Year in Architecture 2013

For much of 2013 it felt like the "Year of Zaha Hadid." From the copycat development of her Wangjing SOHO in Beijing in January to the media hype around the apparently feminine form of her Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar last month, Hadid was an almost constant presence in the news.

In addition to highlighting the news that transpired over the course of the last year, the below month-by-month presentation links to some of the best Insight features from our eMagazine over the same period.

As we said last year a new year often begins with simultaneous glances backward and forward, typically taking the form of "best of" lists from the previous year and resolutions for moving forward. Construction is one of the most optimistic tendencies in architecture – seeing a project take shape in reality – but news broke in the first week of 2013 that Wangjing SOHO in Beijing (one of 11 projects designed by Zaha Hadid under construction at the time) was reportedly being copied in the Meiquan 22nd Century development in Chongqing in central China, also under construction. Nearly 12 months later and Hadid's design is nearing completion (see our "look ahead to 2014" at the bottom of this page), but interest in the Meiquan project, and the supposed lawsuit against them, has faded away.

The simultaneous glances backward and forward continued in the passings of architectural critic Ada Louis Huxtable (1921-2013) and photographer Balthazar Korab (1926-2013), and in the announcement that Rem Koolhaas would direct the 14th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale with the theme "Fundamentals: Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014." Huxtable was remembered for basically defining the genre of architectural criticism and writing her strongly articulated opinions until the month before her death (on Norman Foster's plans for the New York Public Library). Korab was remembered as the midwestern equivalent of West Coast photographer Julius Shulman and East Coast photographer Ezra Stoller, all brining modern architecture to a wider public last century. Koolhaas's appointment also looks back, specifically to World War I and the effect it had on modernity, cities, and architecture.

Insight: Deconstructivist Architecture, 25 Years Later

Some good news and bad news – both concerning the preservation of modern architecture – came in the second month of the year. Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York, was saved from the wrecking ball, hopefully paving the way for the preservation of more Brutalist architecture before memory of the brief movement is wiped clean by its opponents. But Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Women's Hospital, a concrete cloverleaf that echoed his more famous Marina City "corncob" towers also in Chicago, was denied landmarks status, meaning Northwestern University could demolish the building to make way for a much larger building. Demolition started near the end of the year, about the same time that Northwestern selected the design of Perkins + Will to rise on the site.

Insight: Studio Visit: OMA NY

Every spring Chicago's Pritzker family announces the recipient of their eponymous prize that is referred to as the "Nobel Prize of architecture." The recipient of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize was 71-year-old Japanese architect Toyo Ito, joining six recipients from his home country: Kenzo Tange (1987), Fumihiko Maki (1993), Tadao Ando (1995), and the duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (2010). We considered the prize long overdue, and we're looking forward (see bottom of page) to the completion of the Taichung Opera House in Taiwan, what may become Ito's magnum opus. The building stands out from most of his works; not surprising, given that he said upon the award of the Pritzker: "When one building is completed, I become painfully aware of my own inadequacy, and it turns into energy to challenge the next project. Probably this process must keep repeating itself in the future. Therefore, I will never fix my architectural style and never be satisfied with my works."

Not long after the announcement of Ito as the 37th recipient of the prize, Denise Scott Brown told a Women in Architecture Awards luncheon, via a prerecorded address: "They owe me not a Pritzker Prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony. Let’s salute the notion of joint creativity." In 1991 her husband and professional partner Robert Venturi won the Pritzker Prize, not to mention how Wang Shu was given the prize in 2012 without mention of his wife and partner in Amateur Architecture Office Lu Wenyu. Brown's words resonated with professionals and students, including Harvard GSD's Women in Design, which petitioned the Pritzker to give her a retroactive prize. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the Pritzkers denied Brown such a correction, saying, "A later jury cannot re-open, or second guess the work of an earlier jury, and none has ever done so." While the Priztker family and its jury did not budge, the American Institute of Architects opened up its AIA Gold Model – long the purview of individual architects – to collaborations, acknowledging the role of all architects (men, women, all nationalities, etc.) in the process of designing and realizing buildings.

Insight: Viewpoints: Uncommissioned Work by Architectural Photographers

Spring on earth is a time of life as flowers, plants, and trees dormant over the winter months explode into green and other colors. Likewise the opening of buildings in springtime is fitting, an optimistic start to what are hopefully many years and decades of use by people. A few notable buildings opened in April: The New Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, designed by Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos of Seville; the Messe Basel, designed by Herzog & de Meuron for their hometown; and Robert A.M. Stern's design of the George Bush Presidential Center in Texas. The first is a sensitive transformation and addition to Pierre Cuypers's 19th-century building; the second is a large raised volume that spans a tramway and is wrapped by a distinctive twisted aluminum façade; and the third combines the requisite Presidential Library with the Bush Institute, "a place of action, a results-oriented institute that will have an effect on our country and, we think, on the world," according to the 43rd President.

