The U.S. embassy in Haiti is one of the rare significant structures in Port-au-Prince to have survived the Jan. 12, 7.0 magnitude earthquake with only minor damage, none of it structural. Photo: Pbase.com/beulahchapel Construction work on Port-au-Prince embassy in 2007. As a result, the embassy has become an important base for several relief efforts. The embassy is a relatively new structure. It was built as a design-build project by Fluor Corp., as part of the U.S. State Dept’s overhaul of its global facilities. Construction started on the 134,000 sq-ft office building with its 54,874 sq ft of support structures in

Following a decade of study and debate, Nashville this month will begin clearing a 16-acre downtown site for the controversial $585-million Music City Convention Center. Photo: Music City Convention Center Authority Sweet song Music City Convention Center will inject more than $500 million into Nashville’s economy. A 1,000-room hotel to be located nearby would add another $300 million. The Nashville Metro Council voted 29-9 in January to approve the financing plan, despite questions about the city’s ability to pay off construction debt approaching $40 million a year. The 1.2-million-sq-ft convention center is scheduled to open in early 2013. The construction-management-at-risk

“The President is alive but has nowhere to live.” That was U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s stark assessment of Haitian President Rene Preval’s situation Thursday and it applied to hundreds of thousands of Haitians who had survived the quake but faced immediate problems of surviving. Government buildings in Haiti were severely damaged and the nation’s infrastructure, never solid, was in tatters. “There is no communications system,” said Clinton. “We are attempting to help set up a communications capability for the government." AP Photo/Francois Mori A person's leg hangs from of a building that collapsed during the earthquake in Port-au-Prince,

Along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., memorials honor the service of Americans in wartime, but the site’s newest addition will be one that fosters conflict resolution and peace. The 150,000-sq-ft permanent headquarters for the U.S. Institute of Peace, being built at the mall’s northwest corner near the Lincoln Memorial and the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge over the Potomac river, will greet visitors with a dramatic new structure that its designers say both respects the context of its historic surroundings and offers a strikingly modern contrast. Slide Show Photo: The U.S. Institute of Peace. The 150,000-sq-ft U. S. Institute of Peace,

The developer of the world's tallest building, which finally opened Jan. 4 in Dubai after more than a year's delay, has announced the height at 828 meters. The announcement ends years of speculation, fueled by developer Emaar Properties. Members of the design and construction team, including architect-engineer Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and lead contractor Samsung Corp., were contractually obligated to keep the height a secret. Emaar Properties Burj Dubai opens under its new name, Burj Khalifa The 828-m height makes the building a whopping 320 m taller than the previous world's tallest building, the 508-m Taipei 101. The difference is

A new pilot program launched by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) will provide both design and operational ratings for all building types, except residential buildings; the ratings will be posted on the buildings themselves. The “Building EQ” program is designed to give building owners, designers and potential buyers a more realistic sense of how buildings are actually performing in terms of energy use, ASHRAE officials said at the launch of the program in Washington, D.C., at the Dec. 7-11 Ecobuild conference, sponsored by the National Institute of Building Sciences. Initially, volunteer ASHRAE members will

Art courtesy of The Cloud Project A proposal is afoot for a lightweight observation tower topped by inflatable, light-emitting spheres that would display information during the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The LEDs in the “Cloud,” fed by real-time information, would be viewable from all over the city. People would be able to visit the bubbles, while information about the games, local traffic, weather or news was being displayed. Various energy-saving and -collecting strategies would keep the installation carbon neutral, say the promoters. The only dark cloud on the horizon is a lack of funding. More information is available at

It’s a tired, old story and the bane of many a design team: Win an international design competition and then watch helplessly as all the brilliant concepts get whittled away by the developer and its “value engineers” until the constructed building bares little resemblance to the original submission. Slide Show Image Rendering: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture Masdar Headquarters, just starting construction, is billed as the world’s largest carbon- and waste-neutral office building. Slide Show Image: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture This exploded view of the building shows, conceptually, the seven-acre steel-pipe trellis and its support cones (top),

A San Francisco civic group is seeking support for an ambitious, 50-year plan, called the Resilient City Initiative, that could help minimize loss and speed recovery after the “Big One.” The initiative can serve as a model for disaster preparedness and recovery for all earthquake-prone communities, say sources. Photo: USGS A pre-quake retrofit might have limited damage and allowed a repair rather than a razing. While developed for San Francisco, the resilient-city concept of the nonprofit San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) Association has “application anywhere a city is trying to deal with natural hazards,” said Chris Poland, chairman

A Chicago architect is producing a holistic planning approach to reduce carbon emissions in dense urban cores. The fledgling urban replanning effort, which Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is developing for the 550-building Chicago Loop area, is a process that starts with a survey of existing buildings in a district to assess age, use, condition, energy consumption and more. The survey is a first step toward devising a district-wide approach to sustainable retrofits and appropriate adaptive reuse. The planning framework can be used as a model for retrofits in other cities, urban cores and building campuses, says the architect.