• Responding to character of context

    New deco mixed-use building in Pasadena broke a community log jam with distinctive and lovable design that responds to its surroundings.
    In Pasadena, California, the Playhouse Plaza has replaced a single-story furniture store with “an architectural triumph that has added to Pasadena’s legacy of well-designed, beautiful buildings,” says Susan Mossman, Executive Director of Pasadena Heritage. Located in the city’s revitalizing 32-...Read more

  • Affordability with flair near downtown

    In an area that once suffered in-city freeway blight, this mixed-use housing project creates a beautiful urban streetwall with modern sensibility.
    In the middle of the last century, a new network of elevated highways slashed through San Francisco’s delicate historic neighborhoods. The most harmful of those was the Embarcadero Freeway along the city’s northern waterfront. After the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Embarcadero was demolished—...Read more

  • How architecture can enhance a neighborhood

    The timeless and artful Plaza La Reina, a new hotel in a transit-oriented Los Angeles neighborhood, shows the impact of a building on a city.
    With its wide steps opening onto the street corner like a gift to the neighborhood, Plaza La Reina looks like it should have been part of Westwood Village from the beginning. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti referred to the Moule & Polyzoides designed hotel as an “architectural jewel in Westwood...Read more

  • Vincent Scully, ‘spiritual father of the New Urbanism’

    The great Yale lecturer had an impact on movements that are changing the face of communities in the US and beyond.
    In late 2017 America lost an intellectual giant, a rare academic lecturer in the humanities who had a real impact on American communities in his lifetime. Architectural historian Vincent Scully, who taught for five decades at Yale and after retirement lectured at the University of Miami, was a...Read more