Places in the Architecture of Machado and Silvetti

The strategies of placemaking developed during the late seventies and implemented in the early eighties have proven insufficient to grapple with many of the irregularities of the contemporary metropolis. So while contextualism, collage, and other formalist design tools have been viable means for architects to reintegrate the fabric of pedestrian cities, such a fabric simply never existed in many American cities, particularly at their periphery. Ed. note: The featured project is by Machado and Silvetti Associates

Mastering the Hard Stuff: The History of College Concrete-Canoe Races and the Growth of Engineering Competition Culture

This article details the history of college engineering competitions, originating with student concrete-canoe racing in the 1970s, through today’s multi-million-dollar international multiplicity of challenges. Despite initial differences between engineering educators and industry supporters over the ultimate purpose of undergraduate competitions, these events thrived because they evolved to suit many needs of students, professors, schools, corporations, professional associations, and the engineering profession itself. The twenty-first-century proliferation of university-level competitions in turn encouraged a trickling-down of technical contests to elementary-age children and high schools, fostering the institutionalization of what might be called a competition culture in engineering

Brutal Realities

This presentation examines the changing tide around the reception of Brutalism in the United States during the last decade, while questioning how that change will impact our treatment of concrete buildings in the future. As concrete modernism comes into more positive focus today, will attitudes toward the future of these buildings in the architecture and preservation communities readjust? Should such structures be preserved or conserved, adapted or transformed? And how important is it to be responsive to original intentions and elements of significance? A conservation management plan for Boston City Hall is presented as a case study in which careful management of change is rooted in an understanding of the structure’s intentions, history, and significance

Architecture in detail : Materials

Singapore190 p.; illus.; 28 cm