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One month after Pope Benedict XVI made his historic visit to the United States, Sean Cardinal O’Malley ordered the closure of Boston’s oldest German parish, Holy Trinity, and declared all its assets — including $ 242,000 in its bank account — be transferred to Holy Cross Cathedral. The priests and parishioners of Holy Trinity Church, established by German immigrants in 1844, opened the first parochial school in New England and introduced the Christmas tree and Christmas cards to Puritan Boston, among many other traditions. Since 1990, the parish has been home for the Traditional Latin Mass community from 1990 to...

The latest Big Apple trophy being coveted by oil-rich sovereign wealth funds is the landmark Chrysler Building. Sources say the super-rich Abu Dhabi Investment Council is negotiating an $800 million deal for a 75 percent stake in the Art Deco treasure that has defined the Midtown skyline since 1930. The Chrysler assets would be purchased from TMW - the German arm of an Atlanta-based investment fund that's been eager to cash out of its Chrysler stake. The deal follows last month's sale of the GM Building and three other Macklowe/Equity Portfolio properties for $3.95 billion to a group of investors...

American visitors to Paris, Rome, Prague, or Barcelona, comparing what they see with what is familiar from their own continent, will recognize how careless their countrymen often have been in their attempts to create cities. But the American who leaves the routes prescribed by the Ministries of Tourism will quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it. Elsewhere, European cities are going the way of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surrounded first by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the...

I have always associated classical architecture with gravitas -- the large imposing columns and pediments that grace the front of serious places, like courthouses and banks. It hasn't seemed a living tradition that can inform land-use planning and the architecture of everyday life. But that was before I interviewed several architects who describe themselves as "modern classicists." They espouse a practical, no-nonsense approach to design that extends beyond individual buildings to encompass neighborhoods and whole towns. They don't limit themselves to the details and proportioning systems used by the original classicists, the builders of ancient Greece and Rome. They also...

The Pope used the structure of the great Cathedral as a symbolic framework for addressing the interior meaning of the Christian vocation and mission.

The story of Western architecture is one of darkness giving way to light. Europe's dour medieval fortresses were replaced by airy Gothic structures and for the modernists, light was an end in itself. Has this tale run its course? From the beginning, architecture has been embarked on a journey to the light. That we have arrived is something we now take for granted. But it wasn't always thus. Indeed, of all the elements that comprise architecture, light was historically the most elusive. For millennia, we lived in shadow. Anyone who has wandered through those 1,000-year-old Romanesque churches around Barcelona in...

On a clear day, the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean - providing you've a head for heights. ...

If the British and French can design and build spectacular bridges at a modest or at least reasonable cost, why can’t we? Or maybe we can, but we haven’t tried it lately, at least not in Oregon. The question comes up because Peter DeFazio, our man in Washington, is chairman of the highways and transit subcommittee in the U.S. House. His committee will write the next highway bill, probably by the end of 2009. And when DeFazio led his colleagues on a fact-finding trip to Europe, he saw the viaduct at Millau. It’s the most spectacular bridge he has ever...

A DEVELOPER IN DUBAI, one of seven oil-rich emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates, has hired Rem Koolhaas to design a posh new neighborhood, Waterfront City, on a newly created island in the Persian Gulf. The Dutch architect plans to fill the island with a regular grid of intentionally bland highrises punctuated with an eyeball, a pretzel, a drill bit — that is to say, huge buildings that bring such objects to mind. Of course it is ridiculous. In 2000, Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. They don’t hand out such an honor willy-nilly. Your work must be totally...

The idea of “green” buildings is a terrific marketing concept. In San Francisco, it has helped grease the political roadway for massive, view-blocking luxury condominiums, implying that building these structures is more environmentally sustaining than leaving land vacant. Few seem to care whether green buildings can be a nightmare for those having to work inside high-rise structures lacking heat or air conditioning. The new Thomas Mayne designed Federal Building at 7th and Mission Streets in San Francisco is a case in point. Lauded by the New York Times as a building that “may one day be remembered as the crowning...

