Past Is Prologue

Austin’s Seaholm Power Plant, decommissioned in 1996, will become the centerpiece of an 8-acre, mixed-use development.
www.mcconnellphoto.net

 

01_Adaptive Reuse

Reviving old buildings with new uses is a mainstay of the preservation toolbox. But today’s architects are tackling what you might call extreme adaptive reuse. Aaron Seward reports on four sites across the Americas — a cotton barn, a grain elevator, a nurses’ dormitory, and a power plant — proving that even the most unwieldy building types can be reborn. 
 


 

the enclosure atop the new acropolis museum is aligned parallel to the parthenon.
christian richters
 
 

02_New Acropolis Museum

When Bernard Tschumis home for the Acropolis antiquities opens in June, it will mark an end to a convoluted saga involving political strife, archeological ruins, and the most influential building in western civilization. The architect talks to Julie V. Iovine about designing a contemporary building atop one of the world’s most historically charged sites.

 

  
 


 

The renovation retains the museum’s frayed historical layers.
 christian richters
 
 

03_Neues Museum 

David Chipperfield’s re-completion of a war-damaged Berlin museum melds past and present to create a moving testament to time’s decay. Jeff Byles offers a capsule history of this powerful new project.

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

amid the moor grass: the high line’s landscape mimics the look of overgrown terrain.
adam friedberg
 
 

04_High Line

There is no real precedent for New York’s newest urban promenade — sculpted from the famed elevated railway — and time will tell how much Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s design lives up to our unfettered fantasies. Julie V. Iovine takes a first stroll.

 

 

 

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