Architects' Sam Carter and Dan Searle talk new music, new lyrics and playing their biggest ever UK headline show at London's Alexandra Palace.

YOU'RE PLAYING ALEXANDRA PALACE! TELL US ABOUT ITSays Sam Carter (vocals): Were going to put on the best show possible. Its one show and youve got to go all in, and were so stoked to have While She Sleeps with us as well.

Dan Searle (drums): We just want to make a massive night of it. Its a big event, a big celebration for everyone. Everyone knows what the band has been through.

Its not your average story, and theres a level of emotional investment with fans now where it really makes for a special event.

Sam: I feel like now, shows and especially big shows like Brixton have meant so much to people in the crowd as well, because its crazy that people have invested so much time in our band over these years to see us get to this level.

I think they understand how much this means to us as well, so theyre equally important to the show.

Dan: Its odd because the trajectory of our band is so unusual. We sort of pottered along for a decade at a lower level barely making ends meet. Weve persevered and to then suddenly find ourselves in this position is quite unusual.

Not many bands break through to that degree on their seventh album. Its really unusual.

AND HAVING WHILE SHE SLEEPS AND COUNTERPARTS INVOLVED MUST BE AWESOMESam: Brendon from Counterparts messaged me being like, Thank you for letting us play a 10,000 capacity show. We will never do that ever again for the rest of our career! Its so funny.

Dan: Has a hardcore band ever played at Ally Pally? Is the closest Suicidal Tendencies supporting Slipknot? I dont know, its really great that we can give a band like that the opportunity to do something like that, because its a very unique and rare thing, so thats really cool.

Sam: And for us live its like, Lets just go in. Were planning and getting carried away already, so its nice to be like, This is our one show. Focus all of the attention on that.

Its obviously a massive venue so you can do things that you couldnt normally do in smaller rooms. You can do more in that room than you can in Brixton, and Brixtons still a big venue.

ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT WHAT COMES AFTER THAT? I REMEMBER AFTER BRIXTON YOU WERE SAYING, WE CAN T BELIEVE THIS...Sam: I always do this thing and I think Dans similar in that while we were playing Brixton my mind was like, Right... next! You always have these little points where youre like, Where are we going to go from here? but with Ally Pally its like... Where do we go?!

Dan: After we played Brixton.... That was the career pinnacle off my bucket list. There was nothing beyond it, and I came offstage at Brixton... I loved the show, but afterwards I felt quite a bit empty, like, Well, thats it.

Weve kind of had to set new targets and new ambitions in order to keep moving forward. Well definitely have one eye on whats beyond that but nothing really matters unless we produce a good album.

Sam: I think from here as well show-wise, its real, actual dream-come-true shit, playing a venue that big and being the band that we are

Dan: Were incredibly insecure though, so we dont get too carried away. Itll probably only do 1,000 tickets, the promoter will lose money and never work with us again-

Sam: -these are genuine conversations we have...

Dan:Genuinely, bands live and die by their songs, so its all well and good doing Ally Pally but were dead in the water without a good album, so up until we play Ally Pally our focus is on making sure we write some good songs.

Thats the most important thing and thats where our focus is, not the shows. So well see.

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT HOW NEW MUSIC IS PROGRESSING?Dan: Weve got a lot of songs.

Sam: Its going really well. When we finished the last tour we knew that was when the writing was really going to start taking shape.

Dan and Josh have been writing, Alis been writing, its been a lot of work but it seems to be flowing very naturally and its actually fun and we almost have too much stuff.

Now were going to trim it back and work on each song individually that we have and start demoing vocals. Its really coming together.

Dan: Theres just a lot of pressure. The circumstances are unique and we feel the responsibility to... I feel like the attitude should be given that weve lost Tom just to try and make something half decent, but we kind of want to keep getting better.

But the odds are stacked against us and it almost sounds arrogant or deluded to suggest that we want to keep getting better, but that is ultimately our target.

Sam: And I think people know that we have very high standards, and if we didnt truly think it was better than All Our Gods..., it wouldnt come out.

So were very hard on ourselves and we have the standards that we set and well keep working until we smash those standards out of the park.

Dan: Were trying to not settle and not make any promises about when were going to deliver the album or anything like that, because we have enough pressure on the band already without deadlines. Weve got to get our heads down and make it happen.

DO YOU WISH YOUD HAD MORE TIME OFF OVER THE PAST YEAR?Sam: I think for all of us, a way of actually helping what was happening was being all together on tour, having a routine of being together and constantly being busy. I think now were at the point where we need some time to chill and to evaluate.

