Year in Architecture 2021

• We remembered Swiss architect Luigi Snozzi, who died at the end of December, 2020.
• SOM's Moynihan Train Hall at Pennsylvania Station opened on the first day of 2021; we visited the building and its artworks.
• Munich's DETAIL magazine turned 60.
• Blair Kamin stepped down from his nearly thirty-year post as architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune.
• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled THE LINE, a "170-kilometer revolution in urban living."
• A third suicide shuttered Thomas Heatherwick's The Vessel at Hudson Yards in New York City. (see also July)
• London's Design Museum named the "Teeter-Totter Wall," a temporary installation at the US-Mexico border, the Beazley Design of the Year 2020.
• Kate Macintosh and Lesley Lokko were named this year’s recipients of the Jane Drew Prize and Ada Louise Huxtable Prize, respectively.
• France's cultural minister announced the Centre Pompidou would close for four years (2023–27) for renovations.
• DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany 2021 was awarded to MVRDV and N-V-O Nuyken von Oefele Architekten for WERK12.

​Selected Found: Věčná loviště (Hunting Grounds), a pet crematorium inserted into an old military bunker near Prague, designed by architect Petr Hájek.

Selected Insight: Formgiving, the latest monograph by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and the third in a trilogy produced by Taschen in the context of major exhibitions on BIG.
 

• JGMA's Esperanza Wellness Campus on Chicago's South Side was voted by our readers as 2020 US Building of the Year.
• Amazon unveiled The Helix, designed by NBBJ as the centerpiece of the tech company's new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia.
• The Obama Foundation cleared one last legal hurdle, paving the way for construction to start on the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side.
• The Hudson River Park Trust unveiled plans for Gansevoort Peninsula, designed by James Corner Field Operations and just steps from the High Line.
• A team led by James Corner Field Operations won the competition to transform an unused railway in London into the Camden Highline.
• London's National Gallery announced plans that include reconfiguring parts of The Sainsbury Wing, designed in 1991 by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. (see also July)
• Mario Cucinella Architects and WASP developed TECLA, a project that addresses the housing crisis through 3D printing.
• Diller Scofidio + Renfro's competition-winning design for the Centre for Music at the Barbican in London was cancelled.
• US President Joe Biden revoked the controversial executive order, "Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture," that former President Donald Trump signed in December, 2020.
• The first phase of the Underline, the transformation of the space beneath Miami’s MetroRail into a park, trail, and art destination, opened on February 26.

​Selected Found: A manga biography on architect Denise Scott Brown, by artist Hiroki Otsuka for the Vilcek Foundation.

Selected Insights: Two book reviews: Japan: Nation Building Nature by Joachim Nijs; and the Atlas of Digital Architecture: Terminology, Concepts, Methods, Tools, Examples, Phenomena.
 

• MARABAR, Elyn Zimmerman's site-specific installation in Washington, DC, was saved from demolition.
• Hugh Newell Jacobsen, an architect based in Washington, DC, died on March 4 — exactly one week shy of his 92nd birthday.
• La Biennale di Venezia announced that Lina Bo Bardi would be given a Special Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in memoriam.
• Aldo Rossi: The Architect and the Cities opened on March 10 at MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome.
• When Practice Becomes Form: Carpentry Tools from Japan, with an exhibition design by Sou Fujimoto, opened on March 11 at Japan Society in New York City.
• French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal were chosen as laureates of the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize
• Indian architect Bijoy Jain and his office, Studio Mumbai, won the 14th Alvar Aalto Medal.
• On March 20, Louis Vuitton opened its transformed Ginza Naminki store in Tokyo, designed by Jun Aoki and Peter Marino.
• Francis Kéré was named the recipient of the 2021 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture.
• The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) gave the 2021 RAIC Gold Medal to architects Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe.

​Selected Found: Architect Junya Ishigami's Restaurant Noel, a series of cave-like spaces seemingly carved into the earth.

Selected Insight: Richard Saul Wurman on Louis I. Kahn and the return of The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn after nearly 60 years.
 

• Vienna's Coop Himmelb(l)au won an international competition to design the SCA Arena and Park in St. Petersburg.
• Paris's Bruther, the firm of Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot, won the seventh biennial Swiss Architectural Award.
• The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art revealed plans for a major expansion by Safdie Architects, the architect of its original museum.
• Genevese architect/landscape architect Georges Descombes was named one of three recipients of the Prix Meret Oppenheim.
• Fundació Enric Miralles launched MIRALLES, a series of exhibitions and events celebrating the life of Enric Miralles, the Catalan architect who died in 2000.
• Basel's Christ & Gantenbein and Barcelona's Harquitectes won the international competition to extend MACBA, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.
• Olafur Eliasson's immersive Life installation opened on April 16 at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland.
• The American Institute of Architects and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) revealed the ten winning projects in the 2021 COTE Top Ten.
• La Biennale di Venezia announced Spanish architect Rafael Moneo as recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
• David Chipperfield Architects' refurbishment of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin was completed, marked by a virtual handover of the keys on April 29.

​Selected Found: At Home: Projects for Contemporary Housing at Garagem Sul / Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon.

