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MULTI-ELEPHANT HOUSING BY FOSTER
The Copenhagen Zoo's new Elephant House by Foster + Partners emerges gently from the surrounding park grounds, its two leaf-patterned glass domes topping walls of pink-hued concrete. At once playful and serious, transparent and solid, this modern menagerie provides both high-quality living conditions for the animals inside and an exciting and interactive visitor experience. — Published 2009.0401
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PICTOU LANDING HEALTH CENTER
The new medical clinic and community center in the Pictou Landing First Nation in Nova Scotia recalls a longhouse, the traditional winter lodge of the Mi'kmaq.
Sustainably harvested spruce poles, six to eight inches (15 to 20 centimeters) in diameter, are bent and lashed together at the tops. Like a giant wooden model of a whale's ribcage, clad with rows of oversized spruce shingles, the peaked frame is an adaptation of traditional Native bent-wood construction. — Published 2009.0114
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DESIGNING FABRIC STRUCTURES
The first step in designing a fabric structure is to create a form with sufficient pre-stress, or tension, to prevent it from fluttering like a flag or sail. Lightweight structures with minimal surfaces optimally should have double curvature — a surface that possesses a high-point (positive) curvature along one principal axis and a low-point (negative) curvature along the other principal axis. — Published 2008.0924
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BEIJING BIRD'S NEST - ARCHITECTURE
This is the first part of a two-part series about Beijing National Stadium. Part one looks at the stadium from the architects' perspective, part two from the engineers'.
In the weeks and months leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, the Chinese government faced a range of complications, from polluted skies to Tibet protests. — Published 2008.0820
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ROBIN HOOD IN QUEENS
Public School 42 in Arverne, Queens, a five-story prewar brick edifice, had a small library in a converted fourth-floor classroom. Physically and visually isolated from the core of the elementary school's activities, the library was relocated to the ground floor, where it replaced one of two gymnasiums. — Published 2008.0723
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BEIJING TERMINAL 3 BY FOSTER
The Chinese have long been good at big gestures, and one of Beijing's latest — courtesy of London's Foster + Partners — is lifting spirits in the capital at a rate of thousands per day. — Published 2008.0723
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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
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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
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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
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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
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