Dan: We were a little bit silly in that we just said yes to everything. Its been a bit too much. [Reading & Leeds was] our last show of the year so were fine, were right at the end and its been great, but were all pretty burnt now.

Weve said in the past that we wouldnt do this any more, but after we lost Tom we just wanted to dive right back into it, and paid the price for diving in a bit too deep.

Sam: Not that we didnt feel grateful before, but I feel like we feel very honoured to be still able to be in a band and still be playing shows.

Not many bands go through this, and no one really tells you how to deal with stuff after it, so weve just been feeling it out and weve been there for each other through periods of people finding it hard and being tired, but were at our last show and all still smiling and still having a good time.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE THE WORLD NEEDS AN ARCHITECTS ALBUM RIGHT NOW?Sam: We get asked this a lot regarding the next record because obviously of our political stance and what were about.

"I feel like theres a lot of political bands out there as well now doing that, but I think yes, obviously there will be some parts of the record where we may be talking about that sort of stuff, but I think with the things weve been through as a group of people, lyrically its going to be heading in that direction.

Dan: The state of the world is obviously not good, but dealing with personal stuff has taken the spotlight off that stuff for us a little but. Lately weve become a little bit more invested in it

Sam: I feel like for us, writing lyrics about this sort of thing and writing lyrics about what weve been through can be very cathartic and very helpful.

I think were obviously never going to turn away from our beliefs and who knows, maybe therell end up being a few songs on the record that are about it because we are in a very sorry state of affairs right now and I still find it very shocking that Donald Trump is actually the president, but theres a lot of things that we need to get off our chests and our heads and as a band explain what weve been through and also as a family and as a group of best friends.

Architectsplay London's Alexandra Palace alongsideWhile She SleepsandCounterpartsin February. Tickets are on sale now.

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Architects: Writing Lyrics About What We've Been Through Can Be Very Cathartic - ROCKSOUND.TV

One issue that the right and left agreed uponin the 2016 election? Infrastructure. The countrys roads, bridges, highways, hospitals, railways, and water systems need immediate attention. President Trump promised to spend $1 trillion to improve the situation; so far, no comprehensive plan has been releasedbut the presidentis implementing policy that will impact how these projects are designed and built. Andaccording toenvironmentalistsand architects, it might make infrastructure weaker, not stronger.

On August 15, Trump signed an executive order that shortened the permitting process for federal infrastructure projects by overhauling the environmental review process, which he believes has slowed the pace of infrastructure construction and repair. Trump also revoked an Obama-era rule mandating extra flood protections for all federal infrastructure projectsdesigned to build resilience and mitigate damage from climate change. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Texas government assess the damage from Hurricane Harvey and its flood waters, and begin to rebuild, this policy change will impact how new infrastructure is designed and to what specifications.

Obamas 2015 executive order was all about using design to reduce the risk of catastrophic damage from flooding. For example, it mandated that all projects receivingfederal funding must use the best-available climate science and hydrological data to assess flood risk and determine what the flood elevation should be. It also went into granular detail and instituted a rule that added two feet to the base flood elevation for non-critical projects and three feet to critical projects. Trumps executive order eliminates the stricter protections Obama mandated on flooding and the effects of climate change, along withshortening the environmental review process. Environmental advocates have railedagainst the order, while the oil industry has showered itwith praise.

To get a fuller understanding of the new policys implications, we spoke to members of two groups that it will directly impact:architects and sustainability experts.

To Margaret Montgomerysustainability leader at NBBJ, an architecture firm based in Seattle that designs for Amazon and Samsungand recently rebuilt the Veterans Administration Hospital, in New Orleansthe new policy is indicative of climate denial, which puts us at risk for long-term planning.

Climate change is here, no matter what any administration does to hide the facts, she says. To blindly act as if nothing is happening sets us up for facilities that fail, people that are hurt, and communities burdened with tremendous additional costs that could have been avoided. It especially damages communities that have less power and ability to react and recover when something happens.

Montgomery, like other architects who commented for this story, believes that specific regions of the country are more vulnerable to the negative consequences of Trumps policy, like communities that are more dependent on federal funding, areas that dont accept that climate change is real, and areas that are underserved. Regionsthat already have strong local climate action planstypically major cities on the coastswill continue to champion sustainable, resilient design. The areas that are at the greatest risk of infrastructure failure in a storm are often the least likely to prioritize resiliency without federal oversight.

