William Menking

The Storefront for Art and Architecture held its yearly spring benefit on May 7 in the beautiful 19th century Celeste Bartos Forum in the New York Public Library. The room, with its spectacular 30-foot-high elliptical dome of iron and glass, supported on four springing arches, is one of the city’s most…

The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s multi-story studio is located in an old 19th-century brewery in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district. The combination artist’s studio, materials research laboratory, and fabrication workshop is outfitted with elegant Hans Wegner furniture, displays of Eliasson projects, artwork prototypes, and a glass-walled kitchen for employees’ daily…

The Parrish Art Museum in Watermill, New York is housed in a simple but at the same time grand exhibition space designed by Herzog & de Meuron in 2012. When it was finished, the Swiss architects asked Dutchman Iwan Baan to photograph it for publication. As Jonathan Hilburg reported…

What are we to make of a recent survey that claims MIT, the Bartlett, and Delft University of Technology are the best architecture schools in the world?  This ranking, created by British-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) also names Stanford, New York University, and University of California,…

Lispenard is Tribeca’s northernmost street, just parallel to and south of Canal Street a short block away. It’s only two blocks in length and the last one in Triburbia (or Tribeca, a neighborhood in transition on the lower west side of Manhattan) to be gentrified with fancy shops and…

London’s Architectural Association is undergoing the sort of dramatic change all schools of architecture periodically experience. They will be taking on a new director in the fall, Eva Franch i Gilabert, who will bring a new culture and pedagogy, and parting ways with their current leader, Samantha Hardingham.…

In 1942, the industrial designer Russel Wright and his wife, Mary Small Einstein, purchased a 75-acre abandoned stone quarry in Garrison, New York, on the eastern side of the Hudson River. The wooded site has a spectacular view down to the river, and Wright lived on the property until…

The members of the Architectural Association (AA) in London have selected Eva Franch i Gilabert, Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, to be their next director. Franch was selected with 67 percent of the vote from a shortlist that included…

On February 14, London’s Architectural Association announced its short list of three finalists to be considered for its director position. This short list, the AA claims, came from an initial response of 73 submitted applications that was then winnowed down to a “longlist of 26 candidates, of which…

London’s venerable Architectural Association (AA), founded in 1847, has long stood as a resolutely independent-minded educational institution. But in the last few months, it seems to be going through a spasm of self-doubt about its future, current leadership and independence. The history of the institution suggests that…

The Architect’s Newspaper wants to note the passing of architectural journalist Mildred Schmertz, who was a contributor to the paper. Suzanne Stephens, deputy editor of Architectural Record, has written a respectful obituary of Schmertz, who spent the entirety of her professional career at Architectural Record. She was 92. Schmertz was…

Gavin Stamp, the English architecture historian, died on December 30, 2017 at 69. His Ph.D dissertation at Cambridge was a re-assessment of the career of George Gilbert Scott and he went on to become the leading spokesperson for British architecture. An architectural activist, he lectured, wrote and issued polemical tracts…