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New York City's First “Gold” Office Building Opens
Hearst Tower becomes a reality after three-quarters of a century
The Hearst Tower, with its distinctive triangular frame, opened in New York City October 9 as the city’s first Gold LEED® certified building. The 46-story, 856,000-square-foot Midtown structure is defined by vertical and horizontal energy-saving, diamond-shaped bands of bright stainless steel. The $500 million design, by AIA Gold Medal recipient and Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Lord Norman Foster, Hon. FAIA, occupies the shell of the original six-story Hearst edifice, once called the International Magazine Building.

Spanish Architects Select 22 Best Works of American Architecture
The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design presents the 22 projects selected by a jury of Spanish architects and architecture journalists as the best new American architecture today. The museum’s annual “American Architecture Awards” program draws “significant world attention to new buildings and urban planning projects being built and designed globally by the best and most prestigious international architecture offices and design firms.”

Arrowstreet Develops Village Square for Freeport, Me.
Arrowstreet, a multidisciplinary firm in Sommerset, Mass., recently received a commission to design Village Square, a $45 million, 113,000-square-foot “lifestyle” retail complex with 550 parking spaces in Freeport, Me. The square represents the first step in the town’s “2010 Vision” plan to recreate Freeport as a leisure destination town.