Magazine

As 2023 draws to a close and our thoughts linger on what transpired over the last twelve months, World-Architects is taking a month-by-month look at some of the stories we covered: awards, competitions, buildings, books, exhibitions, and passings. John Hill

The white exterior of Promenade, a new commercial development in suburban Houston designed by Brooklyn's MODU, is made with “self-cooling concrete walls” developed in consultation with Transsolar — the white, corrugated surfaces aim to cool the tenants' interior and exterior spaces in the... MODU

Variations on our reality are currently on display at the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel. The curators of “What if” have given a stage to entries from architectural competitions that will never be realized. It is a look into the past that is sad, albeit briefly, but with positive... Katinka Corts

Estimated number of housing units being created by office-to-residential conversions in the United States right now: 21,000 René Ammann

Ahead of construction set to start soon, Google has released renderings of the renovation of the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago, the postmodern “spaceship” that was designed by Helmut Jahn in the 1980s and recently John Hill

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban studies have announced that Miami's Chad Oppenheim is winner of “the highest honor for architecture in the United States.” John Hill

The latest video tour by Akira Koyama, founder and owner of KEY OPERATION INC. / ARCHITECTS, goes inside the new headquarters the studio designed for Juzen Chemical Corporation near the Jintsu River in the city of Toyama. John Hill

Dogma, the Brussels-based practice of Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara, is the 2023 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award, named for the influential architecture critic and landscape designer.  John Hill

A highlight of ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, the comprehensive retrospective on Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha now on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, is Chocolate Room, a gallery covered in more than 500 sheets of paper screen-printed with chocolate. John Hill

Number of homeless kids in San Francisco, California, waiting for shelter ahead of Christmas: 363 René Ammann

Amy Hau, who began her career as artist Isamu Noguchi's assistant in 1986 and for the last eight years has been a principal at New York's WXY Architecture and Urban Design, has been appointed director of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum. John Hill

Brett Steele, who moved from the Architectural Association in London to the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture in 2017, has been named the new dean of the USC School of Architecture, a post he'll assume in February 2024. John Hill

Japanese architect Toyo Ito is donating a portion of his archive, documenting projects spanning the years 1971 and 1995, to the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal.  John Hill

Rotterdam's Studio RAP recently completed Ceramic House, a new facade on Pieter Cornelisz Hooftstraat, Amsterdam's famous designer shopping street. Algorithmic design and 3D printing combined to create a contemporary riff on traditional masonry architecture. John Hill

The latest architecture-related filmed interview from Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Louisiana Channel features Reinier de Graaf, partner at OMA in... John Hill

The Center is a combination Central Kitchen, Instructional Farm, and Education Center that supports daily food production for every student in the Oakland Unified School District in West Oakland, California. The design of The Center by Palo Alto's CAW Architects features shaded outdoor spaces,... CAW Architects

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) returned to Singapore last week, crowning the Huizhen High School in Ningbo, China, designed by Approach Design Studio and the Zhejiang University of Technology Engineering Design Group, as World Building of the Year 2023. John Hill

On display at DuSable Park as part of this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial, Parallel Histories is an installation that looks back to the Haitian-born immigrant the park is named for — and forward to the imminent creation of the park that has been more than 35 years in the making. John Hill

Can a work of architecture reveal something about its creator? Or does a building only tell stories about its occupants? In Skin of Glass, filmmaker Denise Zmekhol attempts to learn more about her father, who died when she was just fourteen, by visiting his masterpiece, the 24-story... John Hill

Approximate number of people who follow the @african_brutalism account on Instagram, a collection of photos of African modernist and brutalist architecture (with 241 posts, as of today):... René Ammann

The Tangshan Quarry Park in Nanjing, China, designed by Shanghai's Z+TStudio, has been named the winner of the 2023 Rosa Barba Casanovas International Landscape Prize, awarded at the 12th International Biennial of Landscape Architecture Biennial in Barcelona. John Hill

Lacaton & Vassal, the French architecture practice of Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, has been named the recipient of the 2023 Soane Medal, given out by Sir John Soane's Museum in London. John Hill

London's Architecture Foundation recently held its annual Book Week, featuring “fourteen of the best newly published architecture books” in roughly half-hour videos presented by their authors. Some highlights. John Hill

Atwater Canyon is an adaptive reuse project situated along a commercial corridor in the Atwater Village neighborhood of Los Angeles. Formation Association designed it so the facade retains some of its kitschy character, while the interior is bisected by a canyon-like passageway. The architects... Formation Association

Age of RMIT Village, a 12-story student housing complex in the city of Melbourne, Australia, to be knocked down and rebuilt for $264... René Ammann

More than five years in the making, An Atlas of Es Devlin opened at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City on November 18, 2023. It is the first monographic exhibition on Es Devlin, the renowned artist and set designer from London, and is accompanied by a... John Hill

The recipients of the 34th annual Piranesi Awards were announced on Saturday, November 25, 2023, during the 40th Piran Days of Architecture held in Portorož, Slovenia. John Hill

Rob Krier, the influential architect, author, and sculptor who was born in Luxembourg and spent much of his life in Germany, has died at the age of 85. John Hill

On Monday, November 20, a topping-out ceremony was held for the 1,388-foot (423m) tower designed by Foster + Parters for JPMorgan Chase, the replacement for the bank's Midtown Manhattan office tower that was torn down in 2021. John Hill

In Vladimir Belogolovsky's interview with Chris Bosse, the Sydney-based co-founder and co-director of LAVA discusses achieving more with less, combining ideas coming from nature based on principles that remain constant and technology that constantly evolves, being innovative, and pursuing a... Vladimir Belogolovsky

The new wing of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal, will open to the public in early 2024. The museum first opened to the public in 1999 in a building designed by Álvaro Siza, who also added the new wing — appropriately called the Álvaro Siza Wing. John Hill

A gateway should provide access — literally, an opening — but also present a strong image that attracts people toward it. The Roger Williams Park Gateway Center achieves both of these: acting as a point of entry for the eponymous historic park and making a bold statement with colorful... INFORM Studio

Heimtextil, the international trade fair for home and contract textiles, will take place from January 09 to 12, 2024. It is a meeting point and melting pot for the international community from the fields of design and production, architecture and interior design, expertise, trend forecasting,... Silke Bücker

The Reggio School in Madrid by Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation and the Gabriela García Márquez Library in Barcelona by SUMA Arquitectura are the joint winners of the FAD Architecture Award 2023. John Hill

Amount Canadian architect Asen Vitko spent to turn the empty 123-year-old neo-Gothic St. Mary the Virgin church in Toronto into 17 townhomes: $16 million... René Ammann

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has completed a restoration of Lever House, designed by SOM in 1952, as part of a $100 redevelopment of the Midtown Manhattan office tower by Brookfield Properties and WatermanClark. John Hill