NAVY TEMPLE In addition to the usual challenges facing an architect designing a synagogue, Joseph Boggs confronted a few special ones at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Any contemporary U.S. synagogue designer has to create a sanctuary large enough to hold the High Holiday full house while creating a space that still feels intimate when mostly empty during the weekly services. — Published 2006.0503
	RECREATIONAL MORPHING A generation ago, the University of Cincinnati was a commonplace American commuter school riddled with surface parking lots, the campus severed by a busy thoroughfare. Despite being nestled in the heart of a large city, it felt suburban. But over the ensuing years, the university has undergone a billion-dollar makeover. — Published 2006.0426
	SACRAMENTAL RESTORATION The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament has been an impressive landmark of California's capital city of Sacramento ever since its 1889 completion. But by the turn of the 21st century, it had deteriorated and been found incapable of withstanding the next big earthquake. Now, a $34.5 million restoration has rescued this spiritual oasis in a political city. — Published 2006.0329
	CHILEAN LAKESIDE Nestled in the foliage of Lake Colico near Santiago, in Chile's Region IX, Lakeside House looks at first like a diminutive medieval castle with a stone facade. But this appearance is only the prelude to an expansive glass structure that inserts its inhabitants into the heart of nature. — Published 2006.0329
	TEN YEAR HOUSE Any telephone user knows how frustrating it is to be "on hold." When an entire design project is put on hold, however, the challenges multiply. Building codes may change, and the architects may develop new design approaches. When the Santa Monica, California firm of Pugh + Scarpa saw a residential design process stretch out to ten years, they treated it, finally, as an opportunity to inject an old project with new ideas. — Published 2006.0315
	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
	HOUSE BY UNIT A Nestled on the edge of a town in southwest Germany is the Fleischmann House. Its owner, a photographer, craved open, visually quiet surroundings to counteract the visual bombardment of his profession. One-third studio, two-thirds open-plan dwelling, the house is a sustainable abode flavored by Japanese tradition. The building plan is rectangular. Maki Kuwayama, of unit a architects, describes both the exterior architecture and interior design as "simple and clean... not so much a style as a lifestyle choice." — Published 2006.0222
	MADRID TAKES FLIGHT In 1930 Le Corbusier wrote: "the beauty of an airport is in the splendor of wide open spaces" and added that the most appropriate architecture would emphasize "sky, grass, and concrete runways." Barajas New Area Terminal (NAT) in Madrid, a joint venture between Richard Rogers Partnership (London) and Estudio Lamela (Madrid), lives up to that height of inspiration. — Published 2006.0215
	ENGINEERING KOOLHAAS To support the rapid expansion of China Central Television (CCTV), an international design competition was launched in 2002 for a centralized headquarters building in Beijing. Winning the commission was Rem Koolhaas (Office for Metropolitan Architecture, OMA), teamed with engineering firm Arup and the East China Architecture and Design Institute as both architect and engineer of record. Koolhaas imagined a building whose three dimensional form brings CCTV's staff and functions into a "continuous tube." This is part of the story of the engineering challenge. — Editor — Published 2006.0111

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