I wasnt surprised; we all saw this coming, Mike Cavanaughsustainability leader at CannonDesign, a firm that specializes in hospitals, university campuses, and civic buildingstells Co.Design. Were definitely concerned, but at the same time weve been through this for seven to eightmonths and we know deregulation is the theme of the day.

He points out that, paradoxically, deregulation is detrimental to areas that want it the most. These are regions that already have the worst infrastructure since their economies have not supported new construction or maintenance over they yearsso they urgently need new development, which could sparkjob creation.

[Policy makers] deregulate because they want things to happen faster, Cavanaugh says. So areas without the robust economy feel like they need to get a fast-food version of development going. Thats where planning isnt going to take place properly. Theyll build critical infrastructure below the 500-year floodplain and thats where well see regretting some of these decisions made to quickly get a short-term economic boost, maybe not in 1or 5years, but in 10 or 20 years. So its places in the south, like Louisiana still rebuilding from Katrina, [that want] to accelerate oil and gas infrastructure.

In his executive order, Trump stated that unnecessary rules and regulations cause inefficient decision-making processes, stalling infrastructure development. To spark development, he claimed, the country needs fewer rules. But fewer federal rules might not make development fasterit could actually slow construction down even more, according to Phil Harrison, CEO of Perkins+Will, one of the largest architecture firms in the country.

Right now, perhaps the biggest impact is incongruence and confusion, he tells Co.Design in an email. While a number of sustainability-focused policies are being rolled back, other pre-existing federal environmental policies and executive orders, such as the Guiding Principles for Sustainable Federal Buildingswhich essentially sets requirements for federal buildings to meet the 2030 Challengeremain in effect. This lack of clarity around whats still applicable and whats not will likely lead to even greater regulatory burden, despite all promises to the contrary.

In his experience, Harrison has found his government clients to be good stewards of public funds and doesnt believe that agencies would put their multimillion dollar investments in harms way. But that might not be the case in every situation.

Since, by rolling back some of these environmental policies, the federal government is reducing its role in protecting the public interest, other groups will need to close the gap, Harrison tells Co.Design. Fortunately, communities, cities, counties, and states already have a more significant hand in public health and safety than the federal government. So for now, this rollback simply means they will need to do more.

If these municipalitiesand the stakeholders footing the billagree that climate-resilient design is a priority, changes at the federal level wont matter. However, there are dozens of climate deniers in office. While resilient design and sustainability have become part of the lingua franca for many projects today, that wasnt the case a decade ago.

In general, my biggest worry is that were just beginning to head in the right direction and gather the resources and forces and momentum to actually respond appropriately to climate change, Margaret Montgomery says. I think its unfortunate were hitting a setback. In the profession were mobilized. Well do what we can do and theres a lot we can do without being told to do it.

In many ways, architects are the first line of defense. As consultants, they are equipped to inform their clients about resilient design. The AIA Code of Ethics includes a section about how environmentally responsible design is a professional duty. CannonDesign incorporates questions about long-term resiliency at the start of its discussions with clients by plainly asking if its a priority. If not, then its architects explain why its worth considering.

Of course, this approach can only go so far when there are many stakeholders involved and many competing priorities, cost and time being two major factors. Flood-resistant design is often more expensive, since it can include things like moving mechanical systems to upper floors and significantly reinforcing structures. When it comes to staying within budget, design elements that arent necessary for day-to-day operation rarely take priority: Why spend extra money to design a structure for an event that might only happen once every 100 years?

Its really handy for us as taxpayers to say we can shave 2% or 3% off the project cost now, but at what cost in a disaster? Montgomery says about investing in resilient design. We just have the heroic sense that we can put off paying, but we cant for very long. The costs of disaster are amounting so muchand its so avoidable.

The countrys current infrastructure problem is a result of putting short-term priorities over long-term consequences. Budgets are severely limited. Building a new bridge might be put off for a few years, but funding emergency services cant be delayed, for example. The cycle repeats, and here we are. The only solution is to be aggressively proactive, and the administrations current trajectory is anything but.

Trump abandoned his plans for an infrastructure advisory councilwhich would have steered his trillion-dollar promiseafter his other councils disbanded in the wake of Charlottesville. Long-term infrastructure planning requires vision and foresight to rally taxpayers, private contractors, counties, cities, and states around projects that will take longer than a political termor annual profit reportto plan and complete. As it is now, Trumps blind need for speed policy robs tomorrow for today.