Some less-than-life-affirming news came when the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announced its plans to demolish the old American Folk Art Museum designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Fans of the building (this writer included) feared this decision since MoMA bought the building in 2011. The news was tempered one month later when MoMA – responding to some strong backlash from supporters of the Folk Art Museum's positive attributes – announced that Diller Scofidio + Renfro were hired for the MoMA expansion and would be investigating reuse of the Williams Tsien building. Yet as late as mid-December those plans have not been released to the public.

April also saw the passing of visionary architect Paolo Soleri (1919-2013), who dedicated most of his life to realizing Arcosanti in the desert north of Phoenix, Arizona; and Rick Mather (1937-2013), an architect from Portland, Oregon, who spent most of his career in London.

Insight: Architects House Themselves

In May the jury for the 2013 European Union Prize for Contemprary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award selected Harpa - Reykjavik Concert Hall & Conference Centre, designed by Batteríid Architects, Studio Olafur Eliasson, and Henning Larsen Architects, for the biennial prize. The project was heralded by the European Commission as "a symbol of resilience, dynamism and recovery" in a country hit hard by the economic crisis. May also saw the awarding of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum's 2013 awards. Recipients included James Wines (lifetime achievement), Michael Sorkin (design mind), Studio Gang Architects (architecture design), Aidlin Darling Design (interior design), and Margie Ruddick (landscape architecture).

May was a particularly busy news month for Zaha Hadid, as her Riverside Museum: Scotland's Museum of Transport and Travel in Glasgow, Scotland, was awarded the 2013 European Museum of the Year Award from the European Museum Forum; her firm was selected to design the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the Zaha Hadid Design Gallery on Goswell Road in London opened as part of Clerkenwell Design Week.

Insight: A Short Survey of Architectural Publishing

As we said last year, one thing becoming increasingly common around the world is to celebrate the warm months of summer with a temporary architecture installation. The Serpentine Gallery has been doing it since the year 2000, when they installed a tent in Kensington Gardens designed by Zaha Hadid. MoMA PS1 has been holding a competition under its Young Architects Program for a pavilion in its courtyard in Long Island City, Queens, for the same amount of time. Sou Fujimoto's ethereal design for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion opened on 8 June and CODA's Party Wall installation occupied the MoMA PS1 courtyard starting on 27 June.

The month also saw the opening of the Museum of Architectural Graphics in Berlin, designed by Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov of SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov; the opening of Musée des civilizations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée by Rudy Ricciotti; the unveiling of Peter Zumthor's design for the expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the cancelling of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's "bubble" for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC; and the passing of Henning Larsen (1925-2013), only one month after the Danish architect's Harpa building won the EU - Mies Prize. From 20-22 June, World-Architects attended the AIA Convention in Denver, Colorado, writing up the visit in "A Month of Architecture & Design."

Insight: The Landscapes of Le Corbusier

Like the seasons, architecture news tends to have an ebb and flow, so that July and August are fairly slow (or, more positively, laid-back) months for architecture. In mid-July Venetians rejoiced when Pierre Cardin abandoned his plans for the 250-meter-high (820') Palais Lumiere tower planned for Marghera, the former industrial area about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northwest of the center of Venice. Setting aside the UNESCO buffer zone, in which new buildings cannot be visible from the historic city of Venice, Cardin's three-pronged design was a less-than-elegant solution to a design problem of his own making: creating a self-contained mixed-use development with apartments, a hotel, office and commercial space, a conference center, educational facilities, and a panoramic restaurant overlooking Venice.

July also saw the unveiling of two Zaha Hadid creations: A proposal for a residential building on West 28th Street in New York City, bordering the High Line elevated park; and the Nova Shoe, a collaboration with Rem D. Koolhaas and United Nude.

Insight: Hand Drawing in the Age of Computers

A story in August – a month when we take some time off from our eMagazine for summer holiday – illustrated the way absurd stories can rapidly become memes, yet at the expense of accurately portraying the complexity and thoroughness of architectural construction. On 8 August, Gizomodo broadcast that the builders of Tempo Towers in Spain "forgot the elevator," basing the assertion on a Spanish-language article in El País from July. This assertion was due to the fact the developer roughly doubled the height of the building from 20 to 47 stories, but apparently the builders did not allow room for the elevators in the new floors. Later Gizmodo updated their post to say that "the building may have elevators after all," just not as many as they should. As we said when picking up on things later in the month, the story unfortunately paints "the architect, builder, and others involved with the project in a negative manner, convincing readers that their stupidity led to the apparent error." But, "given the breadth of experts necessary for even a 20-story building, it's close to impossible that elevators can be forgotten, even when the building doubles in size."

