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AN editors and contributors this year invested significant resources on stories that matter most, from anti-DEI legislation and its ramifications for architecture educators, interviews with leading practitioners, exhibition reviews in Beirut, and more. Here are some of the long-form pieces we published in 2024 that you may have missed.
How anti-DEI legislation is impacting college architecture education across the country
Since 2023, 86 anti-DEI bills in 28 states have been introduced and 14 have become law. In October, Diana Budds wrore a story on this subject after interviewing architecture educators from across the country with an emphasis on those who work in Red States, namely Texas, Alabama, and Florida.
Budds reported that, while academic freedom in places like Iowa and Kansas is certainly being infringed upon, Blue States like New York also saw limits on freedom of speech for educators and students, albeit with different machinations.
Resiliency design in the Rockaways
The Rockaways have long offered respite and retreat for New Yorkers looking for sandy beaches. The peninsula is home to none other than Patti Smith, and thousands of people more broadly. But its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and low elevation makes it extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels.
By 2100, sea levels may rise as much as 6 feet, flooding the Rockaways. What is to be done? This summer, AN intern Alexandra Surprenant interviewed Rockaways locals and architects looking to fortify the beloved locale from global warming.
Nina Cooke John, Sekou Cooke, and their parents
The holidays are a time for family. As such, one of the most wholesome pieces AN published this year came from a conversation with architect-siblings Nina Cooke John and Sekou Cooke, and their parents, Leroy and Cynthia.
AN executive editor Jack Murphy talked to the family about growing up in Jamaica, how Nina and Sekou got interested in architecture, and more.
ESOPs spread the wealth
As important conversations about labor and unions abound around water coolers, how exactly to make architecture firms more democratic has become a common talking point. Should architecture offices unionize? What mechanisms are at our disposal for placing power in the hands of workers?
ESOPs are 100 percent employee-owned firms. And today, offices like Gensler, SHoP, Zaha Hadid Architects, and others all have them. Timothy Schuler interviewed workers and firm owners about ESOPs, and the value they offer.
Indigenous architects today
What is it like for Indigenous architects to practice today? This was the point of departure for Diana Budds in her piece from our June issue.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an initiative to repair the harms of colonialism, has done much to open up opportunity for Indigenous architects in that country. But in so many regards, the U.S. lags behind in such matters. Budds interviewed Indigenous architects to learn about what can be done and improved upon stateside.
Thomas Phifer–designed Museum of Modern Art opens in Warsaw
A culture project two decades in the making wrapped up in Poland this year. This fall, AN news editor Daniel Jonas Roche flew to Warsaw, interviewed Thomas Phifer, and spoke with local curators about the project, and what it means for the city.
Anthony Acciavatti talks water rights
Architect Anthony Acciavetti has been studying water rights for over 20 years. This year, AN tapped into this knowledge when Sebastián López Cardozo and Harish Krishnamoorthy interviewed Acciavetti. The interview touched upon the latest book by Acciavetti, Groundwater Earth: The World Before and After the Tubewell.
Jeanne Gang on The Art of Architectural Grafting
Fresh off a major addition to the American Natural History Museum, Studio Gang founder Jeanne Gang spoke with Jack Murphy about her new book, The Art of Architectural Grafting. Gang and Murphy talked additions, materials, and so much more.
Bjarke Ingels on his design for the Museum of Freedom and Democracy
A megaproject could soon break ground next to the United Nations in New York. That project is being designed by Bjarke Ingels. It will include residences, hotels, and a potential casino (pending a gaming license). The developers driving the project also want to see a Museum of Freedom and Democracy atop the casino, designed by Ingels.
AN interviewed Ingels about the museum, and how he went about ideating it.
Khalil Khouri retrospective fills gaps in Lebanon’s collective memory
Nadine Khalil, an art writer from Lebanon, wrote a heartfelt story for AN this year about late architect Khalil Khouri, and a show that was put on about him by his son, Bernard, during We Design Beirut. For the piece, Khalil interviewed Bernard Khoury, but also Mariana Wehbe, who organized We Design Beirut, and historian George Arbid.
Page Comeaux ruminates on Louisiana State Penitentiary
Should architects withhold their labor from prison projects? Such questions have fueled numerous debates in the architecture community for some time now. And this year, a writer from New Orleans, Page Comeaux, wrote about one of the most brutal spaces of incarceration in the U.S. today, Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Comeaux went into the history of carceral design, and meditated on its past, present, and future.
A repurposed church in Buffalo houses an arts program
Started in 2014 by artist-architect-educator Dennis Maher, Assembly House 150 is a loose bag combining an arts and public outreach project sited in an old Buffalo church.
On the altar of the 1850s gothic revival church, 12 students and a small team of instructors dress a rough wood-stud-and-drywall construction with tape and mud. Architecture professor Adrienne Economos Miller wrote about the event, and its curatorial merits.
Hill House by Donaldson + Partners dazzled and impressed
What is possible when the right client finds the right architect? Projects, for instance, like Hill House show what is possible. Jack Murphy interviewed the team at Donaldson + Partners who designed the project for the founder of Lynda.com.
Designing for disability in Ukraine
The question of reconstruction in Ukraine is an important one, but when and how that should look is to be determined. Ukrainian architecture student-turned-journalist Iryna Ivanivna Humenyuk interviewed leading Ukrainian architects and disability experts to learn how to design for disability in mind when the war eventually ends.
Anne Holtrop on Kuwait and Gaza
Anne Holtrop’s architecture is concerned with fundamental questions about forms and materials, but also the material histories of Palestine. He doesn’t “want to define the form of things, so [he] build[s] in all kinds of constraints and conditions to make form happen in other ways,” he told AN’s executive editor Jack Murphy this year, just before his new Siyadi Pearl Museum opened in Muharraq, Bahrain.