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Architects Speak Out Against Trump's Latest Executive Order - Co.Design (blog)

Renowned architect Frank Gehry was in North Adams Friday to visit what supporters hope will become the future site of the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum, an initiative being championed by Thomas Krens, former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

Gehry, who worked with Krens on the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, signed on earlier this year to design the proposed 83,000-square-foot museum. It has spectacular potential, said Gehry. I dont know of anything quite like what [Krens] has in mind.

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The proposed $65 million museum would boast some 110 continuously operating model trains and would display architectural models by some of the worlds leading architects.

There is no real architecture museum anywhere in the world, said Krens, who accompanied Gehry on the trip. People like miniaturization, and they are drawn to motion.

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The proposed museum is part of a much larger plan Krens and others are championing for Western Gateway Heritage State Park and nearby lands that includes a distillery, a commercial art storage facility, a new park, and multiple structures designed by well-known architects.

In addition to designing the model train and architecture museum, Krens said, Gehry will plan renovations for the Mohawk Theater and design a pedestrian bridge. He added that architect Jean Nouvel has agreed to design a luxury hotel, a museum devoted to American art, and a museum devoted to motorcycles. In addition, he said, architect Richard Gluckman has signed on to design the Massachusetts Museum of Time, which would be devoted to industrial clocks.

I always thought [North Adams] could become an American Florence, Gehry said. Not a wealthy mans Florence, but a normal mans Florence.

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The city of North Adams has submitted an application for a $5.4 million grant from MassWorks to support the planned railroad and architecture museum, which would be built on publicly owned land.

But Krens said the bulk of the funding for the proposed $65 million museum would come from private investors.

This is a for-profit endeavor, said Krens. We are expecting 500,000 to 700,000 annual visitors. If I get that kind of visitor-ship, were running a fairly simple museum. We expect our investors will be very handsomely rewarded.

By contrast, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, also in North Adams, logged about 165,000 visitors last year. In nearby Williamstown, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute drew 170,000 visitors in fiscal year 2016.

There appears to be regional support for the project. On Friday Krens and Gehry were joined at a press conference by former governor William F. Weld, Mayor Richard Alcombright of North Adams, and Mass MoCA director Joe Thompson. During the press conference, Weld said the project would totally transform the North Adams-Williamstown area. Thompson said it would inject a tremendous amount of life into North Adams.

Gehry, who is known for making splashy architectural statements, said he had no preconception of what its going to look like.

The architectural mandate is simple, since the landscape around us is so spectacular, said Gehry. I dont think Tom is given to excess in his program needs, so itll probably be a modestly budgeted building.

Krens said $2.5 million had already been raised for the project without formal fund-raising.

Connor Orlando

The proposed $65 million museum would boast some 110 continuously operating model trains and would display architectural models by some of the worlds leading architects.

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Architect Frank Gehry to design proposed museum - The Boston Globe - The Boston Globe

In August 2016, Architects guitarist Tom Searle, brother of drummer Dan Searle,passed away at the age of 28. Tom battled melanoma for three years, and among other things left the world with seven Architects albums between 2006 and 2016. At the time, Architects very understandably wasn't sure what the future of the band would hold, though they did keep their touring commitments after Tom's passing.

Now in a new interview with Rock Sound,vocalist Sam Carter says the band is working on a new album. More interestingly, he says Dan Searle and current touring guitarist and vocalistJosh Middleton (Sylosis) are writing the record together, possibly suggesting that Middleton could be a part of Architects officially?

Its going really well. I mean when we finished the last tour it was kind of like we knew that was when the writing was really going to start taking shape. Dan and Josh have been writing. Ali has been writing. It has been a lot of work but it seems to be flowing very naturally. Its been fun and its almost like we have too much stuff ya know? Sort of like now were gonna sort of trim it back and work on each song individually that we have now and start demoing vocals. Its really coming together.

Middleton filled in briefly with Architects in 2012 on guitar, and has been doing so once more pretty much ever since the band has been on tour after Tom's passing.

[via Rock Feed]

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ARCHITECTS Is Working On Its First New Album Since Guitarist ... - Metal Injection.net

AtThe Architects Newspaper, were plain addicted to Instagram. Sure, we love seeing Brutalist concrete through Inkwell or Ludwig filters, but theres also no better place to see where architects are getting their inspiration, how theyre documenting the built environment, andwhere theyve traveled of late.

Below, we bring you some of the best Instagrams of this past week! (Also, dont forget to check out our Instagram accounthere.)