Many people seem to think that contemporary Catholic church architecture is so ugly because of misunderstandings that arose from the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This thesis is especially attractive to those of a more "intellectual" bent, such as theologians and liturgists, because it suggests that the problem is one of ideas. Correct the ideas — enforce a proper theology of the liturgy (the job of, guess who, theologians and liturgists) — and voila, we will get better-looking churches. As attractive as that thesis is, its one big drawback is that it is largely untrue. Bad church...

Not content with finishing construction of the "The World", a constellation of man-made islands forming the shape of the continents, Dubai's developer, Nakheel, is to build "The Universe": an archipelago of reclaimed islands depicting the sun and the planets and moons of the solar system. Only half of The World's islands have been sold, but Sultan bin Sulayem, Nakheel's chairman, says Dubai is pressing ahead with another offshore project. Residents have already moved into apartments and villas on Palm Jumeirah, the city's first reclaimed development, which will boast several deluxe hotels, including a refurbished Queen Elizabeth II, the liner's final...

What's generating buzz in Chicago might not resonate in L.A. And the issues driving design in Miami might not mean much in New York. Although big-name, international architects are working all over the United States—Renzo Piano, for example, has current or recently completed projects in New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, and Atlanta—smaller, domestic firms are playing important roles, too. This mix of big and small, global and regional is shaping the American architectural landscape. The projects shown here offer a cross section of what is going on right now—from a skyscraper in Manhattan to a quonset hut in Kansas,...

Honesty compels me to admit the peculiarity of someone like me writing on sacred architecture.1 it's like Helen Keller giving a tour of the Louvre. It's like Ray Charles painting your portrait. It's like the deaf Beethoven teaching my son's aural skills class. I protest to my friends that although I lack an aesthetic capacity, I have learned to live with it, the way an adult who can't read has learned to survive in society. The reader should therefore not look here for architectural detail, but rather for something that lies deeper. I should like to think about the theological...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Burj Dubai skyscraper under construction here reached its 100th story on Tuesday, nearly two-thirds of the way in its relentless climb to become the world's tallest building. With 3,000 laborers adding a new floor nearly every three days, the $1 billion spire is at 1,140 feet and days away from surpassing a neighboring skyscraper, the razor-blade resembling Emirates Office Tower, at 1,165 feet. The Emirates Office Tower is currently the tallest in the Middle East, Dubai-based developer Emaar Properties said. "The tower is a symbol of the city's pride and a statement of our...

A picture doesn't lie -- the one-hundred-and-five-story Ryugyong Hotel is hideous, dominating the Pyongyang skyline like some twisted North Korean version of Cinderella's castle. Not that you would be able to tell from the official government photos of the North Korean capital -- the hotel is such an eyesore, the Communist regime routinely covers it up, airbrushing it to make it look like it's open -- or Photoshopping or cropping it out of pictures completely. Even by Communist standards, the 3,000-room hotel is hideously ugly, a series of three gray 328-foot long concrete wings shaped into a steep pyramid. With...

To follow up on the highly successful Ugliest Buildings in New York According to the Experts, last year I solicited opinions from some of London's top architects about the monstrosities in their own city. For various reasons (time constraints, few and wordy responses), we didn't run the piece. But looking back months later, I've realized this is some real gold gathering the proverbial dust in my inbox -- rife with biting commentary, insightful observations, and pure hatred for Norman Foster. So without further ado, I present some of London's most promising architects' answers to the question, "What is the ugliest...

CHICAGO — This may be the only city in the world where architecture ranks as a sport. Bleachers are erected around construction sites so the locals can sit and watch cranes swing steel beams into place. In fact, Chicagoans are so engaged in the state of their skyline, public opinion in 2001 sounded the death knell for initial renderings of the Chicago Trump Tower. Critics argued that the proposed structure would not look right among its iconic brethren. Two renderings later, Chicago Trump Tower now edges its way upward. The handsome design will tickle the sky by 2009, along with...

