea seeks to apply conflicts and tensions in positive ways to achieve interesting and energizing effects. — Published 2007.0404
	LEAVES OF GLASS Glass, as a building material, offers a special interlayer between our outer and inner space and has opened up and contained, as well as sheltered and revealed, the architecture of its time. Architects' pursuit of the minimal environmental envelope has created an evolutionary and reductionist approach, whereby glass has become a predominant and essential cladding material of contemporary architecture. — Published 2007.0228
	RED BULL HQ Visitors ascend from street level by elevator and enter the new Red Bull headquarters via a rooftop reception lobby. This dramatic entry sequence, from a small ground-floor lobby to a grand, rooftop terrace overlooking London's West End, is heightened by views from the terrace down into and through the building. — Published 2007.0228
	TOYO ITO INTERVIEW Japanese architect Toyo Ito is credited with influencing a generation of younger architects with his ideas about contemporary urban forms. While presenting some of his recent work at an exhibition at the Tokyo Opera City Gallery in 2006, he spoke with journalist Colin Liddell about his designs, his theories, and their origin. — Editor Colin Liddell: In all your buildings, you seem to be trying to get away from straight lines. Do you hate straight lines? — Published 2007.0110
	MAYNE COURTHOUSE The new Federal Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon by Thom Mayne and his Los Angeles firm Morphosis, is in some ways an outstanding building for this small city. Mayne certainly delivers a strong dose of visual excitement. The depth of art in this architecture is more open to question. — Published 2007.0103
	TO CROSS THE SEINE A new pedestrian bridge, "Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir," now undulates across the Seine in Paris. It is the creation of Feichtinger Architectes with consulting engineers RFR, where I work, and Sepia. — Published 2006.1004
	ASMUSSEN'S CULTURE HOUSE Austrian-born artist and scientist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) developed the "spiritual science" of anthroposophy — "a path of knowledge aiming to guide the spiritual element in the human being to the spiritual in the universe." He saw all natural phenomena as interconnected spiritually and dependent on the larger whole. To explore the integrative and holistic ideals of anthroposophy, Swedish architect Erik Asmussen built the Rudolf Steiner Seminary, at Järna, Sweden. Its social and cultural focus is the Culture House (completed in 1992), an expression of art, craft, spirituality, and functionality. — Editor — Published 2006.0301
	CONSTRUCTING OSAKA ART Until recently, the site of Osaka Japan's National Museum of Contemporary Art, one of three national contemporary art museums in Japan, was at the far edge of the city, on the former site of the 1970 World's Fair. The museum had planned to move from this distant suburb to a central urban location in the middle of Nakanoshima Island, part of a planned cultural arts district that has great potential to activate and energize an integral part of the city. — Published 2006.0222

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