With summer drawing to a close, its time to lay eyes on fall fun, and what better place to start than IG? AlthoughArchtober, New York AIAs October architecture bonanza, is a full month away, the Chicago Biennial opens in just two weeks. Though we didnt find studio pics of bleary-eyed architects on a work binge, surrounded by takeout containers, we did see participating firms working furiously on their installations for the second iteration of the Biennial. Check out a few projects below:

Andrew Kovacs (Archive of Affinities) debuted the colorful first drawing for his Biennial model on Instagram yesterday.

And at Bureau Spectacular, model-making is underway.

Meanwhile,CAMESgibson is hard at work on some sunshine.

Well done.

A post shared by CAMESgibson (@camesgibson) on Aug 17, 2017 at 1:15pm PDT

On the other side of the world, OMA is showing off pics of the nearly-completeLab City, an engineering school in Paris.

And finally, just look at 3XNs magnificent staircase forUN City Copenhagen. Its sinuous curves respond to the dialogue and connection the UN fosters, but it also resembles a writhing snake coated in chocolate shell. (Theres a technical term for that, right?)

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An ophidian staircase, Chicago Biennial prep, and other updates from the architects of Instagram - The Architect's Newspaper

This is the third column of Practice Values, abi-monthly series by architect andtechnologistPhil Bernstein. The columnfocuses on the evolving role of thearchitect at the intersection of design and construction, including subjects such as alternative delivery systems and value generation. Bernstein was formerly vice president at Autodesk and now teaches at theYale School of Architecture.

Disabling (Professional) Expertise

In 1977, social critic Ivan Illich argued that the mid-20th century should be named The Age of Disabling Professions, asking whether if this age, when needs were shaped by professional design, will be remembered with a smile or with a curse. Illichs skepticism about the importance and role of doctors, lawyers, and architects was an inflection point in the ascendance of the professional class that began with the industrialization of America. What followed for architectswho, at just about the same time as Illichs query, were subjected to the emergence of alternative forms of project delivery (like design-build), new incumbents treading on our turf (like construction managers), and influence from extrinsic forces (like lawyers and insurance companies)was several decades of existential angst with which we are all familiar.

Forty years later, there are more architects, and more work for us, than everyet the existential angst remains: If recessions, construction managers, and liability insurance underwriters didnt manage to dismantle the profession, now what? Answering that question comes the Oxford duo of Richard and Daniel Susskind and their 2015 tome The Future of the Professions, an exhaustive examination of how the broad influences of digital technology may be the end-of-times challenge to the professional class so desired by Illich. The Susskinds argue that it will not be a loss of faith in architects, lawyers, and accountants, but rather the broad democratization of expertise through big data and data sharing, expert systems, and automation that will transform the work of human experts. As knowledge work begins the same transfiguration in the world of computation that manufacturing experienced with machine automation, the bespoke relationships curated by architects with clients will be circumvented by widely accessible knowledge systems, architects will no longer be the anointed gatekeepers of professional knowledge or judgment, and the increasing complexity of building problems will face economic pressures demanding that architects provide even more service for less money. Large swaths of professional services will be routinized by computers, further decomposing those services into discrete automated tasks. New systems of design and construction delivery will reconstitute from traditional professional scopes disintermediated by algorithms and big data.

But if the essential value of architects is our ability to designsee the world creatively, synthesize disparate information, generate new and innovative ideasarent we safe from this digital onslaught? Not so fast, according to the Susskinds, who ask, To what problem is judgment the solution? They cite the 60 million disputes on eBay resolved with automated mediation (and no lawyers), medical advice dispensed by WebMD on smart phones around the world, or the online tax-preparation software used by millions of taxpayers each year; many of these folks would have never dreamt of hiring a lawyer or an accountant. And this is the core of their argument: Technology will democratize expertise, making it available to many more recipients than could ever by curated by 1:1 professional relationships.

Since society created the professional class to codify and distribute professional expertise, shouldnt this trend to democratization be embraced? And since architects design a small percentage of the built environment, isnt this trend, in theory, all for the good? Should architects cede our authority to algorithms, its likely well lose all control and influence over the forces that often reduce great design aspirations to mediocre results. It is difficult to argue, however, that the changes that automation and the resulting process innovation that the Susskinds predict will put great pressure on the role of our profession while simultaneously eliminating the need for broad swaths of production work like working drawings.

How to respond? As far back as Illichs original provocation, architects have decried our diminishing influence while embracing new technologies and their opportunities with at best mild enthusiasm and at worst outright hostility. This wave of automation-innovation will be much more profound than CAD or even BIM. Perhaps it offers a chance to deeply examine the value proposition of architecture and architects, and, using our skills, to design our roles in the future supported and accelerated by new technology rather than, once again, threatened by it.