Insight: Spaces for Learning

A similar "looks like the architect goofed" story took hold of a wider audience than architecture news typically does in August when City A.M., a free business daily paper in London, reported that Rafael Viñoly's "Walkie Talkie" office tower nearing completion at 20 Fenchurch Street was "scorching Londoners." Turns out the concave facade directed the sun's rays at certain times of the day to one spot on an adjacent street, even damaging the plastic in some cars. The story, which the paper milked for all it could throughout September (even frying an egg with the sun's rays at one point), led the building to take on the monikers of "Walkie Scorchie" and "Fryscraper." Having designed a concave façade for a hotel in Vegas previously, Viñoly actually incorporated fins on one elevation of 20 Fenchurch to reduce glare, but the fins were value engineered over the course of construction.

September was full of awards, including the triennial Aga Khan Awards (five winners, including the Islamic Cemetery in Altach, Austria, by Bernardo Bader Architects, pictured above); the 2014 RIBA Gold Medal to Joseph Rykwert; the Praemium Imperiale to David Chipperfield; and the awarding of the 2020 Summer Olympics to Tokyo. As part of the last, criticism was directed at Zaha Hadid's competition-winning National Stadium Japan for being too large and too costly. Later in the year the Japan Sport Council, the body in charge of the stadium, announced it would scale back the floor space by one-quarter to 220,000 square meters (2.36 million sf).

Insight: Making Architecture Public

In early October we traveled to Singapore for the World Architecture Festival 2013, the sixth WAF overall and the second at Marina Bay Sands. Over the course of three days we took in as many architect presentations as we could; watched the keynote lectures by Charles Jencks, Dietmar Eberle and Sou Fujimoto; attended the award ceremonies; talked with architects on the Expo floor; and headed out into the Singapore heat for parties and plenty of sightseeing. It was busy and fast, but we're already looking forward to 2014.

In Hadid news, the architect's Serpentine Sackler Gallery opened in London at the end of September, but when we wrote about it in October we were smitten with Adrián Villar Rojas's artwork inside the galleries more than Hadid's signature swoops at the adjoining restaurant; the architect participated in A Dolls' House fundraiser, eventually raising the most of any of the participating architects for the UK charity KIDS; and elsewhere, the New York Times asked "Who's winning the architecture arms race?" with the response of Baku, Afghanistan, thanks to Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center.

Insight: Studio Visit: WOHA

Even though Zaha Hadid is arguably the most famous living architect today (having supplanted Frank Gehry at the top, due to her almost constant presence in the news and the great number of projects in the works), those jealous of the attention around her must have said "Thank God that's not me" when the media jumped all over her concept design for the Al Wakrah Stadium in Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup when it was unveiled in mid-November. A statement from Hadid's office says the design "captures the essence of the traditional dhow, an Arabian pearl fishing boat," but that didn't stop critics from saying it looked like a part of the female anatomy; even Daily Show host Jon Stewart described Hadid as the "Georgia O’Keeffe of things you can walk inside." All the hoopla prompted Hadid to fire back, telling Time magazine: "It’s really embarrassing that they come up with nonsense like this. What are they saying? Everything with a hole in it is a vagina? That’s ridiculous."

We shied away from the low-brow controversy (until now, that is), but that didn't keep us from reporting on some pop culture, as Kanye West visited Harvard GSD to give the students some advice and invite them to his concert. November also saw the announcement of three finalists in the Nobel Center competition, and two disasters in Brazil: a crane collapse at a World Cup stadium in São Paulo, and a fire at Oscar Niemeyer's Latin America Memorial. On a high-note, Renzo Piano's long-awaited expansion of Louis I. Kan's Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, opened to high acclaim.

Insight: Between Earth and Sky: The Piano Pavilion

A couple buildings were completed the last month of 2013. In Miami, Herzog & de Meuron's Pérez Art Museum Miami opened its doors during Miami Art Week/Art Basel. Across the Atlantic, the new Stonehenge Visitor Center finally opened after 30 years, the last 12 with current architect Denton Corker Marshall. This month also saw World-Architects wrapping up the first 50x50 – 50 States in 50 Weeks feature for the United States, which we'll be doing again next year – one of many things to look forward to in 2014.

Insight: Year in Architecture 2013!

Here we note a few projects that are expected to be completed next year, with each project documented with a rendering on the left and a construction photo on the right. Of course, things have a way of changing in architecture and construction, so please don't be upset with us next year if these buildings aren't done!