The first tower at New York City's World Trade Center opened yesterday with 40 percent vacancy. With one-million square feet of office space still to fill, Janno Lieber, president of World Trade Center Properties, "predicts the property's allure for companies will shine through as the construction fences come down." The Port Authority and New York City's Human Resources Administration are slated tenants. The significance of the opening was attributed to more than just Fumihiko Maki's design: "This wasn't even a celebration of architecture or symbols as much as it was another celebration of everything that began in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 12, 2001, when New York and New Yorkers began to get back up," writes Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News.
Architecture for Humanity founders Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr have left the humanitarian design organization after 14 years of work and one week after winning the Curry Stone Design Prize Vision Award. [Gizmodo]
Alec Hathaway, AIA, was named associate curator of architecture and design at The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. [MSU Today]
Architect is the 19th-whitest job in America. [The Atlantic]
When designing an affordable housing project with a historic structure in sunny Los Angeles, Santa Monica-based architecture firm Koning Eizenberg installed solar panels vertically along the rear of the structure. The architects chose to go vertical so as to not "crowd the roof with anachronistic panels." [Gizmodo]
A Frank Lloyd Wright gas station is going up inside the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum. Preview tours are being offered now, and the project is slated to open officially in May or June of next year. [The Buffalo News]
According to Blair Kaimn, architecture critic for The Chicago Tribune, the tallest building in America title is "no big deal." His first two sentences: "Wise men and women know that tallest building titles, like glory and Cubs winning streaks, are fleeting. Someone can always build a taller tower." [The Chicago Tribune]
AIA Houston names University of Houston’s Patrick Peters Educator of the Year. [The Daily Cougar]
The Yale Daily News ran a piece on the "tight-knit community" of the school's architecture majors. "You don't find any other major where you can talk to a TA at 2:30 in the morning," according to one student. [The Yale Daily News]
A proposed penthouse addition to the historic Upper West Side landmark, Apthorp, receives criticism from architects, including Robert A.M. Stern, A. Eugene Kohn (of Kohn Pedersen Fox), Michael Graves, and David Childs (who designed 1WTC). [Business Insider]
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