Gail Davidson discusses Hugh Ferriss's process for crafting a 1920s skyscraper under strict zoning laws.

Ely Jacques Kahn's design for a skyscraper, now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, demonstrates the power of the architectural drawing as an advertising tool.

Architect and 2016 National Design Award winner for Lifetime Achievement Moshe Safdie discusses the four design principles that have guided his work over the past five decades and how they relate to the evolution of architecture in the era of globalization. Safdie sheds light on the ramifications of “megascale” and “megastructure,” examining scale, site, buildability,...

U.S. public libraries are redefining and expanding their roles in civic life to ensure community access to the vital information and tools needed to learn, create, and improve lives. Join us for a conversation on public libraries as hubs for civic engagement, with a focus on the innovative neighborhood libraries featured in the exhibition By...

Where does a building end and the earth that surrounds it begin? Often, this question is easy to answer. We tend to think of buildings and land supporting them as separate entities. This preliminary drawing by the Weiss/Manfredi Architects for the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York shows us that sometimes buildings and...

Theodore Jojola, professor in the Indigenous Design + Planning Institute at the University of New Mexico, discusses the unique nature and power of indigenous design and planning.

Essay by Julie Sangborn about the changing vision for some of New York City's public libraries.

Talk by Deanna Van Buren, architect and coordinator of the Designing Justice + Designing Spaces project. This talk is a part of Autodesk’s Design Night. Designing Justice+Designing Spaces facilitates the design of more restorative and healing criminal-justice environments through community engagement in jails and prisons. An alternative to the current punitive-justice system—the United States has...

“In architecture, there are no limits to forms, colors, and textures that you feel you should use. Feeling is the important thing; that you should actually feel something about your problem.” [1] The words of architect Bruce Goff ring true throughout his brilliant and oftentimes bizarre architectural projects. Goff’s notable work in church, home, and...

Title: The Architect, builder and woodworker. Publisher: New York [etc.] C.D. Lakey [etc.] 1868- Smithsonian Libraries Reference Number: NA1. A43 CHMRU   Builder and Wood-Worker Masthead. Vol. 18, no.2 Feb, 1882. NA1. A43 CHMRU The Cooper Hewitt Library collects a variety of trade periodicals, especially those dealing with architecture and the building trades. The Architect,...

This beautiful monochromatic wallpaper is an excellent example of mid-nineteenth century stylistic eclecticism. The window, surrounded by fan vaults and Gothic tracery, is a typical Gothic Revival image. However, the bunches of flowers and swirling acanthus leaves that frame the Gothic interior are Rococo Revival motifs, pointing to the enormous  influence of French culture on...

Echoing the larger artistic vision of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, this chair was designed for the hotel’s Peacock banquet room in the early 1920s. Amongst the 700 drawings that exist for the hotel, most are for its interior, showing how significant its design was.[1] The chair’s hexagonal back and square seat reflect...

For her first assignment as an architecture student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mary Ann Crawford was given a sheet of paper, twelve hours, and a problem: design an entrance to an architectural school. Crawford’s submission was well-received by her professor, but he gave her a cautionary warning. “You want to be careful...

Though it is frequently lauded as the tallest skyscraper designed by a woman in the world, Chicago’s Aqua Tower is worthy of praise beyond the gender of its architect, Jeanne Gang, a MacArthur fellow and winner of the 2013 National Design Award in Architecture. The key aspects of Gang’s LEED certified design, which explores the...

Polly Turner’s sampler, worked in 1786, is one of the earliest known examples made at Mary Balch’s school in Providence, Rhode Island. According to tradition, the sampler’s five-bay house represents the residence of the president of Rhode Island College. Polly’s is the first known needlework depiction of the house, which appears on at least six...