The best paper for reviews is the New York Times. Reading the NYTimes Achre Reviews is a good way for you all in two steps:
a) first, to see "architecture culture" up close
b) and then, to see what you should be rebelling against in your own design work
There have been some interesting reviews in recent weeks.
Steven Holl, a 63 year old NYC architect, is building a new library on the waterfront in Queens facing Manhattan. That review is HERE. Notice how the overall form of the building is fairly complex (it is a figure) and that the shape of the windows and the shape of the building are independent?
Frank Gehry, an 81 year old Los Angeles architect, has built a new concert hall in Miami. That review is HERE. A nice slide show of the project is HERE. In this project Gehry stacks a series of elements and complex figures inside and around a much larger and encompassing simple box. The windows in this project appear to be just a section of the box made transparent. That's very different than the independent figures of the windows of the Holl project.
Steven Holl is the architect of the Nelson Atkins Museum addition in Kansas City. The NYTimes review of that project (and a slide show) is HERE. That project is about making secondary spaces that surround but defer to the original new-classical museum building as the primary element of the museum. His additions are translucent glass where the original building is white marble. They both seem to glow.
Finally, Edgar Tafel, one of the very last people who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, has died at 98. Read his OBIT.
Architects really often do live a long time. Or they die early--Enric Miralles.
