HAVANA — Kathleen Murphy Skolnik gasped one recent morning as she gazed up into the stairwell of a 1939 downtown apartment building here and pointed at the chevron pattern in the ironwork, at the unpolished rust-pink marble and a simple alcove on the stairway crowned by a stepped arch. “It’s so beautiful,” said Skolnik, an [...]
Architectural Victory in Afghanistan
August 5, 2012 | Posted by
Kabul, Afghanistan doesn’t immediately spring to mind when one thinks of centers for forward-thinking architectural design. More likely we think of unforgiving mountainous terrain pock-marked with terrorist-concealing caves, so it was quite a surprise to see a stunning design concept paying homage to the country’s heritage in a progressive, beautiful way. The design concept for [...]
Modern Take on Buddhist Temple Incorporates Mobius Strip, Reflects Idea of Reincarnation
July 12, 2012 | Posted by
The Buddhist temple soon to be built in Taichang, China, takes shape of a Mobius ring, reflecting the basic principles of Buddhism and the idea of reincarnation. With the aid of digital design and fabrication techniques, the spatial logic of the building is rooted in the idea of “formlessness”. The architecture is interpreted as a [...]
Innovative North Atlanta High School is a National Model for High-Tech School Design
June 19, 2012 | Posted by
There’s little that comes easy to the architects turning parking lots into playing fields and cubicles into classrooms to transform an 11-story office building in north Atlanta into a cutting-edge high school. One of the first challenges: Rigging the bank of eight elevators so it wouldn’t take 45 minutes to load all of the 2,400 [...]
