May 12, 2025
The Brutalist
Directed by Brady Corbet
Written by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
Brookstreet Pictures and Kaplan Morrison, 2024
Aaron Seward
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Aaron Seward is managing editor at Perkins&Will. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of The Architect’s Newspaper and editor of Texas Architect magazine. He lives in Austin.
Latest Articles
Jul 01, 2021
As a member of an advisory group to MIT, I’ve been a bit critical. The other day while talking with…
Jul 01, 2021
In May, the American Institute of Architects announced that Robert Ivy, FAIA, will retire at the end of this year,…
Jul 01, 2021
On June 14, the Texas Society of Architects welcomed Jennifer Briggs as its new executive vice president. Briggs was previously…
Jul 01, 2021
Houston Audubon’s Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary at High Island, designed by SWA and SCHAUM/SHIEH, is a case study in the…
May 03, 2021
This year, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, widely considered the discipline’s highest honor, was awarded to French architects Anne Lacaton and…
May 03, 2021
Why do architects make books about their own work? Especially these days, when basically everone has a website presenting their…
Mar 04, 2021
It used to be that after exiting I-35 and heading east, all you could see for miles was wide open…
Mar 04, 2021
The SXSW Center shows that Austin’s biggest little festival organizer is all grown up, for the most part. Architect Pei…
Jan 11, 2021
A clearing in the forest. The boardwalk has brought you here, as if to show it to you. But why?…
Jan 11, 2021
Since 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt donated all of his official papers to the federal government for safekeeping and public…
Jan 11, 2021
The Rothko Chapel is 50 years old this February, and it has never looked better, thanks to a studious update…
Nov 04, 2020
It is, by design, dark, obscure. Some people, upon entering, feel uneasy, claustrophobic, creeped out. Others walk in, look around,…
Nov 04, 2020
Milby High School in Houston’s East End preserves history while providing 21st-century pedagogy. Architect Kirksey Architecture Associate Architect Huerta &…
Sep 01, 2020
No photos of tiny sheds in the colossal landscape under cotton ball clouds afloat in Big Texas blue skies. This…
Sep 01, 2020
Everett Fly, FASLA, is an architect and landscape architect based in San Antonio. He studied architecture at UT Austin and…
Sep 01, 2020
Nkiru Mokwe Gelles is a project designer at Michael Hsu Office of Architecture in Austin. Originally from Lagos, Nigeria, Gelles…
Sep 01, 2020
Jonathan Moody, AIA, is the CEO of Moody Nolan, an Ohio-based architecture firm with 12 offices across the U.S. He…
Jul 30, 2020
Two months ago, already deep into lockdown life, I conceived this editor’s note as a paean to the opportunities of…
May 06, 2020
These days, with the advent of each next global crisis, members of the architecture and design profession ask themselves what…
May 06, 2020
The Dakota Mountain house in Dripping Springs combines passive environmental strategies and affordable construction with a co-living concept. Architect Low…
May 06, 2020
Michael Imber, FAIA, is principal of Michael G. Imber, Architects in San Antonio. Imber, a self-described “modern classicist,” submitted a…
Apr 26, 2020
Last month, an anxious ripple stirred the murky waters of architectural discourse. Architectural Record reported that it had obtained a…
Mar 11, 2020
An Austin bungalow renovation blends the old Texas dogtrot and the contemporary Texas air-conditioned box, with pleasing results. Architect Charles Di…
Jan 07, 2020
Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I…
Jan 07, 2020
The digital revolution has changed nearly every aspect of life, including the design of built space. For an extreme example,…
Nov 05, 2019
“Welcome to the frontier,” is what I say at the Austin airport when picking up friends visiting from out of…
Nov 05, 2019
The Commune, a co-working spot for creatives in Austin’s North Loop neighborhood, occupies a 1940s commercial building that formerly housed…
Sep 12, 2019
All physical ugliness and social ugliness have strong concomitants and roots. Incredibly, there is rampant today all manner of hate…
Jul 15, 2019
When John Saunders Chase, FAIA (1925–2012) graduated with an M.Arch degree from The University of Texas at Austin School of…
Jul 15, 2019
Founded in 1991 at the dawn of the Neoliberal era, Humphreys & Partners Architects has from the start taken an…
May 03, 2019
The 2019 TxA Design Conference took us to Tulsa. Entitled “Unexpected,” it laid out the proposition that, as the tag…
Mar 05, 2019
January 29 was a revelatory day for architecture in Texas. That morning, the Linda Pace Foundation opened the doors of…
Jan 10, 2019
Many architects must feel somewhat annoyed. So much of the rhetoric surrounding the profession these days directs them to solve…
Jan 08, 2019
A solid-concrete wedding chapel, a floating house addition, two accessory dwelling units that rise above the roofline — in each…
Jan 08, 2019
A house with an inhabitable gable roof, a conservancy center in the vanishing Katy Prairie, an underground bathhouse in the…
Jan 08, 2019
A public art installation on an air traffic control tower, a community theater in Fort Stockton, a museum concept for…
Jan 07, 2019
A digitally designed and fabricated selfie wall, a cross-border dust sensing network, a national de-escalation training center for law enforcement…
Nov 01, 2018
In the last issue, I ended this column by suggesting that more diversity, promiscuity, and surprise in architecture might improve…
Nov 01, 2018
Oh! Many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with…
Nov 01, 2018
Despite their strict functional requirements, parking garages have given rise to a surprising number of typological inventions. There are continuous…
Sep 06, 2018
My first job after college was as a book editor at Edizioni Press, a boutique publishing house in Manhattan that…
Sep 05, 2018
In May, the Houston Botanic Garden unveiled plans for its first phase of development. The nonprofit organization, founded in 2002,…
Jul 03, 2018
‘‘Venice Architecture Biennale! What does that have to do with Texas?” Believe it or not, I’ve heard that more than…
Jul 03, 2018
Exhibit Review Accessing FREESPACE The 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale The Giardini, Arsenale, and points elsewhere within…
Jul 03, 2018
Deep Vista took place at Texas A&M University on April 27 and 28. Curated by architecture professor Gabriel Esquivel, the…
Jul 02, 2018
The new Big Brothers Big Sisters houston headquarters is a shining example of big-idea architecture done on a budget. Sited…
May 08, 2018
On the afternoon of December 30, 2017, a Saturday, I was at Figure 8, my favorite East Austin coffee shop, struggling…
May 08, 2018
Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He has collaborated with Björk, Jennifer Walshe, Olafur…
May 07, 2018
For four decades, the Seaholm Power Plant generated electricity for Austin. After decommissioning, it sat mostly vacant for the next…