Revista

As 2021 — year two of the coronavirus pandemic — draws to a close, World-Architects takes a month-by-month look back at some of the stories that transpired over the last twelve months: awards, competitions, buildings, exhibitions, and passings.  John Hill

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced that Angela Brooks and Lawrence Scarpa of California's Brooks + Scarpa Architects are winners of the 2022 Gold Medal, while Boston's MASS Design Group wins the 2022 Architecture Firm Award. John Hill

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced that India's Balkrishna Doshi is the 2022 recipient of the Royal Gold Medal, which recognizes architects "who have had a significant influence on the advancement of architecture." John Hill

The House of Hungarian Music in Budapest's City Park will open to the public at the end of January. Sou Fujimoto's design is an undulating canopy above glass walls that is all about blending the new building into its natural setting near the city center. Ulf Meyer

Hiroshi Sugimoto's redesign of the Hirshhorn Museum's Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, has been approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, allowing the Hirshhorn to move forward with site development plans that have been years in the making. John Hill

The same week that Barbados removed Queen Elizabeth as head of state and became a republic, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced the creation of the Barbados Heritage District, featuring a slavery memorial designed by Adjaye Associates, which released a short film visualizing the... John Hill

Amount British street artist Banksy has offered to buy an empty prison in Reading, England, that features an uninterrupted 500-meter-long paintable surface, proposing to turn it into... René Ammann

Copenhill, also known as Amager Bakke, the waste-to-energy plant topped with a ski slope in Copenhagen, was judged the top prize at the annual World Architecture Festival that was held virtually this year. Here we present some images of the design by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and other winners... John Hill

The new office building at 520 West 20th Street is an adaptive reuse and extension of an old warehouse in West Chelsea, just steps from the High Line and the plethora of residential buildings that have boomed alongside the elevated park. Morris Adjmi Architects answered a few questions about... Morris Adjmi Architects

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow has unveiled SANAA's design that will revive The Hexagon, a building with six pavilions originally designed by Ivan Zholtovsky. Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa explain their design in a short film. John Hill

The 104-year-old Obama Building in Detroit's Old Redford neighborhood takes its name from a mural that used to grace the building's exterior and depicted Barack and Michelle Obama's "First Dance." The restored mural is now inside the Obama Building, which was renovated by Lorcan O'Herlihy... Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects

The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has announced that John Puttick Associates has been awarded the 2021 WMF/Knoll Modernism Prize for their preservation of the Preston Bus Station in Preston, UK. John Hill

The Sir John Soane's Museum in London has announced that the recipient of the fourth annual Soane Medal is Marina Tabassum, Bangladeshi architect and pioneer of "‘the architecture of relevance." John Hill

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has revealed the 2021 shortlist for the RIBA International Prize, the biennial award that "celebrates projects that demonstrate design excellence and social impact." John Hill

Price of a salad bowl at Swedish retailer Ikea that served as an inspiration for MVRDV's Depot Boijmans Van... René Ammann

CROSSROADS: Life in the Resilient City is a short film by Nils Clauss and Neil Dowling that tells five stories in five cities — New York, Seoul, Mumbai, Paris, Nairobi — inspired by this year's Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. John Hill

The Tampa Museum of Art has announced a $65 million expansion that is being designed by New York's WEISS/MANFREDI and will "enliven Tampa’s cultural scene and significantly alter the city skyline." John Hill

The Real Deal is reporting that the 76-story residential tower at 8 Spruce Street in Lower Manhattan designed by Frank Gehry and that goes by the name New York by Gehry is for sale, with an asking price of $850 million.  John Hill

The Aspen Art Museum has announced that My Dear Mountains, a site-specific artwork by Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce, will cover the facade of the museum's Shigeru Ban-designed building next year.

Optimist Hall is a former textile mill and pantyhose factory that was recently transformed into a food hall with indoor and outdoor seating. Many parts of the existing building outside of its structure, walls, and floors were salvaged and incorporated into the project. Square Feet Studio,... Square Feet Studio, Perkins&Will

Architect and educator Michael Sorkin, who died in March 2020 in the wave of Covid that swept through New York City, was known best as a tenacious and irascible critic of buildings and cities. His writing was also joyful, apparent in the widely circulated list of "250 Things an Architect... John Hill

City Climb, billed as "the highest open-air building ascent in the world," has opened on the top of 30 Hudson Yards in New York City, directly above Edge, an outdoor skydeck that cantilevers from the supertall skyscraper. John Hill

A new short film from Spirit of Space captures people relaxing and playing in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the post-industrial waterfront park designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates that recently won the 2021 Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize. John Hill

Architects At Play is now on display at Garagem Sul / Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon. Centered on the idea of "creating worlds," Architects At Play is the Portuguese iteration of the exhibition of the same name that originated at CIVA in Brussels two years ago. John Hill

Unveiled by Foster + Partners in late 2018 but then rejected by London mayor Sadiq Khan less than a year later, The Telegraph is reporting that the Tulip is expected to gain approval from the housing secretary, allowing the 305-meter tower to proceed. John Hill

Stockholm’s ArkDes portrays the famous Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975) as the “Architect of death and life” in a major monographic exhibition that opened on October 1, 2021, and is on display until August 28, 2022. Ulf Meyer toured Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and... Ulf Meyer

On July 28, 2004, IKEA opened a new store in New Haven, Connecticut, a store that controversially cut up Marcel Breuer's 50-year-old Pirelli Building. A decade and a half later, architect and developer Bruce Redman Becker bought the empty office building, with plans to convert it into a hotel.... Becker + Becker

Number of the estimated 8,000 architectural marvels threatened by wind erosion, war, and economic struggles in Sana’a and other ancient cities of Yemen that were René Ammann

On September 18, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York opened the exhibition Reuse, Renew, Recycle: Recent Architecture from China, which will be on display until July 4, 2022. This is the first time in the history of the museum that it has turned its attention to contemporary... Eduard Kögel

The World Architecture Festival has announced that, "In response to continuing COVID-19 travel restrictions," the 13th annual festival will "migrate its 2021 event in December to a live and interactive digital format." John Hill

Public space in China developed completely differently than it did in European cities of the twentieth century. In imperial China there was no open public space that had been fought for and defended by the citizens. Cities were shaped by streets and alleys, markets and temple courtyards, as... Eduard Kögel

The Playscape is a children’s community centre housed in a former industrial complex north of Beijing that dates to the 1970s. The design by waa (we architech anonymous) is a fantastical landscape of mounds, pipes, slides, nets, and other features depicted in a short film made by Studio FF. John Hill

The New York Times is reporting that the condo board of 432 Park Avenue, the supertall tower in Midtown Manhattan designed by Rafael Viñoly, is suing CIM Group and Macklowe Properties for $125 million in damages over "some 1,500 construction and design defects." John Hill

In June 2020, in some of the worst days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Mayor of New York City executed the Open Restaurants Program, which enabled storefront restaurants to provide seating in shelters that occupy parking spaces next to the curb. Maiden Korea is an exceptional example of one... Dash Marshall LLC

The M9 Museum of the 20th Century in Venice-Mestre is hosting draw love build, a large exhibition on thirty years of the work of Sauerbruch Hutton, the architectural practice that can boast of M9 as one of its flagship designs. Ulf Meyer visited the exhibition after its September 3rd... Ulf Meyer

L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped is a temporary artwork by the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude that is on display at Place de l'Étoile in Paris for 16 days, until October 3, 2021.  John Hill