CONTENTS:

NEWS:

Jean Nouvel Has Arrived
French Architect is named 2008 Pritzker Prize Laureate

Green Goes Global
Property Owners working to establish international Green Rating System

How the West Won’t Be One
Tishman Speyer bid selected, but design likely to change

Cheers, Frank
Gehry Designing this summer’s Serpentine pavilion in London

Preparing for the R-word
AIA Billings Index shows sharpest 2-month decline since 1995

Dead End
Mayor’s congestion pricing plan defeated by Assembly Dems

Eavesdrop: Editors

Dark Days for Moynihan Station?
MSG pullout could kill new transit hub and tower project

Open: Gallery
Parts + Labor Gallery

New Digs
Princeton University unveils ambitious campus plan and architecture school gets sleek addition

Unveiled: Park Tower

Crit: Alexandra Lange
Will mIss Brooklyn Bow Out?
As Atlantic Yards shrinks, its critics rejoice, but is smaller still too big

The Nation’s Brown Field
Citizen groups are complaining that the Washington Mall has never looked worse

Light at the Top of the Stair
Steven Holl renovates NYU Philosophy Department

Prince Street Pile-Up
Soho says no to traffic-ban plan, fearing massive influx of unicyclists and mimes

Studio Visit: MERGE Architects

Sitting Pretty
New city park benches are both sustainable and hip

Can Architecture Save Syracuse?
University commits financial capital and serious architecture to boost struggling upstate city.

In Detail: EMPAC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Grimshaw with Davis Brody Bond and Buro Happold

CNU Charter Awards 2007

Emotive Architecture
Two artists devise a Hamptons house to challenge residents to live harder

Get Smarts
RMJM endows new $2 million GSD program

At Deadline
Strike Three
Not So Fast

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FEATURE:

Food and the City
They come from different sides of the business, but restaurateur Danny Meyer and architect David Rockwell both know a thing or two about what makes a restaurant work, from the straightforward challenges of circulation, lighting, and seating planning to the more evanescent issue of creating atmosphere. But they also understand that in a city like New York, a restaurant can have a role that goes beyond dinner. AN sat down with the two at gramercy tavern as they talked about design, public space, and the give-and-take between a restaurant and its neighborhood.
By Anne Guiney and Julie V. Iovine. Photograph by Adam Friedberg

Restaurant Row
Be it low-budget noodle shop or high-gloss dining destination, restaurants are a classic proving ground for architectural experiment and whimsy, drama and desire. The latest crop of chow houses finds this tradition in full flavor—from rustic-chic to sumptuous quartz slabs, anything goes so long as all five senses are firing. In that spirit, here are new restaurants from across the nation and beyond, revealing that whip-smart design is still every match for the fiercest culinary chops. Dig in. Produced by Jeff Byles with contributions from Alan G. Brake, Matt Chaban, Julie V. Iovine, and Aaron Seward.

The Storytellers
Guided by an abiding curiosity about the past lives of buildings, objects, and neighborhoods, the partners of the design and concept firm AvroKo have developed a distinct visual language for some of New York’s most popular restaurants. Their aesthetic may have been duplicated, but their narrative-based approach makes it hard to match. By Eva Hagberg

Changing Tastes
What and where a neighborhood eats can reveal a lot about it and is a reliable barometer of change. Brooklyn’s Bushwick is the latest in a long series of New York neighborhoods where new restaurants signal that the process of gentrification is well underway. By Angela Starita Photographs by Edwin Montoya

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REVIEWS:

DIARY

No Robots Please
Design and the Elastic Mind
Thomas de Monchaux

Building for Barons
The Country Houses of John F. Staub
Mark Alan Hewitt

The Building of the Green
The Greening of Southie
Anne Guiney

The Urge to Flourish
Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730–2008
Stephanie Murg