The new building codes make 49 amendments to the International Building Code...will be the first time Aspen has set energy limits for every building in the city...The new regulations are not about affordable housing...Axelman does not expect the new regs will reduce the rumbling thrum of construction that is the soundtrack to Aspen. — The Colorado Sun

aiming for it to be an active community hub and an engine for new ideas about art and design and the many interests of Herbert Bayer. Not, then, just another white cube museum honoring another dead white man...a destination for local school groups as well as global scholars working in modern and contemporary art and design — The Aspen Times

Of course, the Aspen Art Museum is far more inviting than most edifices when it comes to climbing. The museum exterior is built from Prodema, a composite made of wood and paper pulp, bound by resin, and coated in a wood veneer. The long woven strips that encase the building are placed at regular intervals, creating a ladder-like structure that almost calls out to be scaled. — news.artnet.com

[Shigeru] Ban in Aspen represents a high-culture culmination of this goodwashing force. His museum, a beautiful structure faced with a woven screen and featuring a timber truss, uses his signature paper tubes non-structurally, as decoration in the corporate board room and the gift shop—all the style of his humanitarian work with none of the substance. -Dana Goodyear — The New Yorker

In the heart of downtown Aspen, Colorado, the new Aspen Art Museum already has a busy itinerary of festivities — from an award ceremony to the official ribbon-cutting this past weekend -- even before its public opening this Saturday, August 9. Surrounded by Aspen's mountainous landscape, the new 33,000 sq.ft building designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Shigeru Ban includes a rooftop sculpture garden and 17,500 square feet of new exhibition space. — bustler.net

“I’m not the architect to make a shape,” he told me firmly. “My designs are always problem solving.” Rafael Viñoly, who worked on a team with Ban in 2002 to propose a design for the new World Trade Center—they made it to the final round—says, “This is a guy that still thinks architecture is about building, the mechanical part of building and what the building does. Architecture is not writing or talking, it’s building buildings.” — newyorker.com

Next Saturday at 5 p.m., after a week of member previews, the 35-year-old Aspen Art Museum in Colorado will open the doors of its new building to the public and then keep them open for a 24-hour celebration.

There is much to celebrate. The four-story building is the first American museum designed by the innovative Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. — nytimes.com