Until last year, Jeff Page, 42 years old, was living in a rescue mission in Los Angeles. He says he'd had a couple of opportunities to move into subsidized apartments, but turned them down, calling them "old and decrepit." Then a new building opened up on San Pedro Street: Rainbow Apartments, developed by the nonprofit Skid Row Housing Trust in downtown L.A. With its sharp angles and bright red window frames that jut out from the otherwise flat, concrete exterior, the 89-unit building stands out from traditional apartment buildings in the area. The slashes of color, in particular, made an...

The Irish Jesuits have sold Sacred Heart church in Limerick, a landmark of Catholic architecture, to a developer who plans to convert the building into a health club. The scheme, if it gets the go-ahead from the local authority, will see the church transformed into a day spa featuring a swimming pool, gym and treatment rooms. The nave of the church will become the pool, but the main altar will be carefully preserved and visible behind a glass wall. So the swimming and sweating will take place in a building with that nice old-fashioned Catholic "look" that's so fashionable these...

Dainty. Floral. Romantic. Fun. Fifty years ago, at the high-water mark of steel and glass modernism, those adjectives described architectural no-no's. You didn't decorate a building. You stripped it of ornament (or at least you made it look that way). You didn't speak of beauty, which sounded old-fashioned and subjective. You spoke of objective truth and of an architecture that would be the inevitable byproduct of its industrialized epoch. But in a provocative new architecture and design show at the Art Institute of Chicago, all those notions are turned on their right-angled heads. The exhibition, "Figuration in Contemporary Design," skillfully...

A long-missing Michelangelo sketch for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, possibly his last design before his death, has been discovered in the basilica's offices, the Vatican newspaper said Thursday.The sketch, drawn in blood-red chalk for stonecutters who were working on the construction of the basilica, was done by the Renaissance master in the spring of 1563, less than a year before his death, L'Osservatore Romano reported."The sureness in his stroke, the expert hand used to making decisions in front of unfinished stone, leave little doubt, the sketch is Michelangelo's," the newspaper wrote about the discovery, which it said will...

The most audacious of the 13 "Make it Right" house designs, unveiled on Monday, may also be the most sensible. "Make it Right" is actor and architecture enthusiast Brad Pitt's plan to provide affordable, ecological housing to a largely depopulated section of the Lower 9th Ward. That stretch of low ground between Tennessee Street and the Industrial Canal, visible from the Claiborne Avenue bridge, became a landmark on Aug. 29, 2005, when the modest neighborhood filled with raging floodwater. Some of the houses in the direct path of the deluge were swept away. Most of the rest were unsalvageable and...

Pablo Picasso was a fraud. So says Tom Wolfe, who does not like Picasso. This much was becoming clear. Picasso, according to Wolfe, “left school just before they taught perspective.” He had to shroud his backgrounds in “fog.” He was a sorry excuse for a draftsman. Wolfe is right that the art world is in crisis. But his articulation of this crisis is curious. He repeats and simplifies. He beats up on straw men. He puts on quite a show. Wolfe himself is a draftsman, a cartoonist of some talent who has illustrated his own books and articles. But for...

A review of: Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, by Peter Gay (W.W. Norton; 640 pp.; $35) Artistic creation, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is a “form of possession or madness” that “seizes a tender, virgin soul and stimulates it to rapt expression.” Artists have always struggled to persuade the world that the madness that drives them to create is genuinely a gift of the Muses, and not merely a trick of vanity. Their task has only become more arduous as prosperity increases and works of art proliferate. The history of artistic modernism is in part the history of...

