America: The Latest Architecture and News

Architect Antoine Predock (b.1936 in Lebanon, Missouri) started his pursuit of an engineering degree at the University of New Mexico College of Engineering. A chance encounter with architecture professor Don Schlegel sparked a life-long passion in architecture. After switching to architecture school – first at the University of New Mexico and then, at the advice of Schlegel, transferring to Columbia University, Predock obtained a Bachelor of Architecture in 1962. After traveling throughout Europe on a Columbia University Traveling Fellowship with a focus on work in Spain, he began his internship in San Francisco with Gerald McCue, a future Dean at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. In 1966, Predock went back to New Mexico, the place he considers his spiritual home, to establish what since has become a world-renowned practice. In 1985, he was awarded the Rome Prize with residency and study at the American Academy in Rome.

+ 31

American home services website Angie's List has released a series of commissioned images showcasing eight United States landmarks in cross-section. Dubbed Cutaway America, the project takes a new perspective on projects that people are used to seeing from the outside. From idealistic designs that attempt to become one with nature to complex infrastructure, these cutaways hint at a longer story of America and its history.

The end of the War of 1812 left the young United States of America awash with nationalist fervor. In the following years, the world’s first modern republic experienced unprecedented growth and prosperity; it was not without reason that the period came to be known as the “Era of Good Feelings.”[1] It was into this epoch of unbridled national pride that Thomas Jefferson, one of the country’s founding fathers and its third President, introduced his master plan for the University of Virginia: an architectural manifestation of the Enlightenment and republican ideals he had helped cultivate.

+ 32

The belief that a building can both blend in and stand out at the same time is embodied by the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art (CAC), located in Cincinnati. Though it's heavy volumetric massing makes it appear as an independent and impenetrable sculptural element, the Rosenthal Center is in fact designed to pull the city in – past its walls and up, toward the sky. This inherent dynamism is well-suited to a gallery which does not hold a permanent collection, and is situated at the heart of a thriving Midwestern city.

+ 32