Six architect-client teams proved that good design is good for business, which, these days, means more than increased revenue. From a theater to a headquarters to a small city, these projects add to a company's profile, change a corporation's direction or culture, help retain employees, and give back to their communities..

Photo courtesy Haworth

Bucky Lives!
Michael Sorkin examines the legacy of Buckminster Fuller.

Photo courtesy the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

This month, RECORD is focusing on people and projects that merge design with social responsibility. We profile firms at the forefront of humanitarian design, hold a design invitational for refugee housing, host a roundtable discussion about community-focused design-build programs, and more.

Photo © Werner Huthmacher

This summer, all eyes are on Beijing, and RECORD has put together a special section of our site dedicated to the city. View and comment on high-profile projects, browse photographs and post your own, read Beijing recommendations from people who know the city, and more.

Photo © Jennifer Richter

SOM’s Carl Galioto and Paul Seletsky on BIM
Carl Galioto, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s partner-in-charge of the firm’s New York Technical Group, and Paul Seletsky, SOM’s director of digital design, are two of the architecture profession’s leading experts on building information modeling. The pair discuss how BIM facilitated a major redesign of the Freedom Tower; address common misperceptions; explain BIM’s potential benefits for smaller practices; point out how BIM can lead to increased compensation; and lay out the potential ramifications of BIM on the architect’s overall role in the realization of buildings.

Image © dbox Studio

AIA Convention: Boston
We explore Boston, the host city of the 2008 national convention for the American Institute of Architects. Read about must-see buildings, recent projects, and the best places to dine. Watch videos, view slide shows, listen to podcasts, and contribute your own images to our Boston Photo Showcase. Also, RECORD editors will blog live from the convention, held May 15 to 17.

Photo © Bryant Rousseau

The AIA will recognize the recipients of the 2008 Honor Awards during its national convention in Boston. View winning projects in three categories: Architecture, Interiors, and Regional/Urban Design. Also, read about the winners of the 25 Year Award (Richard Meier's The Atheneum), the Firm of the Year (KieranTimberlake Associates), and the Gold Medal (Renzo Piano).

Photo © Jeff Weiner

BusinessWeek/Architectural Record 2008 China Awards
In 2006, we introduced the BusinessWeek/Architectural Record Awards program to China on a biannual basis. This year, we honor 13 building and planning projects ranging in size from a small house in Hong Kong to an 860,000-square-meter, mixed-use development near the center of Beijing. We also selected as best client a real-estate developer that has made design an essential part of its business strategy.

True Green
Given the growing concern about sustainability, it’s a good time to look back to the originating seeds of green, to the anarchic 1960s and Bucky Fuller’s philosophy of doing more with less.

Photo © Jack Fulton

New Museum of Contemporary Art
Having developed a reputation for exquisitely refined buildings, SANAA faced a very different kind of challenge with the New Museum in Lower Manhattan: Design a building for an anti-establishment museum in a scruffy-but-gentrifying part of town. Our Web coverage includes a slide show and video tour, along with a story about the project, a detailed analysis of the building’s structure, and a profile on leading engineer Mutsuro Sasaki.

Photo © Christian Richters

The New York Times Building
Renzo Piano Building Workshop and FXFOWLE present a quietly luminous addition to the Manhattan skyline with The New York Times Building. See images, view videos and read stories about the $1 billion project.

Photo © David Sundberg/Esto

Design Vanguard 2007
For our eighth annual selection of the world’s top emerging designers, we find a diverse group of 10 firms committed to making architecture count. Read about our winners – including  Höwler + Joon, Leven Betts Studio, and Moongyu Choi + GaA Architects – and view images of their work.

Photo: © Raúl Belinchón

New Video Series: My New York
In our latest video feature, we explore New York with noted architects, critics, artists, and others with impassioned opinions about architecture. They comment on buildings they love, hate or feel are critical to the context of the city’s built environment. Our “tour guides” include Robert Ivy, editor in chief of Architectural Record; noted artist Dennis Oppenheim; and Bruce Fowle, senior principal of FXFowle Architects.

Read interviews with design leaders who will speak at the 2007 Innovation Conference.

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw has gained recognition worldwide for his seamless integration of complex technological systems into striking, modernist structures.

William Mitchell, director of MIT Design Laboratory, is investigating how buildings and cities can respond more intelligently to their inhabitants.

