Luxury High-Rise Hotel, Office Planned for Downtown L.A.

Market Flexibility Is Keeping These Firms Above Water
Architects are adamant in their conviction that the recession must not compromise the quality of design. Yet there is no question that the changed business climate has put new pressure on the tenor of practice. Clients have put some projects on hold, while putting others on the fast track. With architectural billings in decline and credit for construction financing in short supply, how are firms adapting?

Leeser Wins Helix Hotel Design Competition for Abu Dhabi Development
Leeser Architecture has won a design competition for the Helix Hotel, a 208-room luxury centerpiece for the Zayed Bay development of office buildings, condominiums, and retail along the water in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The design features staggered floor plates that spiral upward, with the structure partially floating in the bay adjacent to the Sheik Zayed Bridge, designed by Zaha Hadid and currently under construction.

ASLA Panel of Landscape Architects, Architects, and Planners Endorse Park Service Plan for National Mall
The American Society of Landscape Architects voiced strong support for the National Park Service’s (NPS) preliminary plan for renovating the National Mall at a press conference in early April. Representatives of a panel assembled by the professional association spoke of the agency’s “heroic” efforts in maintaining the Mall in the midst of a “crisis of maintenance,” and largely supported the measures the Park Service intends to pursue to repair the monumental swath of property stretching from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial. The most substantive point of discussion between the ASLA panel and the NPS centered on how to ensure that the Park Service is aware of the Mall’s status as a symbolic space of various and shifting meanings, all of primary national importance, and all of which require nuanced and diverse renovation strategies.