Year in Architecture 2014

The beginning of the year is often a time of hope, of resolutions for moving forward and making change for the better. Yet 2014 started with some sad news in New York City: Diller Scofidio + Renfro determined the American Folk Art Museum, a beloved building (to architects, at least) designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and completed in 2001, could not be saved in MoMA's expansion plans; by the end of the year the eight-story building would be gone, with its white bronze façade put into storage by MoMA.

In other not-so-good news, OMA, after beating BIG in the much-hyped Miami Beach Convention Center competition in 2013, was axed from the job after a new mayor took charge and determined the plans too costly and inexpedient ... Santiago Calatrava was sued by Valencia's regional government over the repair costs of the City of Arts and Sciences complex ... Michael Graves's postmodern icon Portland Building was threatened with demolition (it's fate is still uncertain at the end of 2014) ... Le Corbusier's Chapel of Ronchamp was vandalized ... and British architect Kathryn Findlay died at the age of 60.

Select Insight: Studio Visit: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
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Things were a little sunnier in February as the spotlight was on Sochi, Russia, and the billions of dollars spent on the Winter Olympics ... the late Raimund Abraham's last building, the "House of Music" at the Raketenstation Hombroich in Germany, was completed ... the winner of the competition for the renovation and expansion of the Mies van der Rohe-designed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, was announced (a team led by Mecanoo bested the two other finalists) ... Johnston Marklee Architects' design for the Menil Drawing Institute in Texas was unveiled ... and World-Architects announced the 2013 Buildings of the Year for our American, German and Swiss platforms.

Select Insight: Lettering Large
Select Product: Formglas in Mumbai's T2

The third month of the year is when all eyes are on architecture, since it's the month when traditionally the Pritzker Architecture Prize is announced. In 2014 it was awarded to Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, coming one year after fellow countryman Toyo Ito won the prize that is considered the "Nobel Prize of architecture." After announcing the news we devoted an Insight feature to Ban's work, focusing on his use of materials: paper tubes, timber, prefab and glass. Elsewhere, the winner of the July 22 Memorial in Norway was announced ... and the Moscow Times reported that the demolition of the famous Shukhov Radio Tower was likely, though five months later the structure would be saved through landmark protection.

Select Insight: Looking Outside the Box
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Five months after three finalists were selected from the eleven architects vying for the Nobel Center in Stockholm, David Chipperfield Architects was determined the winner with their "Nobelhuset" entry ... the mixed-use designs of Norman Foster and Frank Gehry for the Battersea Power Station development were unveiled to the public ... The Philadelphia Inquirer's Inga Saffron became the sixth architecture critic to win the Pulitzer Prize ... and Pritzker Prize-winning Austrian architect Hans Hollein died on 24 April at the age of 80.

Select Insight: Architects Designing Furniture
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On the seventh of May the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) turned 25, having been founded by Phyllis Lambert as a museum and study center on that date in 1989 ... the National September 11 Memorial Museum opened to the public exactly two weeks later ... on Friday 23 May a fire broke out at the Glasgow School of Art, bruising and battering but not destroying (to paraphrase school Chair Muriel Gray) the Charles Rennie Mackintosh masterpiece ... two deaths in May: New York architect Frederic Schwartz (1951 - 2014), and legendary graphic designer Massimo Vignelli (1931 - 2014).

World-Architects had some good news in May as we published our first monograph, on Swiss firm Schneider & Schneider, and on 26 May we launched the Daily News, just in time for the following month's Venice Biennale.

Select Insight: On Architecture in Brazil
Select Product: Royal Tichelaar Makkum's Ceramic Cladding in Zwolle

Expectations were high for the Venice Biennale, with Rem Koolhaas serving as director of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition. World-Architects traveled to Venice for the preview and filed reports on the Biennale's various parts: Elements of Architecture, Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014, and Monditalia. World-Architects served as media partner for two of the collateral events: Time-Space-Existence, which was split into two exhibitions, one at Palazzo Bembo and one at Palazzo Mora; and Made in Europe, an exhibition highlighting the 25-year archive of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award.

At the end of June World-Architects traveled to Chicago to cover the 2014 AIA National Convention (we hit PechaKuch night, partied in a Jeanne Gang building, and saw too much of TRUMP) ... a couple Chicago announcements took place at that time: Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial would take place in 2015; and George Lucas decided he would build his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago, not San Francisco ... the 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić, opened ... as did David Benjamin's The Living's Hy-Fi installation in the courtyard of MoMA PS1.

Select Insight: 2014 Venice Biennale
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The Clark completed the 12-year transformation of its Williamstown campus, complete with a new Tadao Ando building, renovations by Selldorf Architects, and landscapes by Reed Hilderbrand ... Herzog & de Meuron completed the Ricola Herb Center, what is considered the largest loam building in Europe ... the Swiss duo also unveiled plans for a residential project on Manhattan's west side ... a scaled-back Mirvish+Gehry development was approved in Toronto ... Zaha Hadid also scaled back her controversial New National Stadium Japan ... Steven Holl was named a recipient of the Japan Art Association’s 2014 Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award ... MoMA appointed University of Zurich professor and freelance curator Martino Stierli as the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, succeeding Barry Bergdoll ... and the organizers of the 2012 Olympics in London reached an out-of-court settlement with Atopia over Thomas Heatherwick's design of the Olympic Cauldron.

