@archrecordmag

In the Hollywood hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, known for prominent houses (and celebrity residents), a small one-story, windowless, white-plastered steel-framed volume emerges eerily from a grassy knoll. ⁠ ⁠ The street facade is small in scale, but @xtenarchitecture's SKYHOUSE is 10,000 square feet. “I conceived the house as land art,” says Monika Haefelfinger, the Swiss architect who founded XTEN architects in 2000 in L.A. with her late husband, Austin Kelly. “We design strong sculptural forms at the scale of the landscape.” ⁠ ⁠ Read more on our at the link in our bio. Photo © Steve King⁠ ⁠

Frank Gehry's contributions to architecture over the past six decades have earned him some of the profession's highest honors, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989. Now, after a decade of contention and adaptation, his Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington finally opened in September.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Tune into our online Innovation Conference to hear the world-renowned architect give a keynote talk on October 28. Register for the free virtual event at the link in our bio! ⁠⠀ Photo of the Eisenhower Memorial © Alan Karchmer⁠⠀ ⁠⠀

In the 1920s and ’30s, when San Diego’s Little Italy was known for the gritty fishing fleets and tuna canneries that lined its waterfront, modest studio apartments were not unusual here. But that option largely disappeared as this once-industrial quarter became extremely desirable, full of hip eateries, bars, shops, and increasingly high-end residential structures.⁠ ⁠ Given those slim pickings and the limited supply of affordable housing, Matthew and his father, firm owner/architect Jonathan Segal (@jonathansegalfaia), saw the need and opportunity to introduce a whole tower of micro-units, at below-market rents. The Continental, the 8-story building they envisioned and completed last January—with 42 mostly south-facing studios, two commercial storefronts, and a four-story owners’ townhouse—offers abundant sunlight, outdoor space, and distinctive architecture for every tenant.⁠ ⁠ Read the full story at the link in our bio. Photo © Matthew Segal⁠ ⁠

Uber drivers have trouble finding it. Passersby often don’t know what it is. With a low profile and blind facade onto the street in an affluent area of Santiago where large estates have been replaced by commercial buildings and high-rises, one would hardly guess these modest wood boxes comprise a new housing development. Its architect, Cristián Izquierdo (@cristian.izquierdo.l), a 2020 Design Vanguard, admits to playing with people’s expectations, and wanting his buildings to be appreciated as something different. But the project’s response to site restrictions, and its ingenious layout and impeccable detailing make it so much more.⁠ ⁠ Building to capacity, Izquierdo developed eight nearly identical units, each roughly 2,750 square feet, in an arrangement that is both familiar and completely new.⁠ ⁠ Read the full story from our October issue at the link in bio. Text by @josephineminutillo_, photo © ©pablocasalsaguirre_works ⁠ ⁠

“Everyone should live in a dignified house,” says architect Alexander Gorlin (@alexandergorlinarchitects). The challenge, he explains, is that developers of affordable and supportive housing don’t always emphasize design as a criterion. But Joan Beck, director of housing and development at New Destiny Housing, a New York nonprofit, was looking for more than just an adequate apartment block when she asked the Manhattan-based Gorlin to create a building in the South Bronx that would serve as a permanent address for survivors of domestic violence leaving the shelter system and other low-income families. She wanted him to imbue it with a sense of home. Completed last year, the brick-clad nine-story multifamily residence, punctuated by pastel-hued window grills inspired by Andy Warhol’s Flowers, is an uplifting addition to a neighborhood once considered a poster child for urban blight.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio. Text by Linda C. Lentz, photo © Eric Petschek⁠ ⁠

