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1 week ago | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Architecture NewsOpinion
It has been nearly a century since an international exposition opened at a moment as fraught as today. Like the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, Japan, is shadowed by a breakdown in global relations, war in Europe, and extreme rhetoric everywhere. The notion of gathering 158 nations to exchange visions of peace and progress feels naïve right now.
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2 months ago | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Architecture NewsInterviews
The second China-based architect to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize since its inception in 1979, Chengdu-based Liu Jiakun struggled to find his purpose at the start of his career but came to international attention in 2002 with a poetic design for a museum displaying Buddhist sculpture. Subsequently, he has produced a body of work that engages history, landscape, and the place of the individual in a communal society.
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Mar 4, 2025 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Liu Jiakun, a Chengdu-based architect whose work can be both muscular and nimble, has been named the 2025 laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His buildings often employ traditional Chinese elements such as walled enclosures and gardens, but do so in modern and poetic ways.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
For a $2 billion undertaking encompassing multiple projects within a 2.1 million-square-foot complex, the people directing the ongoing building efforts at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art talk a lot about the impact of the individual hand. Details reveal purpose. Small things highlight big intentions. Max Hollein, the museum’s director and CEO, speaks of selecting materials and how these decisions express the institution’s value of environmental responsibility and social inclusion.
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Oct 20, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Just past the Beaux-Arts-inspired grand stair in the block-long lobby of Marymount’s new building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, students are busy using 3D printers and the latest “maker” equipment to create projects exploring a rapidly changing world. Tradition and technology meet cheek by jowl, not just on the ground floor but in the three levels below grade and the 10 above.
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Oct 6, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Buried within a soulless 1980s office-and-hotel complex in downtown San Diego lies the indefatigable spirit of an old-time Hollywood star. After a multimillion-dollar renovation, the faded interiors of a 1929 movie theater are ready for their close-up once again, this time as the home of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra.
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Aug 5, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Kongjian Yu. Photo © Turenscape Kongjian Yu is principal designer at Turenscape, the Beijing-based landscape and urbanism firm he founded in 1998, and dean of the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Peking University. He also founded and runs the Turenscape Academy, a non-accredited, hands-on program focused on rural regeneration and located in a small town in Anhui Province.
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Jul 22, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
No one will mistake the succession going on at Pelli Clarke & Partners (PCP) with the fictional one at Waystar Royco that played out over four seasons on HBO. While both the architecture firm and the entertainment conglomerate are global in scope, the media attention is significantly lower and the bad blood nonexistent in the Pelli family saga. The lack of drama as PCP ushers in its third generation of leadership underscores the careful planning behind the firm’s recent moves.
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Nestled at the convergence of three regions in northern Spain, Aguilar de Codés is a place of overlapping influences and layered histories. The Basque country, La Rioja, and Navarre meet here, leaving traces of their varied cultures on the buildings, the cuisine, and the people. The sport of pelota exemplifies the region’s multiple identities—a shared recreation played in diverse ways: with one’s bare hand, a racket, a bat, or a chistera (a wicker scoop) propelling a ball against a wall.
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Jun 19, 2024 | 
architecturalrecord.com | Clifford Pearson
Beach towns have always been quirky places—laid-back but bustling in the summer, sleepy and often storm-wracked in the off-season. Now growth and climate change are adding new pressures on these coastal destinations, forcing them to address critical issues of identity and resilience, usually on tight budgets.
