Sorcerer in the Past

Best (and worst) of 2008: Architecture

China stood astride the architecture world this year. Its Olympic class of landmarks offered a dizzying range of styles — some sleek, some daring and some thoroughly conventional — and at least three individual buildings destined for a place in architectural history: Herzog & de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest stadium; PTW Architects’ National Aquatics Center, home of Michael Phelps’ triumphs and universally known as the Water Cube; and the Moebius strip-inspired CCTV headquarters by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which won’t be entirely complete for another several months but already ranks as the most significant piece of architecture of our young century.

Soaring Chinese ambition, its sizzling economy (which has since dramatically cooled), bold use of new engineering and the rise of world-famous starchitects came together to produce a group of buildings — avant-garde and unapologetically monumental at the same time — the likes of which we may never see in China, or elsewhere, again.

In this country, 2008 was dominated by presidential politics, and the campaign was not without its startling architectural moments. When Barack Obama decided to move his convention speech to 71,000-seat Invesco Field, he stole a page from McKim, Mead and White, emerging onto a stage lined with a colonnade and meant to look like a cross between the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. We’ll never know for sure how many votes the backdrop won or lost for Obama, but the set design likely ranks as the most ambitious use of architectural symbolism in the history of American presidential politics.

After his November victory, Obama quickly announced he’d be creating a new Office of Urban Policy, a reflection of his roots in Chicago and an encouraging sign that cities will move back onto the Washington agenda. Combined with Obama’s promised infrastructure package, which may pour billions of dollars into cities for bridge, tunnel, roadway and transit improvements, the new urban czar will no doubt provide a shot in the arm for civic design and city planning.

Little relief expected for snowbound

The election provided a similar boost for Los Angeles, as two transit measures — L.A. County’s Measure R and California’s Proposition 1A — won approval. Both promise to have a real influence not just on how we move around the city but also on the vitality and maturation of L.A.’s shared spaces.

The most significant building in Los Angeles was not a completed structure at all but a proposed one — and one, moreover, that has been laid low by the credit crunch. Jean Nouvel’s so-called Green Blade condo tower in Century City, announced with slick fanfare and spectacular renderings in February, offered an engaging picture of lush density, seeming to bridge the gap between high-rise and garden living. Like many big-ticket projects now on hold, it may never find financing. But simply as a design it was a psychological breakthrough, helping us imagine a future of verdant high-rise living.

The restoration project at the 1911 Huntington Art Gallery had none of the celebrity power or glitz of a Nouvel design, but it was a revelation all the same. Overseen by the Earl Corp. and San Francisco’s Architectural Resources Group, the preservation work has clarified the building’s dual role as a house-turned-museum more effectively than ever.

In San Francisco, Renzo Piano rebounded from his disappointing Broad Contemporary Art Museum buil

Related posts: Twilight cast, First merit bank, Fed cuts interest rate, Tokyo newspaper, Gwyneth paltrow mother