Selected Insight: An interview with architect Saikal Zhunushova, "the young woman with the low-tech approach."
 

• The American Institute of Architects announced that Robert Ivy would retire after ten years as the AIA's Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer.
• The State of Illinois put Helmut Jahn's James R. Thompson Center in Chicago's Loop up for sale, raising the specter of its potential demolition and renewing calls to protect it.
• A team led by Milan Ingegneria, with architecture by Labics and Fabio Fumagalli, won a competition to design and build a retractable floor at the Colosseum in Rome.
• Architect Helmut Jahn died on Saturday, May 8, at the age of 81, when he was struck by two cars while riding his bicycle west of Chicago.
• M. Arthur Gensler, Jr., founder of the global architecture and interior design firm Gensler, died on Monday, May 10, at the age of 85.
• Terence Riley, architect and former MoMA curator, died at the age of 66.
• The Nakagin Capsule Tower, designed by Kisho Kurokawa and built in 1972, made headlines once again, with reports of owners selling their units and moving out signaling its imminent demolition.
• Will Bruder's Burton Barr Phoenix Central Library was awarded the 2021 Twenty-five Year Award.
• Thomas Heatherwick's Little Island, formerly known as Pier 55, opened to the public on Friday, May 21.
• Canadian landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander died on Saturday, May 22, about a month shy of her 100th birthday.
• Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha died on Sunday, May 23, at the age of 92.

​Selected Found: Scenes from the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened to the public on May 22.

Selected Insight: Susanna Koeberle's review of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, How will we live together?, curated by Hashim Sarkis.
 

• The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York, renovated by Mecanoo and Beyer Blinder Belle, celebrated its reopening on June 1.
• Plans to open an outpost of the Pompidou in Jersey City, New Jersey, were revealed for a city-owned building that will be renovated by OMA New York.
• The 20th Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Johannesburg's Counterspace, opened to the public on June 11th, following a one-year pandemic-induced delay.
• German architect Gottfried Böhm, recipient of the 1986 Pritzker Architecture Prize, died on Wednesday, June 9, at the age of 101.
• MoMA named Carson Chan the inaugural director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment.
• Vectorworks announced the winners of its annual scholarships for students in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, and entertainment.
• Richard Meier & Partners Architects changed its name to Meier Partners, in an attempt to get past the sexual harassment charges leveled at Richard Meier in 2018.
• To pay for restoration work for Puppy, the Jeff Koons sculpture in front of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the museum asked the public to fund the work through donations.
• The tower designed by Frank Gehry for the LUMA Foundation opened in Arles, France.
• The Domus Aurea, Emperor Nero's first-century palace, opened to the public on June 23 with a new entrance designed by Stefano Boeri.

​Selected Found: "Vitra in Bloom," the perennial garden added by Piet Oudolf to the campus of Vitra in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Selected Insight: The five-part D-A-CH series: "Between Emergency and Opportunity," "Planning Means Asking What Kind of Society We Want to Live In," "Emotional Buildings Are Needed," "Explaining, Mediating, Selling," and "The Return of the Inventors."
 

• Alison Killing, an architect and geospatial analyst, was part of a team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.
• Diller Scofidio + Renfro's pedestrian bridge at their US Olympic Museum in Colorado opened on July 1, one year after the museum opened to the public.
• Plans were revealed to save some of capsules from Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower, refurbish them, and donate them to museums in and beyond Japan.
• London's National Gallery selected a team led by Selldorf Architects to work on "a suite of capital projects" that includes remodeling The Sainsbury Wing. (see also February)
• Glenstone Museum released renderings of a new building designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners that will house a major sculpture by Richard Serra.
• The Royal Institute of British Architects announced the 16 projects from 11 countries receiving 2021 International Awards for Excellence.
• MVRDV's Marble Arch Mound opened in London, not to fanfare, but to derision from visitors who criticized it for failing to meet expectations.
• After reopening in May (see January), The Vessel in Hudson Yards closed following a fourth suicide, renewing calls to install higher barriers on Thomas Heatherwick's accessible sculpture.

​Selected Found: A list of ten "Summer Reads."

Selected Insight: "Alone among Men: Astra Zarina in Berlin" by Eduard Kögel.
 

• Plans for the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot, were submitted for planning approval, accompanied by updated renderings.
• Construction commenced on a 34-story tower designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop for Columbia University, across the street from its Piano-designed Manhattanville campus.
• Indian architect Anupama Kundoo was named the 2021 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award.
• New Middles, the third Exhibit Columbus exhibition, opened on Saturday, August 21.
• The Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) revealed plans for an expansion to its iconic building designed by Lina Bo Bardi.
• The awards for participation in the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, How will we live together?, and for the best national pavilions were announced on Monday, August 30.

​Selected Found: NEBULOSUS, an installation of vapor clouds created by AUTHOS.ch and Stella Speziali for the third iteration of Design Biennale Zurich.

Selected Insight: Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes' pedestrian promenade in Bastia, a "masterpiece of urban design and engineering."
 

