This week our Architecture City Guide heads to Richmond, Virginia. Admittedly, it was Richmond’s pair of Cinderellas in this year’s NCAA Tournament that first caught our attention. However, with our interest peaked, we spent the last week exploring its architecture and found much to be admired. Richmond is by far the smallest city we have featured; with only 200,000 residents, the next closest on our list is twice its size. Architecturally, this Cinderella city can compete in her own way with the architectural powerhouses we have previously featured. Richmond’s architectural appeal comes from the city’s ability to keep its rich historic fabric intact while experimenting with new modes of design. While the city strongly embraces the gritty manufacturing buildings of its past, Richmond has resisted the imitation trap and has promoted modern interpretations of the older forms and materials. The majority of the buildings we chose to feature are emblematic of Richmond architecture, rehab/addition projects. We couldn’t possibly fit all our favorites in our list of twelve, so please take a look and add ones that visitors should not miss in the comment section below.

The Architecture City Guide: Richmond list and corresponding map after the break!

Christian Pottgiesser architecturespossibles recently shared with us their entry for the Russian Orthodox Center in Paris. Read about their proposal and view their renderings and video after the break.

Two students, Jarrad Morgan and Christopher Roach, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design shared with us an intriguing book they recently published. The book explores how small autonomous practices can come together as a networked practice “to create a unique value proposition for targeting large commissions and exploiting markets that would be otherwise unavailable.” They chose to take on this topic at a time when most firms exist in one of two extremes; global conglomerate A/E firms or small localized specialty offices. To investigate their hypothesis, they looked at six firms that exhibit many of the characteristics they believe are necessary to be successful as a networked practice. The case study examples include six degrees, over,under, UNStudio, various network and supersudaca.