Construction is underway on 56 Leonard Street, a high-rise residential tower in New York City designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Image: © Herzog & de Meuron, Basel, 2008 Extra Large Image

New York · 2008.0917
Kevin Klasic has joined New York City-based multidisciplinary consulting and design firm Shen Milsom & Wilke as a principal. Klasic has over 20 years of medical equipment planning experience. He has provided budget, specifications, purchasing, and installation coordination services on more than 90 projects, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, INOVA Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, and Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas.

Orange · 2008.0917
A five-year, $24 million architectural restoration of Montpelier, James Madison's lifelong home near Orange, Virginia, is complete. Albany, New York-based Mesick Cohen Wilson Baker Architects served as architect, with Mark R. Wenger as lead architectural historian for the extensive project, which restored the 1760s mansion to its 1820s size, structure, form, and finishes.

Two large wings added in the early 1900s were removed, reducing the number of rooms from 55 to 26 and bringing the house to 12,260 square feet (1,140 square meters). The exterior stucco was also removed and the front porch and colonnade were rebuilt. Inside work included framing, staircases, painting, and wood floors. The front door and other elements may reflect design input from Thomas Jefferson.

Madison (1751-1836) was the fourth president of the United States, the principal author of the Constitution, and the architect of the Bill of Rights.

Tokyo · 2008.0916
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has received the 2008 Praemium Imperiale award for architecture from the Japan Art Association. Zumthor was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1943. He is widely lauded for earnestly examining the location and purpose of a building, and spares no effort in selecting the most suitable materials for it. His work can be found mainly in Switzerland, but also elsewhere in Europe, often in rural or mountainous areas.

Zumthor has a special strength in designing religious buildings, including the Saint Benedict Chapel (1989) in the Swiss alpine village of Sumvitg, with a wooden interior designed to resemble a boat, and the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel (2007) on the outskirts of Cologne, Germany.

He has also designed housing projects, thermal bath facilities, and art museums, including the Kolumba, Art Museum of the Archbishopric Cologne (2007), in which he used ruins to express the continuity of history from Roman times.

New York · 2008.0915
Basel, Switzerland-based firm Herzog & de Meuron has unveiled the design for 56 Leonard Street (rendered above), a 57-story residential tower currently under construction in the Tribeca Historic District of Manhattan. The building will house 145 condominiums, each with a unique floor plan and private outdoor space. A staggered vertical progression of structural slabs and a varied pattern of cantilevered terraces will form an irregular silhouette.

The articulated base will have the appearance of a stack of cantilevered volumes of varying transparency. It will appear to rest upon a massive, reflective, balloon-like stainless-steel sculpture by London-based artist Anish Kapoor. A "vertical garden" will stand to the west.

The ground level features a double-height, 1,600-square-foot (150-square-meter) lobby sheathed in black granite. Above the lobby are several floors of townhouse-style units and two floors of amenities. Floors eight through 45 contain residences of two to five bedrooms. Ten penthouses compose the nine-story crown, a geometric composition of stacked glass volumes.

Costas Kondylis and Partners of New York City is serving as executive architect. The developer is Alexico Group LLC. Occupancy is expected in late fall 2010.

Plano · 2008.0914
The Farnsworth House (1951) by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was flooded on September 14, 2008, with flood waters rising over the top deck, breaching the interior of the house by about 18 inches (46 centimeters).

Built in the flood plain of the Fox River in Plano, Illinois, the house stands on five-foot- (1.5-meter-) tall columns, which proved not high enough. More than eight inches (20 centimeters) of rain fell in two days as Tropical Storm Lowell passed through Illinois, immediately followed by the remnants of Hurricane Ike.

Landmarks Illinois manages and operates the Farnsworth House as a house museum on behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the house. The last flood of the house took place in 1996, when the property was owned as a private residence.

Galveston · 2008.0913
Hurricane Ike hit Galveston, Texas, on September 13, 2008. Initial reports indicated that historic structures in Galveston may sustain significant damage. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is seeking volunteer structural engineers and architects to work with the Galveston Historical Foundation, Preservation Texas, and others in the area to help city officials and homeowners evaluate damage objectively and determine best next steps to minimize unnecessary demolition.

Oxford · 2008.0912
Wilkinson Eyre Architects of London has revealed its design for the University of Oxford's new Department of Earth Sciences building. Planning permission has been granted for the 5,000-square-meter (54,000-square-foot) building, which will include classrooms, laboratories, and administrative offices.

The building is arranged as a simple diagram, with a wing of highly serviced laboratories and a wing of academic offices separated by a stair and an atrium. A common room and terrace on the roof provide gathering space. The ground floor contains the more public activities, such as foyer, research center, seminar spaces, and undergraduate teaching labs.

On the long east elevation, a "narrative wall" is clad in linear, folded planes of stone: Purbeck Cap limestone with inclusions of darker Purbeck Grub and translucent stone-laminated glass. With shifting striations through it, this facade is reminiscent of certain geological features. Construction is planned to begin in late fall 2008, with completion expected by summer 2010

Arlington · 2008.0911
The Pentagon Memorial to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has been dedicated on the West Lawn of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Kaseman Beckman Advanced Strategies (KBAS) of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, designed the memorial, which consists of 184 cantilevered benches of stainless steel, each bench representing one person who died when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building.

Each bench hovers over a small pool of water that is lit at night. The memorial units are arranged according to each victim's year of birth, aligned parallel to the plane's flight trajectory and dispersed in a porous, stabilized gravel system, which also supports a grove of paperback maples.

Princeton · 2008.0911
The new Lewis Library has opened at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. Frank Gehry and his firm, Gehry Partners of Los Angeles, California, designed the multistory, 87,000-square-foot (8,100-square-meter) science and research library, located at the south end of campus. With a plethora of irregular angles, typical of Gehry's work, the building ranges from two to four stories tall. Materials include clay brick, glass, stucco, and steel, with embossed stainless steel panels, punched window openings, and an aluminum-glazed curtain wall.

New York · 2008.0911
The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has revealed its design for 23 East 22nd Street, a high-end residential high-rise in New York City. Located just off Madison Square Park, the building will include 18 residences on 24 residential floors. As the tower rises to a height of 355 feet (107 meters), it stretches to the east, cantilevering 30 feet (nine meters) over One Madison Park, an adjacent residential tower. OMA is also designing amenities, including a screening room, main lobby, pool, and gym, which will be shared by the neighboring building.

OMA partners Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas are leading the project in collaboration with project architect Jason Long. Completion is scheduled for 2010. The developer for both buildings is Slazer Enterprises.

Monterrey · 2008.0910
HOK Sport recently revealed its design for the Estadio de Fútbol in Monterrey, Mexico. The 50,000-seat stadium's sweeping, asymmetrical form pays homage to the nearby mountain, and the metallic cladding makes reference to the industrial heritage of Monterrey. A vast 55-meter (180-foot) cantilevered roof will cover the seating bowl, which was designed to place spectators as close to the pitch as possible.

It was announced on August 28 that HOK Sport Venue Event will separate from HOK. Leaders of HOK Sport are buying the practice, which will become an independent company with a new name and logo. Other HOK Sport projects include the new Yankee Stadium in New York, Washington Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., the Olympic Stadium for the 2012 Olympics in London, and Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona.

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