WASHINGTON--Most church preservation fights involve saving a building that neighbors think is too pretty to be torn down. This is the story of a church that parishioners think is too ugly to stay. The Third Church of Christ, Scientist- a six-story, eight-sided concrete behemoth circa 1971 -sits atop a lonely windswept plaza just two blocks from the White House. Church members say it's too big, too expensive, too uninviting. Plus, it's just plain ugly. Neighborhood preservationists, meanwhile, see a living testament to the type of 1970s architectural ``brutalism'' championed by I.M. Pei and others. It's so distinct, they say, that...

Oakland... the final frontier. As the Cathedral of Christ the Light rises in the Bay Area see-city, one can be forgiven if "Star Trek" comes to mind. Acclaimed for its "ambitious" design, the 1,500-seat mother church of the 500,000-member diocese -- price tag: $190 million -- will open its doors on 25 September 2008. Father Paul Minnihan, provost of the cathedral, said the planning team selected the date to avoid conflicts with such weekend events as weddings and quincieneras. The group also considered an evening event, but decided an afternoon would allow for the possibility of a procession to...

Can you actually stay in a house with 1 meter WIDE by 10 meters TALL? A house calls attention in Madre de Deus, Brazil; it have three floors and even the builder had faith in what he built. Helenita, the designer and the owner of the house who is now living happily inside. At first, the municipality refused, but in the end with the plan allowed the construction, that became a touristic spot of the small town of 12 thousand people. There are benches in front of the house where the tourists can spent some time watching the unusual building....

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up. The suit says that MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which was hailed by critics as innovative and eye-catching with its unconventional walls and radical angles. But soon after its completion in spring 2004, the center's outdoor amphitheater...

The Great Game, as Lutyens called it, is being played again in Piccadilly and for high stakes. One of England’s leading contemporary classicists, Robert Adam, has designed an eyecatching corner block between Wren’s St James’s Church and Waterstone’s, the suave modern store designed in 1935 by Joseph Emberton for Simpson’s. Adam’s design is Classicism with an engaging touch of the Behemoths — more Greek Thomson of Glasgow than Lutyens. He describes it as a “columnar display”, which echoes the theme of other Piccadilly building fronts including Norman Shaw’s grandiloquent hotel opposite and the front of the Royal Institute of Watercolorists...

Dubai: Developers are already showing an interest in snapping up plots in the huge Arabian Canal mega-project, which was unveiled on Tuesday by real estate developer Limitless. The vast project is made up of two main parts, an $11 billion canal which will run along a 75 km U-shaped route from Dubai Waterfront to Palm Jumeirah and a $50 billion waterfront 'city', which will cover 33 km of the waterway's southern stretch. Ian Raine, development manager of Arabian Canal, told Gulf News that Limitless will act as master developer for the waterfront city, setting up the transport and utilities infrastructure...

CORONADO, Calif. -- The U.S. Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify the appearance of a barracks complex in Coronado that resembles a swastika from the air. Navy officials said the spending for changes to the four L-shaped buildings were approved after satellite images from Google Earth revealed the swastika-like shape.

"A local naval amphibious base looks like a swastika from the air. Thanks to Google Earth, people around the world are zooming in to the Naval Amphibious Base on Coronado to take a closer look." "Architect John Mock actually designed the buildings back in the late 1960s. Even now, he stands behind them, pointing out the buildings are not actually connected, and therefore not a swastika."

What architectural design issues most concern you? Perhaps carbon emissions, universal accessibility or the challenge of preserving at-risk historic properties? Maybe you think less about buildings and architectural design, and more about the shape of your community and the broader public realm. However, you probably rarely worry about which architectural style is appropriate for which kind of building, about whether columns should be Doric, Ionic or Corinthian. Many architects, however, feel passionately about competing design philosophies, and one competition in particular persists: classicism versus modernism. Much of Washington's architecture, typified by use of classical motifs derived from Greek and Roman...