Chuck Hoberman's vast and varied project portfolio includes everything from toys and medical equipment, to deployable shelters and retractable domes.

William Zahner's firm has fabricated stunning metal façades for high-profile projects by Frank Gehry, Morphosis, Herzog & de Meuron and other notable architects.

Image: Courtesy Hoberman Transformable Design

A Floating Pool Drops Anchor in Brooklyn
Swimming in New York City’s East River has never been so alluring. Late last June, a barge hauling its unusual cargo of a 25-meter, seven-lane swimming pool moored along the Brooklyn waterfront and, since then, has hosted tens of thousands of New Yorkers looking to escape the summer heat.

Photo: © Philippe Baumann

Journal Entries from Kuala Lumpur
Robert Ivy, RECORD's editor-in-chief, recently traveled to Kuala Lumpur for the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture. He recorded his impressions of the event, diary-style, and also took a number of photographs, which we feature in a slideshow.

Photo: Bob Ivy

Topped/Tapped Out
The skyscraper has had more comebacks than Cher. From its humble, naive beginnings in Chicago after the fire of 1871; its idealistic representation in early European Modernism; its apex as the glam symbol of American corporate eminence; its bimbo phase in Postmodernism; its more recent dalliance with high-tech engineering; and culminating with its supposed demise on September 11, 2001, the skyscraper is one helluva contender.

Photo: Courtesy SOM

The Engineer's Moment
A shift in the architecture profession, already entrenched with issues of control and authorship, affords the engineer an expanded role during initial project design discussions, not just as consultants after the fact. Structural engineers like Chris Wise—formerly of Arup, now at Expedition Engineering—are literally drawing at the table, which is how he explains his collaboration at Arup with Norman Foster’s office on London’s Millennium Bridge.

Photo: Courtesy North Carolina State Fair Division

Between baby boomers pushing 60, and over-the-hill hospitals in need of a makeover, the demand for healthcare buildings couldn’t be healthier.  To meet your need for information about them, we’ve created this Record Review Health Care section.

Pictured: Johns Hopkins Hospital; Image courtesy Perkins + Will

Philip Johnson's Glass House: An Essay in Timelessness
A classic example of Modern architecture is spiffed up for its public debut.

An Architectural Record Contest
The Philip Johnson Glass House Guessing Game
Win the book, Glass House, edited by Toshio Nakamura, photographs by Michael Moran  (Monacelli, 2007, $95.00).

Photo © Arnold Neuman/Getty Images

Peter Marino's Brand Buildings
The New York architect combines respect for the past with a brand's essence in store designs for such luxury names as Dior and Vuitton.

Pictured: The exterior of the Chanel store in Tokyo. Photo: © Takashi Orii

Video Tour of a Chinese Town
Two noted Chinese video artists, On Ning (who trained as an architect) and Cao Fei, take us on an avant-garde, improvisatory tour of a Chinese town, San Yuan Li.

Video Tour of Kyotofu Restaurant
We visit a new Japanese dessert café in Manhattan with a unique, Minimalist façade and an interior that manages to be both ultra-modern and warmly inviting. The owners and the architect also discuss with us the impact that the strong design will have on the business’s bottom line.

The Schools of the 21st Century Web site was created for those who believe that the quality of our school buildings is directly related to the quality of education we give the students who occupy them.

Pictured: Sidwell Friends Middle School; Photo © Barry Halkin

After the Flood: An exhibition presenting proposals for replacement housing and redevelopment in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Click here for our Venice Biennale 2004 coverage

Welcome to RECORD's special site dedicated to the unrestrained, talented, and innovative architects who call Los Angeles home. With podcasts, interviews, and an informal design guide, the site will give you an inside look at the people who make L.A. a nucleus of thought-provoking design. Read on.

Best of China: Check out the 16 winners of the first BusinessWeek/ Architectural Record China Awards, as well as news and other features on architecture in China.

Plus, visit our 2004 China issue, winner of a Neal Award for "Best Single Issue of a Magazine" Be sure to check out our accompanying Web site coverage.

Innovation: This special section covers our annual Innovation conference held in New York City. Discover the featured projects that involve collaboration, technological sophistication, and attention to sustainability. We also include exclusive articles on building technology, products, and technology briefs. Be innovative.