• Urban repair through freeway removal

    Replacing the elevated Central Freeway with a boulevard would reknit the fabric of San Francisco neighborhoods. UC Berkeley student Qingchun Li won a student merit award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category of CNU's 2021 Charter Awards.
    San Francisco is a beacon of freeway removal, largely due to a 1989 earthquake that damaged two elevated highways—causing them to be taken down and their rights-of-way converted to boulevards. A mile-long section of the Central Freeway was demolished and rebuilt as the Octavia Boulevard, repairing...Read more

  • Iconic buildings planned as gateway for urban-outdoor living

    The Montgomery Park Master Plan is transforming warehouse and industrial buildings into a mixed-use district in Portland, Oregon. Lake Flato Architects won a merit award in the Emerging Projects category of CNU's 2021 Charter Awards.
    A hundred years ago, iconic warehouse and industrial buildings were constructed that would define Northwest Portland. The 10-story Montgomery Ward building—later renamed Montgomery Park—and the American Can Complex, occupy the nexus of residential neighborhoods to the south, a large industrial area...Read more

  • The power of cute, affordable townhouses

    We need more ways to build uncomplicated affordable housing in cities and towns. These 19 th Century townhouses in Alexandria, Virginia, offer a great model. Although the townhouses have nice details, they wouldn’t be expensive to build. Each unit has little siding and few windows in the front...Read more

  • Time to move beyond the style wars

    A humanist framing, prioritizing the public, returns beauty to its rightful place as an essential component of good architecture.
    In order to move beyond the style wars that have plagued the debate between modernists and traditionalists for the last 75 years, I’d like to propose a humanist framing, one that prioritizes the public, on whose ground and in whose sight we build. This means architects have a greater responsibility...Read more