China - After a more than a decade of delays, China's tallest building is slicing through Shanghai's hazy, skyscraper-studded skyline — a new trophy built by a Japanese property tycoon. The 101-story Shanghai World Financial Center, a 1,614 foot wedge-shaped tower with a rectangular hole at the very top, was topped out on Friday as its last beam was laid amid a drizzle that obscured the building's panoramic view of endless high rises. In a city whose skyline evinces the belief "the taller the better," the building is bound to be a major tourist destination and landmark. With China's economy...

The world's tallest building, still under construction in the booming Gulf emirate of Dubai, has become the world's tallest free-standing structure, its developers said on Thursday. The Burj Dubai tower is now 555 metres (1,831.5 feet) tall and has surpassed the 553-metre- (1,824.9-feet) CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, which held the record for the world's tallest free-standing structure since 1976, developers Emaar Properties said in a statement. The skyscraper, being built by South Korea's Samsung and set for completion at the end of next year, is one of several mega projects taking shape in Dubai, which is part of the...

(AP) — A maze of wooden planks and glass panes is gradually taking shape among the austere office buildings of downtown Oakland, a structure alternately described as a bee hive, an inverted basket or a nuclear reactor.Only an inconspicuous sign on a fence offers a clue that it will soon be one of the nation's most ambitious — and expensive — religious sites.When it's completed in fall of 2008, the $190 million Cathedral of Christ the Light will be the centerpiece of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, which lost its old cathedral to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.More...

Los Angeles, Sep 5, 2007 / 10:11 am (CNA).- Thanks to local preservationists and an astute developer, the former cathedral of Los Angeles was returned to its previous structural glory last week. The former St. Vibiana Cathedral, now simply named Vibiana and converted into a concert and events hall, got its 3,500-pound cupola back Aug. 30, reported the L.A. Times. The moment ended an 11-year campaign to save the downtown landmark. The historic cathedral was marked for demolition after it suffered structural damage in a 1994 earthquake. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles decided that repairs would cost more than the...

This Dutch practice is representative of a new generation of European architects who are rejecting recent architecture’s ironic posturing in favour of something fundamentally contextual, says Paul Shepheard What is Dutch architecture? You know it — it’s big, it’s clever. It has canted walls and impossible cantilevers. It lands on site from outer space, hissing sardonically and scorching its critics with ridicule. It would be surprising if the heat inspired by this super architecture had not produced a counter-revolution — something unremarkable and built of bricks, perhaps? Sixty years ago, when Rietveld was flattening roofs and stamping out the peasants’...

German town wants its own Great Pyramid By Bojan Pancevski in Berlin, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007 The pharaohs may have set the standard, but German entrepreneurs are hoping to challenge Egypt's pre-eminence in monumental self-indulgence by building the world's largest pyramid. The pyramid of tombstones planned at Dessau They have secured €90,000 (£61,000) in state funding to assess the feasibility of building a 1,600ft tall "Great Pyramid" near the town of Dessau, in the impoverished east German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Like the original Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, this would be a place of burial. But...

The earth is round, but the world is full of seductive edges and remote corners where man wrestles the odds of nature to carve a niche for himself, on distant seaside islands steeped in privacy, where his true visionary genius may come to repose. Chadsworth, a cottage on the extreme north end of Figure Eight Island, on a site which, the owner says, was at one time heavily treed with live oaks ravaged by hurricanes, is one of those rare private villas where a world traveler retreats behind the facade of an anglicized Palladian mansion embedded into the fragile barrier...

Rem Koolhaas has some photographs to show me. Not glossy shots of some earth-shattering new building he has created but small snaps of street life in the age-old courtyards of Beijing. Known as "hutongs", these are tight webs of hotchpotch homes and alleys gathered around wells. "Most of them will soon be gone," says the architect, speaking in the Rotterdam headquarters of his company, Oma."The Olympics next year will find them old-fashioned and unsightly. Those who live there are being given new high-rise flats. These are well-equipped and clean, but people, I think, miss their old life down below in...

