Magazine

The Tainan Public Library, designed by Dutch firm Mecanoo and Taiwan's MAYU architects, opened last month in Tainan City, in southern Taiwan. John Hill

A team led by James Corner Field Operations, the landscape architecture firm behind New York's High Line, has won the competition to transform an unused railway in London into the Camden Highline. John Hill

London's National Gallery has announced its "NG200" plans, which include reconfiguring parts of The Sainsbury Wing, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in 1991, leading up to the museum's 2024 bicentennial. John Hill

Anime Architecture, the new book from curator Stefan Riekeles, presents hundreds of backgrounds from eight classics of Japanese animation. The stunning book immerses readers into the "imagined worlds and endless megacities" of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Metropolis,... John Hill

The UOP Fragrances Factory, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano before the duo won the competition for the Centre Pompidou in 1973, has been demolished. John Hill

The Hudson River Park Trust has unveiled plans for Gansevoort Peninsula, a 5.5-acre project that will include Manhattan's first public beach. Designed by James Corner Field Operations, it is located one block from the southern tip of the High Line. John Hill

Francis Kéré's design of the new national assembly building to be located in Porto-Novo, the capital of Benin, was inspired by the palaver tree, "the age-old West African tradition of meeting under a tree to make consensual decisions in the interest of a community." John Hill

In December the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) named seven regional winners of the 2020 Young Champions of the Earth prize. Engineer Nzambi Matee, of Nairobi's Gjenge Makers, won for Africa, for a machine that turns discarded plastic into paving stones. John Hill

As announced by the Obama Foundation on February 3rd, the years-long federal review process of plans to build the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side is complete, meaning the project will break ground later this year. John Hill

The Vilcek Foundation, which "raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences," has partnered with artist Hiroki Otsuka on a series of manga devoted to Vilcek Prize recipients. The first is about architect Denise Scott Brown,... John Hill

Adelaide’s Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre (AACC) has released updated renderings of its proposed 11,500 square meter building designed by New York's Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Australia's Woods Bagot. John Hill

Three years after Amazon opened The Spheres at its downtown Seattle headquarters, the tech company has unveiled The Helix, part of its new HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia. NBBJ is the architect for both biophilic designs. John Hill

Aeon Video has posted "A Little Piece of Earth," a short film by director Ryan Malloy that profiles Charles Bello, an 86-year-old architect who lives an off-the-grid life on 400 acres in Northern California. John Hill

A list of 449 works nominated for the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award has been released. A second list of nominees will follow in the fall in response to the coronavirus pandemic and a lengthening of the biennial award's timeline accordingly. John Hill

For the second year in a row, a building on Chicago's South Side has received the most votes in our Building of the Year poll on American-Architects.com. In 2019 it was an academic building at Illinois Tech. For 2020 it's the dynamic orange building that Juan Moreno's firm, JGMA, designed for... John Hill

The World Around's annual summit was held on Saturday, January 30, at the Guggenheim Museum, where the organization is in residence this year. Recorded presentations and live discussions were broadcast to the strictly online audience. John Hill

The Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) has announced that the DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany 2021 has been awarded to MVRDV and N-V-O Nuyken von Oefele Architekten for WERK12, a five-story mixed-use building near Munich's Ost station. John Hill

In which we take a look inside Formgiving, the new monograph on BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, in the context of the three monographs the firm has produced with Taschen over the last twelve years. John Hill

A new half-hour documentary from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art profiles architects Søren Johansen and Sebastian Skovsted, whose Copenhagen studio is "a rising star of the architecture scene in Northern Europe." John Hill

The iconic high-tech building designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers will close from late 2023 until 2027, the same year the Parisian institution will celebrate its 50th anniversary. John Hill

The deadline for voting for the US Building of the Year is January 31. The winner that you decide will be announced on the first day of February online and in our World Newsletter. John Hill

Scottish architect Kate Macintosh and Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Lesley Lokko are this year’s recipients of the Jane Drew Prize and Ada Louise Huxtable Prize, respectively, part of the W Awards given out by The Architectural Review and Architects’... John Hill

The coronavirus pandemic may have kept New Yorkers from traveling to London last year, but it didn't stop the transatlantic collaboration that resulted in a timber pavilion recently built on a residential rooftop. Made from dozens of interlocking curved timber tiles, the canopy designed by New... John Hill

Architect Petr Hájek recently completed a pet crematorium inserted into an old military bunker about a one-hour drive from Prague. Named Věčná loviště (Hunting Grounds), the crematorium is hidden behind a new wall of mirrors that reflects nature and adds, in the architect's words, "a... John Hill

The current demolition of the former headquarters of the Burroughs Wellcome company in Durham, North Carolina, designed by Paul Rudolph in the early 1970s, alerted us to a three-year-old short film capturing skateboarders traversing the futuristic building. John Hill

Winners in the seven awards and competition programs of the Tamayouz Excellence Award for 2020 have been announced. Established in 2012, the awards draw attention to architecture in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. John Hill

London's Design Museum has named the "Teeter-Totter Wall," designed by architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello with Colectivo Chopeke, as the Beazley Design of the Year 2020. John Hill

Artist Olafur Eliasson's installation, Atmospheric wave wall, was recently unveiled on the base of Chicago's Willis Tower, which was bought by Blackstone for $1.3 billion in 2015. The artwork is part of a $500 million renovation of the iconic skyscraper still known to many as the Sears... John Hill

The Vessel, the 150-foot (45m) tall climbable sculpture designed by Heatherwick Studio for the Hudson Yards development on Manhattan's West Side, has closed indefinitely after a third suicide in less than one year. John Hill

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has unveiled THE LINE, a "170-kilometer revolution in urban living" that would house one million residents in a string of communities "with zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions." John Hill

During a virtual symposium held on Monday, January 11, the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects announced the 24 winners in its 2021 AIANY Design Awards. John Hill

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents a half-hour film on Indian architect Anupama Kundoo, the subject of a major monographic exhibition at the museum, the latest in its "The Architect's Studio" series. John Hill

Governor Andrew Cuomo, in his State of the State address on January 11, proposed a $60 million extension of the High Line that would connect the elevated park to the newly opened Moynihan Train Hall two blocks away. John Hill

Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin is stepping down from the post he held for close to thirty years, leaving the Windy City with no architecture critics at its two main papers, which also includes the Chicago Sun-Times. John Hill

Designed by LMN Architects, the Mukilteo Multimodal Ferry Terminal, linking Whidbey Island to the Seattle-Everett metropolitan area, opened on December 29, the first new ferry terminal in Washington State in more than 40 years. John Hill

Munich's DETAIL magazine has published around 450 issues since its founding in 1961. It is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year with special peeks into its archive, multimedia feedback from readers, and a "big" anniversary issue in June. John Hill