The Architect's Newspaper

SOM designs observation platforms that allow visitors to walk on the air. A new platform is planned for Chicago's Sears Tower.

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission delayed a vote on several proposed amendments to the city's cultural heritage ordinance because of a lack of consensus among the speakers.

New York City is considering new legislation that seeks to address problems brought by the national recession to stalled construction sites and New Yorkers endangered by them.

A manufacturer of solar systems has planned to develop the country's largest urban solar power plant at a brownfield in Chicago.

LEGO and the Wright Foundation have launched two new sets to honor the architect's centennial.

LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) announced on May 19 that it was laying off Brooke Hodge, its curator of architecture and design.

As the U.S. Green Building Council prepares to give its LEED-AP certification standards a major overhaul, test takers are scrambling to take the exam before it becomes a whole new ballgame.

The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) has opened new offices with the goal of interacting more with the public and creating an 'urban center'.

Growth in Portland's professional sports due to the expansion of Major League Soccer is threatening the life of the city's iconic Memorial Coliseum. Historians and preservationists are teaming up to save it.

Expansion of Los Angeles' light rail system is moving ahead, as a new leg heads west. Though funding is secure, controversy still surrounds the route and its design.

At the sixth busiest stop on the busiest train line in the country, developers are realizing the potential for transit-oriented development around the station.

In a step toward accomplishing PlaNYC's goal of reducing the city's carbon emissions by 30% in the next twenty years, Mayor Bloomberg has announced that larger buildings will be retrofitted to be more energy efficient.

Preconceptions and lofty goals surround New York's soon-to-open High Line park. But the unprecedented inner city rail line conversion leaves much up in the air, according to this piece from The Architect's Newspaper.

A 1999 law forbids the State Department from funding pavilions at international expositions. Fred Bernstein argues that the law is misguided, and should be changed before the next year's World's Fair in Shanghai.

Big-name and big-budget projects in New York are basking in the spotlight, but smaller, community-based projects are also flourishing in the Bronx.

According to Kazys Varnelis, architects should spend less time worrying about the little funding that the stimulus allots to highways and rail, and spending more time focusing on new technologies that supplement typical infrastructure.

In 2006, the Los Angeles Planning Dept. launched an urban design studio to turn Los Angeles into a more pedestrian-friendly city. The studio has gone on to create a set of walkability guidelines, and has more ambitious goals ahead.

William Menking compares the WPA with the current stimulus package and finds many parallels, including an emphasis on shovel-ready projects and a lack of trust in the federal government to plan large-scale infrastructure.

The Pasadena Planning Commission has again rejected famed architect Richard Meier's plans for an Episcopal church in the city center. Commissioners believe the plan does not fit with Pasadena's historic character.

Hudson Park and Boulevard is a new 4-acre system of parks being created in New York. Landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates were selected to make their vision reality.