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 The Preservationist
Clem Labine
Ultimate Goal: A Building That's Impossible to Build
A recent news item made me realize that the Holy Grail for many of today's "starchitects" is to design a building so convoluted that no one can possibly build it. And we're getting closer to realizing that "impossible dream."
Raves in the architectural press are already starting to appear for Rome's new National Museum of the XXI Century Arts (called MAXXI for short). Designed by architect Zaha Hadid, the structure is everything you'd expect a contemporary art museum to be: monumental sculpture pretending to be a building. Read more.
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 A Capital Column
Kim O'Connell
Is DC's New and Improved Chinatown Authentic?
A decade ago, I worked for a magazine that was published in Washington's historic Chinatown neighborhood, where the most famous landmark is a glorious seven-roofed Chinese gate at the intersection of H and 7th Streets, N.W., Chinese immigrants established the neighborhood in the 1930s, which covered about 12 square blocks at its peak in the mid-20th century. At one time, it was a thriving ethnic enclave that could rival better known Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco.
By the late 1990s, however, DC's Chinatown was a shadow of its former self, with just a block and a half of mom-and-pop Asian restaurants, as well as an equal measure of boarded-up buildings and crime.Read more.
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 American Craftsman
Dan Cooper
Refresher Course
There's some time-worn saying about the fact that most New Yorkers have never visited the Empire State Building, and in some manner, this holds true for many of us who reside near an architectural treasure. I live in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, which frames the Connecticut River as it flows southward to Hartford. It's a place steeped in history and home to one of the most impressive collections of 18th- and early 19th-century houses: Historic Deerfield.
You'd think I would have noticed.
Read more.
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 A Place for Trades
Rudy Christian
Learn by Doing
Recently, I asked a friend to review something I had written on trades education. He was kind enough about his opinion of what I had written, but he did suggest that I take my blinders off. What I think he was saying was I needed to be careful not to focus so much on trades education in formal educational programs and remember that much, in fact most, education in the trades happens on the job, and quite often it's because people looking to add to their crew would prefer to train the new employees directly, rather than have to "de-educate" them or deal with a student who was taught in an environment that didn't prepare him or her for the challenges of a real, on-the-job environment. Read more.
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 Discourse and Practice
Aimee Buccellato
Building Better, Building Smarter
While many today seek new ways to construct and express the 'new epoch,' it is important to consider whether sustainability is, and will be, a purely contemporary issue, and whether high-tech expressionism and experimentation are in fact appropriate – or most effective – in either the near term, as manifestations of a constantly changing condition, or in the long term, for the very same reason. Solutions that articulate our current "technicity" and ecological self-consciousness may not actually be nimble enough to address long-range, multi-faceted global issues. For as we advance novel methods, materials and technologies, the context within which we are working is simultaneously shifting to include all of the variables and intangibles that go hand-in-hand with the unknown. Read more.
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