The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis is the site of a modern icon--the Gateway Arch--and a historic 91-acre Dan Kiley landscape. But the site is throttled on all sides by a maze of infrastructure, turning it into an island that divides downtown St. Louis from the Mississippi River. The Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates team's winning proposal for the redesign of the Memorial site hews closely to the spirit of the Kiley landscape, but revitalizes it in order to reintroduce ecological diversity and function to the currently inert monoculture of lawn. The Memorial is a pilot project for a new kind of urban National Park, one that is oriented, physically and culturally, toward the life of the city, and one that pioneers new kinds of sustainable urban ecologies.

 Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (St. Louis Arch)

Charles Renfro, partner in Diller Scofidio+Renfro, talks about the firm's commision to renovate one of the most important performing arts hubs in New York City. 
"It started as a street scape project" says Renfro but turned into "an expansive rethinking of the Center." The architects touched almost every part of the public space, added on to the Julliard Building,  added a new pavillion on the North Plaza and made surgical changes to the entry steps and the canopies. 

Fountain Place, designed by IM Pei, is a unique work of modern architecture. Catherine Cuellar discusses the work.