• New York's Cooper Hewitt announced the winners of the 2021 National Design Awards.
• Jörg Schlaich, of Stuttgart's schlaich bergermann partner, died on September 4 at the age of 86.
• We presented a visual tour of the World Trade Center on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
• Australian architect Glenn Murcutt was named a recipient of the Japan Art Association’s 2021 Praemium Imperiale International Arts Award.
• Design District opened on the Greenwich Peninsula, with a campus of sixteen buildings designed by some big-name architects.
• The 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial opened its three-month run on September 17, activating some vacant lots in a half-dozen neighborhoods through site-specific architectural projects.
• Charles Jenck's Cosmic House opened to the public on Friday, September 24, two years after the famed architectural historian and landscape designer died.
• L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, a temporary artwork by the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, opened in Paris on September 18. 
• The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, opened to the public on September 30.
• Residents of 432 Park Avenue, the supertall tower designed by Rafael Viñoly, sued the building's developer over "some 1,500 construction and design defects."

​Selected Found: The Fourth Chamber, Hiroshi Sambuichi's expansion of the Cisternerne in Copenhagen.

Selected Insight: Draw love build, a large exhibition on Sauerbruch Hutton at the M9 Museum outside Venice.
 

• Expo 2020 opened to the public in Dubai on October 1, 2021, one year behind schedule and with a lot of "short attention span architecture."
• Architect of Death and Life, a major monographic exhibition on Sigurd Lewerentz, opened at ArkDes on October 1.
• The Brooklyn Bridge Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, was named the winner of the 2021 Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize.
• The third Obel Award, the international prize for architectural achievement presented annually by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation, was given to the 15-Minute City.
• The inauguration of the new Aarhus School of Architecture was held on October 4.
• The first phase of OMA's reconfigured Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) department store opened its doors.
• Julie Bargmann won the inaugural Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial award initiated by The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
• Grafton Architects' Town House for Kingston University London was named the 25th RIBA Stirling Prize winner.
• Renderings were released for a proposed 1,500-foot tower designed by the firm of David Adjaye for a parcel near New York's Hudson Yards.
• In Hudson Yards, just steps from the closed Vessel, a "thrill experience" called City Climb opened on the top of 30 Hudson Yards.

​Selected Found: Momentum of Light, an inspiring illustrated book documenting the travels of Iwan Baan and Francis Kéré in Burkina Faso.

Selected Insight: Annie Coggan's The Book of Errors, a "playful exploration of preservation."
 

• Plans for a 4,500-bed dormitory at UC Santa Barbara designed by 97-year-old billionaire Charles Munger drew criticism over the fact only 6% of the dorm rooms would have windows.
• The Aspen Art Museum announced that a site-specific artwork by Gaetano Pesce will cover the facade of the museum's Shigeru Ban-designed building next year.
• The tower at 8 Spruce Street in Lower Manhattan designed by Frank Gehry was listed for $850 million.
• Norman Foster's 305-meter-tall Tulip tower was rejected over its "unsustainable concept" and its visual impact on heritage buildings.
• Herzog & de Meuron's much anticipated M+ opened to the public on Friday, November 12, in Hong Kong.
• On November 13, the Holcim Foundation announced the winners of the Global Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction.
• Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum was named the fourth recipient of the Soane Medal, given out annually by the Sir John Soane's Museum in London.
• John Puttick Associates' preservation of the Preston Bus Station in England won the 2021 WMF/Knoll Modernism Prize.
• Never Demolish, the installation of "Transformation of 530 Dwellings in the Grand Parc Bordeaux" opened at the Barcelona Pavilion on November 26.
• Influential artist and designer Virgil Abloh died of cancer at the age of 41.

​Selected Found: "A building that's also a book," the recently completed Babyn Yar Synagogue in Kyiv, Ukraine, designed by Manuel Herz.

Selected Insight: Engineer Mike Schlaich on the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe.
 

• Madrid's renovated Plaza de España, designed by architects Fernando Porras-Isla, Lorenzo Fernández-Ordoñez, and Aránzazu La Casta, opened to the public.
• The seventh MPavilion, MAP studio's Lightcatcher, opened in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens.
• The recipients of the 32nd annual Piranesi Awards were announced, with the highest award going to Saint Gellért Hall by Építész Stúdió.
• The same week that Barbados became a republic, it announced the creation a slavery memorial designed by Adjaye Associates.
• Hiroshi Sugimoto's redesign of the Hirshhorn Museum's Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, was approved by the National Capital Planning Commission.
• BIG's Copenhill was named World Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival, held virtually over the first few days of the month.
• Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s GES-2 House of Culture opened in Moscow on December 4.
• The Royal Institute of British Architects named India's Balkrishna Doshi the 2022 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal.
• And across the Atlantic, the American Institute of American Architects named Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpa winners of the 2022 Gold Medal.
• Lesley Lokko was chosen to curate the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.
• Helmut Jahn's Thompson Center was saved from the wrecking ball.
• British architect Richard Rogers, of Pompidou and Lloyd's of London fame, died at the age of 88.

​Selected Found: Photos of Sou Fujimoto's completed House of Hungarian Music in Budapest.

Selected Insight: An interview with timber construction entrepreneur Katharina Lehmann.