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You might expect a Boston-based firm to adhere to a proper New England architectural tradition when designing housing in a picturesque town in the Berkshires. Not so. @mergearchitectsinc’s two multifamily housing structures, just added to a compound anchored by a 2016 residential conversion of the late 19th-century Cable Mills factory buildings in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is different. The firm eschews the regional architecture of white clapboard, black wood shutters, and gable roofs. Instead, the architects’ approach reflects the Modernist direction that took hold in the 1930s and ’40s in the Northeast after the International Style began to have an impact in that part of the country.⁠ ⁠ Modern Mill (shown here) is a second component of the condominium apartments at Cable Mills. Here terra-cotta-colored fly ash and polymer panels alternate with Alaskan yellow cedar.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio. Text by @palladiostephens, photo © John Horner⁠ ⁠

To prepare for his interview for the job of designing a new visual arts center at @fandmcollege in 2015, Steven Holl (@stevenhollarchitects) created two watercolors expressing different approaches to the project, each referring to distinct aspects of the school’s heritage. One showed a brick edifice firmly anchored to the ground like many buildings on the campus. The other depicted a lightweight structure hovering above the land like a kite and responding to the large-diameter trees on the site with a scalloped facade curving around them. ⁠ ⁠ Set on the south edge of the campus, the 32,000-square-foot, pavilion-like building aligns with Old Main, the 1856 Gothic Revival pile that features an idiosyncratic central tower and had been the heart of the college before new construction to the north in recent decades. “When it first opened, I bet Old Main seemed daring,” says Holl. “I wanted my building to have that same sense of looking forward.”⁠ ⁠ Read the full story today, on , at the link in our bio. Photo © @iwanbaan⁠ ⁠

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To fully appreciate the darkness of the works in Houston’s @Rothko_Chapel, you must have just the right amount of light. The 14 large-scale panels that Mark Rothko created for the interfaith sanctuary are subtle, brooding, and evocative. But since the earliest days of their installation in the octagonal brick structure, they haven’t been illuminated to their full advantage. That changed last month, when the chapel reopened after an intensive restoration—part of a multiphase master plan led by @Architecture.Research.Office, with landscape architect @NelsonByrdWoltz and lighting designer George Sexton Associates. The new campus will allow visitors to engage more deeply with the Rothko Chapel organization’s mission to advance art, culture, social justice, and human rights.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Read more at the link in bio. Text by @MiriamSitz, photo © Elizabeth Felicella

Architect Dina Griffin’s career is a rich tapestry of defining moments. There was the moment as a teenager growing up on Chicago’s South Side when she elected to take an architectural drafting class instead of home economics. There was the moment during college at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign when a caring professor encouraged her not to drop out of the architecture program. There was the moment in 1994 when she received her architectural license—something only a handful of other Black women in the state of Illinois had achieved at that time.⁠ ⁠ Today, Griffin is president of Interactive Design Architects (IDEA, for short), overseeing a nine-person office alongside partners Charles Young and Robert Larsen. The firm’s 28-year history is one solidly rooted in Chicago. In the decades since its founding, the IDEA team has left its stamp on some of the city’s most cherished places. In the mid-aughts, it served as architect of record alongside Renzo Piano to construct the Art Institute of Chicago’s soaring Modern Wing (shown here).⁠ ⁠ Read the full profile by @afixsen7 at the link in our bio. Photo courtesy IDEA⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠

R. Steven Lewis gets around. Since earning a B.Arch. at Syracuse University in 1979, the peripatetic 63-year-old architect has bounced from New York to Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to Detroit and back to L.A., working in both the public and private sectors. He is now a principal leading the urban-design practice for the Los Angeles office of @zgfarchitects, where his projects include a $1 billion State of California office complex in Sacramento (shown here). One constant in his journey has been an awareness of the role race plays in architecture. ⁠ ⁠ Lewis has been active in the National Organization of Minority Architects (@nomanational) for nearly 40 years and served as president during 2009–10. Currently, he is editor of NOMA magazine for the second time. “Advocacy,” says Lewis, “has been an integral part of my identity, both as an architect and as a Black man.” To recognize his ongoing work for equality in architecture, the AIA gave Lewis its Whitney M. Young Jr. Award in 2016.⁠ ⁠ Read the full profile at the link in our bio. Rendering courtesy ZGF⁠ ⁠