RECORD’s Top  Projects of 2016

The Port House

In retrospect, 2016 was a rollercoaster year for architecture. The field hit some lows with the untimely loss of Zaha Hadid and the fallout of a contentious presidential election.

But the year also was one of milestones: the AIA awarded its highest honor to an African-American architect for the first time, while the Pritzker Prize and other awards honored architects committed to improving communities. RECORD also reached a landmark this year, celebrating its 125th anniversary this fall.

And, of course, 2016 brought an abundance of notable architecture—from a humble salt shed in New York, to a show-stopping concert hall in Hamburg.  With the year nearly behind us, RECORD looks back on some of the best projects we published in our pages, in no particular order.

Visual Arts Building at the University of Iowa

Perched atop a hill, Holl's new 126,000-square-foot Visual Arts Building is more cube than Cubist. Originally intended to have only two levels, its boxy form developed—after more than 40 schemes—with the need to squeeze as much program as possible onto a constricted lot at the edge of campus that is bordered by private property. Concrete rather than Steel, volumetric rather than planar, the new Visual Alts Building comprises bare-bones interiors within a beautifully crafted envelope of zinc-clad poured-in-place concrete walls.

Elbphilharmonie

 Herzog & de Meuron Hamburg, Germany Like a giant seafaring ship With rippling sails of glass instead of canvas and a brick base instead of a wood hull, the new Elbphilharmonie commands the harbor of Hamburg's still-active polt in northern Germany.