Archinect - News

Renewed modernist Esplanade Place Ville Marie opens in Montreal

2023-04-18T14:46:00-04:00

A comprehensive overhaul of Montreal’s Esplanade Place Ville Marie by Sid Lee Architecture and Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux Architectes (MSDL) is now complete, marking the end of a $200 million revitalization project that’s brought much-needed civic life back to a busy section of the city’s downtown commercial core.

Originally constructed in 1958 and designed by I.M. Pei and Henry Cobb, who had opened their practice in New York just three years before, the site had become shopworn since its last redevelopment was completed in the 1980s.

Image: David Boyer

The new Esplanade PVM comes with improved pedestrian access, a modernized shopping mall, and reconfigured underground entrance to public transit. MSDL worked to enact new monumental staircases and a horizontal floating glass structure it says is the longest in North America. The perimeter of the plaza area is also reopened to attract circulation between the street and raised public level, and the original parking lot entrance ...

Henry Cobb, the architect behind some of America's most iconic skyscrapers, has passed away

2020-03-03T21:26:00-05:00

Henry N. Cobb, the bold Modernist architect responsible for the designs of a wide range of iconic buildings through his work with Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners, has passed away at age 93.

Sadly, the great Harry Cobb has died at 93. A teacher, poet of form, gentleman, longtime partner of Pei, the architect of the Hancock Tower, still producing works of subtlety like the African American Museum in Charleston at the end of his life. A truly humane and generous soul.
— Michael Kimmelman (@kimmelman) March 4, 2020

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, broke the news Tuesday evening via Twitter. Word of Cobb’s passing was confirmed to Archinect by members of Pei, Cobb Freed & Partners.

The US Bank Tower in Los Angeles, designed by Henry Cobb. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Selvingarcia.

In 1955, Cobb was one of three co-founders, along with I.M. Pei and Eason H. Leonard, of the now-storied Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners architecture practice, based in New York C...

Henry Cobb presented with 2015 Architectural League of NY President's Medal

2015-05-07T15:30:00-04:00

Over 300 guests gathered at New York's Metropolitan Club for the Architectural League of New York's 2015 President's Medal dinner to honor medal recipient Henry N. Cobb, a founding partner at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Bestowed by the League's President and Board of Directors as the organization's highest honor, the President's Medal recognizes a distinguished body of work in architecture, urbanism, art, or design. Architectural League President Billie Tsien, who also previously received the Medal, presented the award to Cobb.

Here's more about the event from the Architectural League.

2015 President's Medal Dinner. Photo: Fran Parente.

In presenting the award, Tsien remarked:

"'There’s a lovely moment that happens from time to time when you look at a person’s face and you can see exactly what they looked like as a child. It is fleeting, and it is very beautiful. Now, often that look happens when curiosity is sparked and with it a sense of wonder. I have been lucky enough to spend some ti...