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Thanks to big data, all architects will face a major professional crossroads bigger than CAD or BIM - The Architect's Newspaper

Architects Lorcan OHerlihy Architects (LOHA) and owner National Construction have released renderings for a new 30-unit condominium complex in West Hollywood that features cantilevered corners, faceted facades, and perforated metal panel and wood cladding.

The project features faceted facades with overhanging corners and various levels of porosity. (Courtesy Lorcan OHerlihy Architects)

The four-story complex at 1030 N. Kings Road is located in the same neighborhood as the firms much-heralded Habitat 825 complex.

1030 N. Kings Road is designed to break down in scale as it rises and features a series of geometric cut-outs along its facades. The cut-outs establish viewsheds for individual units while also allowing for natural daylight to flood into the buildings common areas, which include a shared gym and communal seating spaces. The cut-outs also contain screened outdoor balconies and terraces accessible to building units. The developments two large amenity spaces are located along the buildings most prominent facades, which are wrapped in the various cladding types.

The condominium complex corridors feature naturally-lit corridors illuminated by skylights and courtyard cutouts. (Courtesy Lorcan OHerlihy Architects)

Renderings for the project depict a faceted housing block with large windows, a double-height entry lobby, and well-lit corridors.

Lorcan OHerlihy Architects has released renderings for a new 30-unit condominium complex in Los Angeles. (Courtesy Lorcan OHerlihy Architects)

The 41,500-square-foot project comes as LOHA expands its footprint in the L.As bustling multifamily housing sector. The firm recently completed work on a starburst-shaped apartment complex in Los Angeles.

In addition to moving forward on the 1030 N. Kings Road project, Lorcan OHerlihy will also be presenting at ANs Facades+ conference in Los Angeles this October. See the Facades+websitefor more information.

The project is currently under construction and is expected to be completed in mid- to late-2018.

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Renderings revealed for LOHA's faceted 30-unit condominium complex in West Hollywood - The Architect's Newspaper

COOKFOX, Olson Kundig, Gensler, Kohn Pederson Fox Associates (KPF), and Morris Adjmi Architects, have all been named as some of the nine architects spearheading Water Street Tampa, the$3 billion project that will give the Florida city a skyline.

Spread over nearly50 acres, 18 buildings comprise the scheme which is being backed by Strategic Property Partnersa consortium between Jeff Vinik, who owns NHLs Tampa Bay Lightning, and Bill Gatess Cascade Investment. Though first announced in early July this year, more details, such as the architects involved, have been released.

Heres the $3 billion project that will give Tampa a skyline. Pictured here: A rendering of Water Street Tampa shows what the city will look like in less than 10 years. (Courtesy Strategic Property Partners)

Four New York firms are in on the act.COOKFOX will be designing two buildings: an office and a residential block which will sit atop some retail. KPF has been commissioned for a series of apartments and condominiums which will reside above some retail and a grocery store.Morris Adjmi Architects has scooped arguably the largest commission: a157-key five-star hotel, a range of luxury condos, more apartments, and retail.Gensler, meanwhile, will be behind twooffice over retail projects.

Seattle firmOlson Kundig is also doing a similar project andBaker Barrios, from Orlando, are to design a central cooling facility.Greenery is coming via Tampa-based Alfonso Architects, who are fronting the redevelopment vision for the citys Channelside with a new public park, waterfront shops, and living units. Another Flordian firm, Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Associates from Coral Gables, are designing a 500-key hotel. Finally, New Haven, Connecticut practice Pickard Chilton are behind three projects that will office and residential over retail.

When finished, Water Street Tampa will boast more than two million square feet of offices. In doing so, the scheme will bring the first new office towers Downtown Tampa has seen in almost 25 years. Located on theGarrison Channel and Hillsborough Bay, the project, according to a press release, intends to bridge the citys cultural landmarks, including the Tampa Convention Center, Amalie Arena (where the Tampa Bay Lightning play), Tampa Bay History Center, and Florida Aquarium. This will be achieved via an array of public parks and spaces that lead to the waterfront where the Tampa Riverwalk, and five-mile-long Bayshore path, can be found.

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COOKFOX, Olson Kundig, Morris Adjmi, and KPF are among the firms reshaping Tampa's Downtown - The Architect's Newspaper

Dennis Drabelle, a former contributing editor of Book World, writes frequently on environmental issues.

