North-facing view of The Sweepers by Wang Shugang at the O'Donnell Athenaeum Phase I Museum. Photo: ©Mauricio Rojas, Courtesy of UT Dallas

UT Dallas opens Morphosis-designed Crow Museum of Asian Art

In Richardson, Tex., the University of Texas at Dallas has opened a second location for the Crow Museum of Asian Art—the first of multiple buildings that will be part of a 12-acre cultural district. When completed, the arts and performance complex, called the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. Athenaeum, will include two museums, a performance hall and music building, a grand plaza, and a dedicated parking structure on the Richardson campus.

Museums

Bjarke Ingels' Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art conceived as village of 12 pavilions

The 60,000-sm Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China recently topped out. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the museum is conceived as a village of 12 pavilions, offering a modern interpretation of the elements that have defined the city’s urbanism, architecture, and landscape for centuries.

Cultural Facilities

Baltimore’s National Aquarium opens 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the harbor’s original tidal marsh habitat

The National Aquarium in Baltimore has opened the National Aquarium Harbor Wetland, a 10,000-sf floating wetland that mimics the Inner Harbor’s original Chesapeake Bay tidal marsh habitat. Located between Piers 3 and 4 on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the $14 million project features more than 32,000 native shrubs and marsh grasses.

Museums

The Tampa Museum of Art will soon undergo a $110 million expansion

In Tampa, Fla., the Tampa Museum of Art will soon undergo a 77,904-sf Centennial Expansion project. The museum plans to reach its $110 million fundraising goal by late 2024 or early 2025 and then break ground. Designed by Weiss/Manfredi, and with construction manager The Beck Group, the expansion will redefine the museum’s surrounding site.

Museums

Skanska | May 29, 2014

7 cost-effective ways to make U.S. infrastructure more resilient

Moving critical elements to higher ground and designing for longer lifespans are just some of the ways cities and governments can make infrastructure more resilient to natural disasters and climate change, writes Richard Cavallaro, President of Skanska USA Civil.

Barnsworth Exhibition Center, Location / Plano, Ill. Photo: Dave Burk, Hedrich B

May 23, 2014

Big design, small package: AIA Chicago names 2014 Small Project Awards winners

Winning projects include an events center for Mies van der Rohe's landmark Farnsworth House and a new boathouse along the Chicago river.

IKEA Headquarters in lmhult, Sweden. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

May 22, 2014

IKEA to convert original store into company museum

Due to open next year, the museum is expected to attract 200,000 people annually to rural Älmhult, Sweden, home of the first ever IKEA store.

Lenfest Hall, one of the museum's two principal public entrance spaces, will be

May 21, 2014

Gehry unveils plan for renovation, expansion of Philadelphia Museum of Art [slideshow]

Gehry's final design reorganizes and expands the building, adding more than 169,000 sf of space, much of it below the iconic structure.

May 20, 2014

Kinetic Architecture: New book explores innovations in active façades

The book, co-authored by Arup's Russell Fortmeyer, illustrates the various ways architects, consultants, and engineers approach energy and comfort by manipulating air, water, and light through the layers of passive and active building envelope systems.

Life at HOK | May 19, 2014

What can architects learn from nature’s 3.8 billion years of experience?

In a new report, HOK and Biomimicry 3.8 partnered to study how lessons from the temperate broadleaf forest biome, which houses many of the world’s largest population centers, can inform the design of the built environment.

Part of the World Trade Centers original foundation, this wall was built to kee

May 15, 2014

First look: 9/11 Memorial Museum opens to first-responders, survivors, 9/11 families [slideshow]

The 110,000-sf museum is filled with monumental artifacts from the tragedy and exhibits that honor the lives of every victim of the 2001 and 1993 attacks.

Photo: Jacopo Werther via Wikimedia Commons

May 13, 2014

19 industry groups team to promote resilient planning and building materials

The industry associations, with more than 700,000 members generating almost $1 trillion in GDP, have issued a joint statement on resilience, pushing design and building solutions for disaster mitigation.

Renderings: courtesy the Department of Canadian Heritage

May 13, 2014

Libeskind wins competition to design Canadian National Holocaust Monument

A design team featuring Daniel Libeskind and Gail Dexter-Lord has won a competition with its design for the Canadian National Holocaust Monument in Toronto. The monument is set to open in the autumn of 2015.

May 11, 2014

Final call for entries: 2014 Giants 300 survey

BD+C's 2014 Giants 300 survey forms are due Wednesday, May 21. Survey results will be published in our July 2014 issue. The annual Giants 300 Report ranks the top AEC firms in commercial construction, by revenue.