Famed New York architect Robert A.M. Stern, who has designed traditional, elegant homes and buildings from Martha's Vineyard to Kazakhstan, has been chosen to design the George W. Bush Presidential Library. The decision announced Tuesday seems to all but guarantee that the library will be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, first lady Laura Bush's alma mater. SMU appears to be the only site still in the running for the prestigious facility, although members of the selection team have not announced their final choice. In a telephone interview, Stern said he was chosen after meeting with the Bushes at...

The average family may be smaller than it was 10 years ago, but the average single-family house is larger -- and more luxurious. It has more bathrooms, higher ceilings, more elaborate master bedrooms, and bigger kitchens and outdoor space. So what will the average home look like in the next decade? More than 300 architects, designers, manufacturers and marketing experts interviewed by phone or surveyed by the National Association of Home Builders last year predicted that the average U.S. home in 2015 will not be any bigger. What it will be, they said, is much more luxurious.

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Washington is a city rich with powerful symbols. It is known for its monuments, memorials and corridors of power. And its big landmarks, the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, will always loom large because of an 1899 law stipulating that no private structures in the city can be higher than either of them.In tourist season – early spring to late summer – visitors to the capital flock to the seats of government and monumental tributes to history with cameras always at the ready. But what they might not readily notice or capture for their photo albums...

Malmö’s famous Turning Torso skyscraper is among the tallest housing blocks in Europe. Behind the ultra-modern exterior is one of the world's most luxurious apartment complexes, writes Paul Steele. People in the south of Sweden are total sceptics to new projects until they’re finished. The Öresund Bridge – no one will ever use it. The City Tunnel – complete waste of money. Turning Torso – Ha! Who would ever want to live there? I for one, and probably half of south Sweden and greater Copenhagen for another. One of the tallest accommodation blocks in Europe, Turning Torso is the leading...

Is the tall building an anachronism? Does it, like sprawling suburbia and out-of-town shopping malls, seem doomed to belong only to what is increasingly referred to as “the oil interval,” that now fading and historically brief moment when easily extracted oil was abundant and cheap? The answer is probably “Yes,” particularly for the conventional freestanding, air-conditioned, artificially lit tower that guzzles vast amounts of energy and is built for short-term profit out of high-embodied-energy materials, many of them petroleum derivatives. Such buildings are utterly contrary to the requirements of times of increasingly insecure and dwindling oil supplies, in which even...

Traditional buildings with solid walls are more eco-friendly because they need less cooling in summer and less heating in winter than modern glass and steel structures, a study says. The study found that traditional buildings with solid walls cost 15-20 per cent less to heat or cool than modern designs with lots of glazing. It was commissioned by Robert Adam Architects, a firm of traditional architects, from a leading environmental engineering firm, Atelier 10, which has worked for Foster and Partners, which builds large buildings in glass and steel. The architect who commissioned it says it has implications for the...

C.W. KIM An artist's rendering of the tower proposed for 11th Avenue and A Street. DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO – They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and two beholders – one of them a government agency's architect – have very different views of a 40-story residential tower proposed at a gateway to downtown San Diego. Sandor Shapery says his design is like a flower. A consultant to the Centre City Development Corp. says it looks like a giant phallus. The Shapery proposal, a 160-unit hotel and condominium tower, was supposed to go before the downtown redevelopment...

LISBON, Portugal  —  Monuments in three Latin American countries were named among the new seven wonders of the world Saturday. Brazil's , Peru's , and Mexico's pyramid were chosen alongside the Great Wall of China, Jordan's Petra, the Colosseum in Rome and India's Taj Mahal. The sites were selected according to a tally of around 100 million votes cast by people around the world over the Internet and by cell phone text messages, the nonprofit organization that conducted the poll said.(snip)Many in the 50,000-member audience at a soccer stadium jeered when the United States' Statue of Liberty was announced...