As Ken Burns put it in the subtitle of his 2009 documentary on the national parks, they are Americas best idea. In Wonderlandscape, an energetic and insightful new book on Yellowstone, journalist John Clayton shows that, at least as applied to Americas first national park, the best idea has been an evolving one.

Several men claimed to have hatched the notion of designating federal land in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as a national park. The semiofficial credit the nod given by Yellowstones influential superintendent Horace Albright at the parks 50th birthday party in 1922 went to attorney Cornelius Hedges. In 1870, Hedges took part in a fireside conversation in which several other well-heeled sightseers discussed filing legal claims to the canyons and geysers they had been exploring. As reported by a witness, Hedges argued that there ought to be no private ownership of any portion of that region, but that the whole of it ought to be set apart as a great National Park. He may have had in mind the counterexample of Niagara Falls, its environs already reduced to an international eyesore by commercial greed.

[National Park Service turns 100, and some sites are showing their age]

Clayton calls this anecdote the national parks creation myth. Today many historians believe that Hedges was merely articulating a commonly held view, a previously expressed impulse, to somehow honor this magical land. Two years after Hedgess recommendation, at any rate, Yellowstone National Park was up and running.

Advancing his insight that the story of Yellowstone is the story of what America wants from Yellowstone, Clayton identifies boosting the national ego as a powerful early desire. Scenic marvels such as Yellowstone set the United States apart from gently picturesque Europe. America is special, the reasoning went, because of its wondrous landscapes.

Artists and architects gravitated to Yellowstone with something more personal in mind: challenges and fame. A year before the parks establishment, a painter named Thomas Moran had come into his own there. His watercolors, shipped back to Washington and enlisted in the cause, gave lawmakers a sense of the incomparable scenery they were being asked to save from spoliation by private enterprise. (Morans eventual masterpiece in oil, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, graces the Wonderlandscape cover.)

In a bravura chapter on the parks architecture, Clayton focuses on Old Faithful Inn, designed by Robert Reamer. Although multistory lobbies are quite common today, the author observes, the inns was a huge innovation in 1903: a space so tall and airy that it seemed to be both indoors and outdoors at the same time. So admired was Reamers design that it fathered a new style, known as National Park Service Rustic.

Seven decades after Morans visit, during World War II, another visual artist, the photographer Ansel Adams, arrived with a commission from the federal government and a private agenda. Yellowstone, Adams believed, was being sold to the public as a pleasure ground, whereas to him it was more like a church. Leaving humans out of his shots, he believed that the spiritual validity of wild, beautiful places arose in part from our simplicity of experience in them. That usually meant sacrificing comforts and undergoing difficulties. If this sounds elitist, the pendulum swung the other way a generation later, with the broadcast of the 1960s animated TV series The Yogi Bear Show. Fans of the program flocked to Yellowstone to see the inspiration for Yogis Jellystone. The cartoon bruin, Clayton writes, secured [Yellowstone] for the masses.

By then the masses tended to live in suburbia; accordingly, the Park Service had embarked on Mission 66, a system-wide infrastructure upgrade to make its holdings more car-friendly. At Yellowstone, this entailed the razing of an old hotel and its replacement by motel-style accommodations in an uninspiring location about a mile away. The change, Clayton dryly notes, was poorly received.

Old Faithful and other thermal features are the parks signature attractions, but Clayton fails to do them justice. After reminding us that the park contains nearly one-quarter of all the geysers in the world, he says little about what spawned them. Geologists, too, have wanted something from Yellowstone scientific understanding and Clayton would have done well to tag along with one of them as he investigated the parks innards.

[We must recommit to national parks, Americas cathedrals]

On the other hand, I like the authors frankness. Yellowstone, he admits, is not an illimitable cornucopia of wild splendor. Although [the park] unfolds vast quantities of empty backcountry, much of it is monotonous lodgepole-pine forest. If youre looking for a steady stream of awe-inspiring solitude, he adds, you might try Glacier National Park instead.

Clayton closes his book with a discussion of what might eventually happen to Yellowstone: an eruption of the supervolcano beneath it, a blowup that might conceivably unleash 8,000 times the fury of Mount St. Helens in 1980. The growing concern about such a cataclysm, the author suggests, reflects todays zombie apocalypse mentality. In fairness to the zombies, it should be noted that, in June, tremors felt in Montana suggested that the supervolcano might be waking up from its long nap. In any event, supervolcanic fears nicely round out Claytons thesis that throughout its history, Yellowstone has long been both a showcase of natural extravagance and a cultural construct.

