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Valencia Gardens is a mixed-use affordable public housing project in San Francisco's Mission District. (Photo: Ted Betz)

AIA/HUD Secretary Awards
Where a failed urban housing project once stood, enclosed and separated from its surrounding neighborhood in San Francisco's Mission District, the mixed-use Valencia Gardens development now supports an integrated neighborhood designed to promote safety through activity. Architect Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP, with associate architect Martinez Architects, Inc., lined the sidewalk with building entries and reintroduced vehicular streets into the site, connecting it with the urban fabric. The project received the Creating Community Connection Award in the 2008 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards for housing and community design. (More)

The John G. Rangos Sr. Building opened in April near Johns Hopkins Hospital. (Steve Ruark for The New York Times)

Building a Technology Park in Baltimore by Rehabilitating a Neighborhood
(Baltimore) - Bulldozing entire neighborhoods to revitalize them seemingly went out of fashion decades ago, after the first mid-20th-century efforts at urban renewal were denounced as failures. But in the blocks just north and east of the vast and expanding Johns Hopkins Hospital here, that is precisely what is happening. The medical institution and Forest City Enterprises, a Cleveland-based building company, have joined forces to demolish a neighborhood to save it. Huge blocks of row houses have been razed, and many more are destined for the bulldozer. As it was, the neighborhood -- a shooting location for the HBO series "The Wire" -- stood in sharp contrast to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Butchers Hill and Canton to the south. (More)

(Image courtesy Studio Pei-Zhu)

Art Museum of Yue Minjun
While the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May left a large portion of Western China in ruins, signs are emerging that some notable building projects in the area are pushing forward. One of these projects is the Art Museum of Yue Minjun, designed by Beijing-based Studio Pei-Zhu, a 2007 Design Vanguard winner. Located near the Qingcheng Mountains, and adjacent to the Shimeng River in Sichuan Province, the 10,700-square-foot museum will house the work of Yue Minjun, a Chinese contemporary artist known for his repetitive images of large, smiling figures. It will be one of 10 new museums on the same site, each dedicated to the work of an influential Chinese artist. Zhang Xiaogang and Wang Guangyi are among the other artists to be showcased. (More)

The Olympic swimming venue is covered in huge bubbles, made of a synthetic, translucent material designed to radiate the idea of water. (CSPA-US PRESSWIRE)

Chinese Architects the Winners in Games
(Beijing) - Enough landscapers to fill a green army have been swarming over this city in recent weeks, sticking rows of saplings in traffic medians and rolling out fresh sod seemingly by the mile. If they've been visibly laboring -- there is no deadline more solid than an Olympic deadline, after all, and it gets pretty sticky in Beijing this time of year -- there is also something symbolically relaxed about the work they're doing. It is the definition of a cosmetic touch-up -- window dressing for a city that by the end of last year had wrapped up much of the construction of its Olympic facilities. (More)

In 1950 Saarinen designed a summer house for Irwin Miller, located north of Toronto, Canada. (Photo: Balthazar Korab)

Eero and Onward
On a December day of 1955, fresh over from Paris, I walked into the small Eero Saarinen office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, with a beat-up box of eight-by-tens of my Beaux-Arts graduation work. "Can I see Mr. Saarinen? I'm looking for a job." He did see me, and having reviewed my prints, asked whether I could start that very afternoon -- for $2.75 an hour pay. I did. I remember every detail of that bizarre first American experience of mine and flash back to Taliesin, three years later, when the pay offered me was one dollar a day. "The first time I've ever offered to pay anyone," insisted the old master. But that's another story. (More)

A Chinese worker straddle giant billboards showing the construction of the China Central Television headquarters in Beijing, China. The building is amongst a handful of iconic architecture that is changing the face of the Chinese capital ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Broad-Minded Museum

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Hearst Magazine Building

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AIA Launches "Walk the Walk"

Chance to save riverfront

Philly's Light Fantastic

Architecture 2030 Reveals New Guide to Reduce Consumption

AIA & Dwell Magazine Name North America's Greenest Homes

Lost in the New Beijing: The Old Neighborhood

PA Legislators Take a Leadership Position with Pennsylvania Rail Safety and Health Legislation

Distinguished Pittsburgh Attorney to Chair Communications Committee with Supreme Court Disciplinary Board

AmeraCash Solutions Inc. and iSend Announce Strategic Alliance

National HIV Testing Day Offers Citizens an Opportunity to Learn their Status and Maintain Healthy Testing Habits

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