 Home of Mormon Tabernacle Choir Renovated
The Salt Lake Tabernacle completes seismic and theatrical upgrades
The Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, completed a two-year renovation for seismic upgrades and building restoration this spring. The Tabernacle was first built as the home of the LDS General Conference, a meeting open to the entire membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the years, the use of the space has increased and it is now the venue for more than 500 events annually and the permanent home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. 
 Home at Last—Ice Age Mammoth Gets Permanent Digs in Russian Permafrost Museum
World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum set to open in Siberia in 2009
The remains of a wooly mammoth, an ancient relative of elephants, preserved in permanently frozen soil—permafrost—will now be researched and displayed at the World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum in the city of Yakutsk in Siberia. New York City-based Leeser Architecture will create a sloping, angular complex elevated at the base of a mountain called the Tchoutchour Mouran. The site will be elevated 20 feet above the ice on cone-shaped stilts to keep it insulated from the surface permafrost. Inside, visitors can “float” upwards on a tube escalator and observe scientists while being surrounded by sloping gardens. The museum, scheduled to open in 2009, will be energy efficient and ecological, the architects say, with research facilities, exhibit galleries, and an underground permafrost gallery displaying the remains of the Siberian wooly mammoth.
 AIA NOVA Honors 21 Special Works
Booming Northern Virginia celebrates new construction, historic preservation
The AIA Northern Virginia Chapter announced on July 12 that a distinguished jury had chosen 21 projects as winners of the chapter’s 2007 Design Awards. This annual design competition, now in its 32nd year, recognizes the design excellence in seven categories achieved by the chapter’s members. Although the architects are from Virginia, the structures can be located anywhere in the world. This year’s entries primarily are based in the nation’s capital area—Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., itself— but also as far away as Shanghai, China.
|