Select Insight: Interview with David Adjaye
Select Product: GKD's Bronze Mesh in St Kilda

This time last year we described 2013 as the "Year of Hadid," given the number of buildings completed, competitions won and headlines garnered. Her presence was significantly reduced in 2014, but in August everybody was talking Hadid again when she sued The New York Review of Books and architecture critic Martin Filler over comments in a book review, specifically Fuller's quote that an "estimated one thousand laborers … have perished while constructing [Hadid's Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar] thus far." Filler responded a few days after the lawsuit was filed, apologizing for his error: "There have been no worker deaths on the Al Wakrah project and Ms Hadid's comments about Qatar that I quoted in the review had nothing to do with the Al Wakrah site or any of her projects. I regret the error."

Elsewhere, Shigeru Ban's basket-weave Aspen Art Museum opened with 24 hours of art and festivities ... Donald Trump, working with Indian real estate developer Lodha Group, unveiled his second foray into India with a 75+-story tower designed by WOHA ... the first of Al Jazeera's six "Rebel Architecture" documentaries aired ... and BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group's LEGO House broke ground in Denmark – LEGO-shaped "foundation stones" and all.

Select Insight: Zoos in the 21st Century

World-Architects visited the High Line's third section a week after it opened, snapping some photos of the park's continuation of the first two sections, its "wild" interim phase, and the adjacent Hudson Yards development under construction ... the Aga Khan Museum, designed by Fumihiko Maki, and the Ismaili Centre, designed by Charles Correa, opened in Toronto ... Irish architects Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey were named the 2015 recipients of RIBA's Royal Gold Medal ... Zumtobel Group named three winners in its biennial architecture awards ... and Nemetschek Vectorworks announced the winners in its first annual design scholarship for students in architecture, landscape, and entertainment degrees.

Select Insight: Surveying Today's Tech Landscape
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This month was a busy one for Gehry, overshadowed by his actions at a press conference in Spain when he flipped the bird at a reporter (later blaming that response on jet lag) and said, "98% of what gets built today is shit" (arguably a true statement). World-Architects focused instead on positive Gehry news: Panama's Biomuseo ("museum of biodiversity") opened on 2 October ... the Fondation Louis Vuitton opened in Paris on 27 October ... and Gehry's redesigned Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC, was finally approved by the Commission of Fine Arts.

Lots of prizes were handed out in October: the WAF Building of the Year went to The Chapel, Vietnam, designed by a21studio ... Everyman Theatre, designed by Haworth Tompkins, won the 2014 Stirling Prize ... Liyuan Library, designed by architect Li Xiaodong, won the inaugural Moriyama RAIC International Prize ... also in its first year, the MCHAP (Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize) was given to two buildings: Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by Álvaro Siza (2000-2008 winner), and 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, USA by Herzog & de Meuron (2009-2013 winner) ... the ASLA gave out its 2014 Professional Awards ... and the two-decade restoration of Alvar Aalto's Viipuri Library in Vyborg, Russia, was awarded the 2014 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize.

Also in October, MVRDV's Markthal Rotterdam opened ... and the team of OMA + OLIN won a competition to design Washington, D.C.’s first elevated park over the Anacostia River.

Select Insight: Studio Visit: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Select Product: A Digitally Drawn Facade in Frankfurt

In July, one month after George Lucas announced his Museum of Narrative Art would have a home in Chicago, he named Ma Yansong's MAD Architects as his choice for designing the building (with landscapes courtesy of Studio Gang Architects). Yansong unveiled a design in early November, with a form that rises from the landscape like an artificial mountain, culminating in an observation deck capped by a "floating" disc.

Unveilings and other news for two big-name architects: BIG's plans for Smithsonian's South Mall Campus were unveiled, and their design for Battersea Power Station's Malaysia Square were unveiled. Herzog & de Meuron's design for the National Library of Israel was unveiled, and their proposed 42-story Triangle Tower in Paris was voted down by the city council, although a supportive mayor called for a revote, leaving its future uncertain.

In New York City news: One World Trade Center opened, 13 years after the attacks of September 11 brought down the Twin Towers ... Thomas Heatherwick unveiled his design for Pier55, a new park for the Hudson River.

Select Insight: On Architectural Models
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Although only eight days have transpired in December, there are a few things to report (more will be added before New Years Day 2015, if warranted): Six finalists for the Helsinki Guggenheim were announced, coming three months after 1,715 entries were submitted for the competition (all of them were posted online in October) ... Thomas Heatherwick's "Garden Bridge" in London gained the approval of the Westminster City Council, leaving only the mayor's OK to give the £175 million project the go-ahead ... and Spain's SelgesCano was selected to the design the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion for London's Kensington Gardens.

Here are ten notable projects that are expected to be completed and open next year, documented with construction photos. Of course, things have a way of changing in architecture and construction, so please don't be upset with us if these buildings aren't finished by the end of 2015!