The 20 Top Design Stories of 2012
Deborah Wilk -- Interior Design, 12/1/2012 2:00:00 AM
The London Aquatics Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects. Photo by Hufton + Crow.
Pillars of power, olympic builds, battles for and against preservation, new parks and parking lots, awards, museums, and more. We've assembled a list of the top 20 most-hard-to-miss design happenings from the past twelve months. And when 50 years from now you're looking to nail the 2012 design trivia category, these timely topics will help you prep.
On an island that appears bitterly overcrowded, developers are finding ways to build new places for business and give starchitects another chance to grace one of the world's most famous skylines.
Design gems such as Herzog & de Meuron's parking garage on Miami's Lincoln Road and Elliott + Associates Architects' Chesapeake Energy Corporation office and garage have given vast consideration to parking lots.
18. Lincoln Center's LCT3, New York
H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture crowns the transformation of the Big Apple's modernist performing-arts center.
17. Sunnylands Opens to the Public
The famed Annenberg estate, known as the destination where the world's leaders laid their heads to rest, is now open for public consumption.
16. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle
NBBJ gives the Microsoft founder's philanthropic arm an award-winning headquarters rooted in site.
15. Deborah Berke Inaugurates UC Berkley Prize
The New York architect was awarded with $100,000 and an academic fellowship honoring her design commitment to sustainability and community.
Louis Kahn's final design takes shape on the tip of New York's Roosevelt Island.
The champion of streamlined luxury and member of the Interior Design Hall of Fame succumbed to cancer at 67.
12. The Tanks at Tate Modern, London
Herzog & de Meuron pushes the envelope for the presentation of times arts.
11. Preservation Battles Perservere
Preservation takes it on the chin as Bertrand Goldberg's Prentice Pavilion and Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center face harsh critics, while developers and civic leaders ponder experimental design.
SANAA's venue for the Musee du Louvre in a French mining town proves that the architecture-as-tourism draw is a trend still going strong.
9. The 13th Venice Architecture Biennale
As this year's rendition of one of design's most beloved shows worked to reinvent itself, practitioners continued to push the envelope.
8. The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia
The storied conflict over the what the art world calls one of the world's finest collections of Post-Impressionist and Modern art came to an end when Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects' venue was received with open arms.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop's tower is Europe's tallest build at over 1,000 feet.
6. World Design Capital Helsinki
As the third city to partner with International Design Alliance to promote design's impact in the global marketplace and on local citizenry, Helsinki brought significant attention to Finnish design.
The latest proof that Brooklyn is the new Manhattan was SHoP Architects' moment in the sun.
Eventually known for his sweeping sculptural sensibility, the modernist architect who contributed seriously to Brazil's idealistic capital city dies at 104.
3. China Central Television headquarters, Beijing
OMA makes its first mark on China with its largest project to date.
As the design community rallied around victims of this fall's perfect storm, both developers and politicians examine the economics of storm sustainability as SHoP Architects' space for Goldman Sachs proved to be a pillar of preparedness.
Zaha Hadid Architects' Aquatics Centre reigned like the jewel in the crown of a seven-year urban-planning project that includes contributions by a host of lauded firms, such as Hopkins Architects, Stanton Williams, Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Make Architects, David Morley Architects and Peter Cook. And the story continues as the centre's legacy is closely watched.
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