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Almost invisibly in her own day, Natalie de Blois, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, helped guide the design of three of the most important corporate landmarks of the 1950s and ‘60s — the headquarters of Lever Brothers, Pepsi-Cola and Union Carbide — whose suave steel-and-glass facades still exude the cool confidence of postwar Park Avenue. — New York Times
Federal officials this morning announced that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Architects has won the contract to build a $400 million Downtown courthouse.
“Today, the new federal courthouse is that much closer to becoming a reality for downtown Los Angeles,” said Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard in a prepared statement. The selection, she said, “means we are moving toward the groundbreaking of a critically needed facility that will resolve long-standing security and space issues.”
— ladowntownnews.com
We are rarely roused by the day-to-day, brick-by-brick additions that have the most power to change our environment. We know what we already like but not how to describe it, or how to change it, or how to change our minds. We need to learn how to read a building, an urban plan, a developer’s rendering, and to see where critique might make a difference.... We need more critics — citizen critics — equipped with the desire and the vocabulary to remake the city. — Places Journal
Places features an essay from Alexandra Lange's new book Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). Lange takes on a classic text by Ada Louise Huxtable — a review of SOM’s 1967 Marine Midland Bank... View full entry