The American Midwest is making a new name for itself. While cities like New York and Los Angeles are known as global design capitals, dynamic modern architecture has begun emerging across the country’s fly-over states. Advocating world-class architecture, sustainability, and craft, Kansas City has become a leader in great American design.

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Home to architectural styles spanning almost three hundred years, the is no city like New Orleans. The meld of French, Spanish, and Caribbean architectural influences, in conjunction with the demands of the hot and humid climate, has impacted the urban fabric as much as the culture itself. Located along the Mississippi River and close to the Gulf of Mexico coast, the construction of ports, NOLA’s trading history, and forceful natural phenomena like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 illustrate how water has shaped the city.

Following Hurricane Katrina, Orleans adapted its values to respond to the changing needs of its recovering community. Although reconstruction is not only architectural responsibility, New Orleans public architecture has contributed to revitalizing and reinhabiting the city after the disaster. Museums, parks, and churches, each of these places connects people to each other in ways that define and support community.

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The construction industry is traditionally one of the most resource-intensive sectors, but with rigorous planning and digital tools, the construction process can instead make an active contribution to environmental protection. Energy, resources, and materials can be intentionally saved during the construction process to widen the conversation from simply sustainable buildings as an end product, but sustainable construction as a process. Digital solutions can play a decisive role, yet the industry has so far made too little use of the numerous possibilities that are available. Below, the experts from the Nemetschek Group present some of the opportunities they provide.

The architecture of golf is directly tied to the landscape. As one of the few sports with no standardized playing area, its clubhouses and structures are usually unique to each course. Prioritizing views and access, golf architecture tends to be exclusive, especially when many courses are not open to the public. Clubhouses make room for players and spectators to gather and socialize while they overlook the course from multiple angles.

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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.

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The Board of Directors and the Strategic Council of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) have awarded renowned architect Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, with the 2020 Gold Medal. This prize credits an individual that had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.

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With the extensive list of acclaimed alumni of his firm, OMA, it is not a stretch to call Rem Koolhaas (born 17 November 1944) the godfather of contemporary architecture. Equal parts theorist and designer, over his 40-year career Koolhaas has revolutionized the way architects look at program and interaction of space, and today continues to design buildings that push the capabilities of architecture to new places.

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Jennifer Bonner of MALL has been named one of the 2019 recipients of The Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers. Each year, The Architectural League announces six firms as winners of the award, which spotlights young, innovative North American architects and designers. Bonner is known for work that reinvents materials, hacks typologies, and playfully reimagines everyday architectural elements from gable roofs to brick facades.

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While Moshe Safdie may be more well known for the bold forms defining his portfolio of built projects—ranging from the National Gallery of Canada and the horizontal Raffles City Chongqing to the iconic Habitat 67—the architect considers his unbuilt works as important, if not more. Safdie ponders the role of these projects and more in PLANE-SITE’s latest addition to the series Time-Space-Existence.

Theorist, architect, and educator Moshe Safdie (born July 14, 1938), made his first mark on architecture with his master's thesis, where the idea for Habitat 67 originated. Catapulted to attention, Safdie has used his ground-breaking first project to develop a reputation as a prolific creator of cultural buildings, translating his radicalism into a dramatic yet sensitive style that has become popular across the world. Increasingly working in Asia and the Middle East, Safdie puts an emphasis on integrating green and public spaces into his modernist designs.

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