Wonderlandscape

Yellowstone National Park and the Evolution of an American Cultural Icon

By John Clayton

Pegasus. 285 pp. $27.95

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Yellowstone as a magical land and backdrop for artists and architects - Washington Post

Drawing on the 2014 Case Study House, a new modern showpiece adapts for another partners family.

WHEN YOU BUILD a Case Study home, you pretty much are obligated to study it. (Otherwise, you know, youd just call it a home.)

Youre not obligated to live there, of course, but the architectural partners of BUILD LLC have discovered that design is best studied from the inside. Kevin Eckert and his family lived in BUILDs 2014 Case Study House, a light and bright living laboratory in Seattles Roosevelt neighborhood, and now its Andrew van Leeuwens turn.

His familys 2016 Case Study House is, again, a deliberately, distinctly modern home in an established neighborhood (Tangletown this time).

Established neighbors might have noticed.

The house was a little polarizing, van Leeuwen says. But everybodys been kind and honest. One couple walked by, and you could tell what was coming. They asked me first: What do you think? I said, Its coming along. Dare I ask what you think? They said: We hear youre very nice people. I appreciate the honesty. As a modern architect, Im fully aware its not for everybody.

Along with serving as a showcase for clients, this particular modern home is designed to work for this particular modern family: van Leeuwen lives here with his wife, Angela Nelson; their 6-year-old son, Parker; daughter Kennedy, 4; and Nelsons mother, Helen. She lives in a fully independent, but beautifully integrated, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) on the lower level.

The primary motivations for the home were to bring three generations of family together and provide sensible density to the city, van Leeuwen says. Seattle is so expensive; solutions are more and more important. The fact that we put an apartment in this house for minimal additional construction costs is a huge deal. Its been a paradigm shift for my little family, and its been pretty awesome to see daily interaction between grandchildren and grandparent.

New element number one, then: sweet success from the get-go. Elsewhere, design decisions informed by the 2014 home continue to evolve:

Please enjoy our stairs: While the open-tread staircase served as an interior focal point in the 2014 home, We wanted to take this design element a step further and share it with the neighborhood, van Leeuwen says. A striking geometry is created when viewed in elevation, and the CSH2016 allows the passer-by to view the entire stair column illuminated at night via wall-mounted tread lights.

Speaking of lights: The 2014 home designated space in the common area for a desk, but van Leeuwens devotes an entire room to a fully enclosed office and art studio. We took an honest look at our lifestyle and, for better or worse, concluded that we work most evenings, he says (Nelson works for Microsoft). Its a space we enjoy close enough to keep an eye on our kids, plus a connection with the neighborhood: The office is perched above the entry and acts as a beacon with its illuminated floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Its a bit of an aquarium, a glowing corner at night.

Way more wood: Cedar was an element, but not a huge element, in 2014. Here, though, We wanted to think of the cedar as a volume; it wraps the entry and office beacon above, van Leeuwen says. Because the cedar siding defines these volumes, it extends inside, flanking the stairway and enclosing the office. The glowing cedar becomes a design feature both inside and out.

Back to the drawing board: Eckerts 2014 kitchen welcomed natural limestone countertops lots of personality, van Leeuwen says, but also lots of weathering and staining. Kevins kids are older, he says. They dont have magic-marker parties anymore. We needed something bulletproof. To the rescue: polished Cascade White PentalQuartz.

Not a lot of lot: The 2014 site had room for a backyard artist studio, but van Leeuwens oddly shaped lot, at just 4,300 square feet, was considerably more challenging. Fitting this house on this site was like squeezing a square peg into a rhombus hole, he says. The footprint created slivers, so landscape architect Shaney Clemmons shaped one into an outdoor room of hardscapes and garden spaces, with a vertical green wall. Specific plants and arrangements were chosen to encourage interaction between our children and their grandmother: picking strawberries on the vertical garden, harvesting blueberries at the retaining wall and growing food in the edible garden, van Leeuwen says.

Sometimes, as with the inverted floor plan, the clearest lesson was: Lets do that again. The 2014 and 2016 Case Study homes both have awesome hatch-accessed rooftop decks, slatted cabinetry in the living areas, interior glass sliding doors, grasscrete driveways, and plane- and quarter-sawn oak hardwood floors.

Its validating, van Leeuwen says. There is an answer to how we design. If you take all the considerations of both houses, were getting very close to the solution.

The experiment continues in Ballard with BUILDs newest living laboratory, Case Study House 2017: It will have a detached ADU with its own garage.

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BUILD architects live and learn - Seattle Times