AEC News You Can Use Blog

Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban studies, has announced that Miami-based architect and urban planner Chad Oppenheim has been selected as the 2023 Laureate of The American Prize for Architecture^®, the prestigious award that is regarded internationally as the highest honor for architecture in the United States.

Oppenheim’s built works, spanning over two decades, are expansive in typology and geography, including works ranging from cultural and hospitality buildings to residences and urban master planning throughout Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America.

“Subtle, powerful, elegant, and deeply romantic” states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, architecture critic and Museum President/CEO of The Chicago Athenaeum, “he is a prolific American architect who is radical in his restraint, demonstrating his reverence for history and culture, as well as time and space, while honoring the preexisting built and natural environments, as he reimagines a more beautiful and poetic world with modern, meaningful buildings that relate to their context and reinvigorates the landscape and places in which his designs exits.”

“His monumental, immutable architecture enhances the lives of its occupants, realizes a site’s full potential, and protects and celebrates the natural environment.”

“From the serene Jordanian desert to the lush Bahamas, he shapes buildings and places to achieve the optimal balance between creativity and pragmatism, function and experience, construction and aesthetics.”

“He treats his buildings and projects with sanctity as he unlocks the mystical and metaphysical essence of the power of architecture.”

“Oppenheim’s buildings engage and harness their surrounding land and seascapes and showcase the designer’s dedication to sustainable practices and materials.”

“He believes that buildings and their environment should be deeply symbiotic, where projects ‘belong’ to their site and form follows feeling. Guided by three philosophical pillars—spirit of place, silent monumentality, and the essential—he has spent decades creating landmark architecture that is highly sensitive and responsive to its context and climate.” Read more here

Willie Nelson—folk legend, guitarist, outlaw, chain smoker, freedom fighter, town planner?

That’s correct. The pop-up town of Luck is a short drive from Austin, Texas designed by Nelson for a 1986 full-length film he produced and starred in, Red Headed Stranger, that was never torn down after production ended. Luck is an Old West Potemkin Village of sorts that can easily be confused with the fictional town of Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles starring Mel Brooks, Cleavon Little, and Gene Wilder.

In the film, Willie Nelson plays a shotgun-toting pastor who’s come to Luck to restore order in the lawless abode. Nelson’s Texas utopia features a dirt road for dueling with six-shooters, a Saloon where cowboys with ten-gallon hats smash glasses over each other’s heads, a general store, a jail, a chapel where Nelson delivers sermons, and Opry House, a fictional music venue.

Lawsuits are piling up against architects as they lock horns with owners over a several-year stretch of project delays, local construction attorneys said.

In the aftermath of the pandemic’s many construction sector interruptions, there’s a battle over who should take the blame for long-delayed projects. Those eager to recoup costs associated with those delays are sometimes pointing the finger at their contractors, as well as design professionals.

That’s being seen increasingly often by Andrew Carlowicz Jr. and Lawrence Powers, co-chairs of the Construction Law Department at New Brunswick-based law firm Hoagland, Longo, Moran, Dunst & Doukas LLP.

The duo has handled many disputes over the years on behalf of architects and engineers. The civil lawsuits that have emerged from this most recent trend are what they describe as interesting and definitely some of the most complicated.

“Because, when a project finishes late, there are some instances where a delay issue was clearly the responsibility of either the design team on a project or the contractor but, that’s rare,” Carlowicz said. “Usually, it’s many different issues caused by different parties concurrently that lead to delays.” Read more here