There are few major architectural projects that are not, in essence, political. They usually cost too much public money, take up too much public space, and provide embarrassment for too many public officials for them not to be.

Such was the case when the upwardly aspirational city of Melbourne discovered it was lacking the one thing all great cities have: a great public square. Enter Premier Jeffrey Gibb Kennett, Conservative head of the state of Victoria. An arrogant, pushy politician, he shared something of French President François Mitterand's style: Kennett liked large architectural statements (some said monuments), and he commissioned them with gusto. The massive 1996 Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Center by the Denton Corker Marshall Group, was one, with its angled, stainless-steel colonnades and aircraft-hangar construction. The 1998 sound barriers for the Eastern Freeway by Wood Marsh Architects were another-a confident example of Kennett's desire to turn a simple urban necessity into an overwhelming piece of design. His most crucial project was Federation Square, a public plaza with an arts and retail center, commissioned in 1996. It would be a celebration of both the Kennett administration's vision and the centenary of the federation of the Australian states into one commonwealth in 1901.

Kennett was on to a sure thing. The site is at the most important intersection in the city: on the banks of the Yarra River, where the main railway station, Flinders Street, deposits passengers at the doorstep of downtown. The city's lungs, the Botanic Gardens, are on one side; St. Paul's Cathedral is on the other. Two brown-brick office towers, housing the state-owned Gas and Fuel Corporation, had occupied the site and dominated the skyline for far too long. They were demolished to make way for the Federation Square project-an open plaza of 75,000 square feet; several new museums; room for shops, Cafes, and bars; and the restored vista of the prized Botanic Gardens, blocked for years by the twin towers. All of this in a fiercely contemporary idiom.

An international competition was held, and a consortium of Lab Architecture Studio of London and Bates Smart Architects of Melbourne won the job, originally estimated at $59 million. "Melbourne needed something to rival the Opera House in Sydney," said winning architect Donald Bates. But this was where reality struck the citizens: the government had pulled down the Big Brown Boxes, and now it was putting up...Big Gray Boxes? The design was for a scattered series of angular buildings with textured skins of zinc, steel, and sandstone suspended over a slightly elevated platform stepping down to the river's edge. One building, to be used as a multimedia center, would have computer-generated imagery flashing down its side on LED screens. Glass atriums would create a winter-garden effect. It seemed an oddly old-fashioned design: one tripping over itself to express modernity yet appearing retro at the same time, with its pink-and-gray mosaic exteriors starkly reminiscent of 1950s crazy paving. The spiky effect of the square would be completed by the strategic placement of architectural "shards"-two fragments of buildings, about 70 feet high, sitting opposite St. Paul's Cathedral-that would house amenities such as visitor services, frame the view of the cathedral, and balance the composition of the plaza.

Because this is such a public design, and because this is Melbourne-where in suburbs of historical significance one is allowed to paint fences only Federation Green-some liked the design and some hated it. But the shards were controversial from day one, and they would in time become the spikes upon which reputations, architects, and even the project itself would be impaled.

One of Australia's leading pollsters, Gary Morgan, made a remarkably prescient observation that people would turn on the Kennett administration over the project. He described Federation Square as "a modern concrete jungle blocking out St. Paul's Cathedral and turn-of-the-century Flinders Street with a maze of toasters and slicers." He wasn't too far from the mark. The project pressed on-in an election year, no less-and then the unthinkable happened: Kennett was voted out of office, and his Labor Party nemesis, Steve Bracks, was voted in. Only one thing need be noted about the significance of this change for a publicly funded piece of infrastructure, and it is summed up in a comment deliberately leaked to the press by the horrified architects. In his sole meeting with them, incoming minister for planning John Pandazopoulos turned to the architects and said: "Well, of course you know that while in opposition we opposed Federation Square, and we have to maintain some consistency. Therefore, we [may] need to make a token change to the project to show that we are now in charge."

The new administration had a ready-made argument. The National Trust preservation group had been protesting the existence of the shards for some time, saying they blocked views of St. Paul's across the street-a vista quickly described as "heritage." With concrete poured and steel framing already up, Bracks announced that he had concerns and commissioned a "review." Its author would be a previous Labor Party planning minister, Evan Walker.

The architects went into a frenzy of damage control, attempting to manage something that was, sadly, entirely beyond them. In defiance of contractual secrecy clauses, they began briefing journalists on the administration's behind-the-scenes maneuverings, desperate to force the issue with a united press.

After a storm of public opinion (the architectural community for the shards, almost everybody else against), Walker handed his review to the Bracks administration: "It is not possible to keep the shards and the unobstructed vista of the cathedral...the western shard could be truncated and left as a single-story structure...but this would rob the shard of its architectural integrity...a total removal would seem to be preferable." The profession's response was outrage. "I must say that I find the politics of this eleventh-hour intervention beyond comprehension," said Leonie Sandercock, a colleague of Walker and associate dean of architecture at the University of Melbourne. "There was no popular revolt or groundswell against the project, only the isolated voice of the National Trust, who, many of us believe, would not recognize good contemporary architecture or urban design if it hit them over the head."

A working group was established to review the review, but the group was later disbanded, after it was revealed that its members might support the architects' view after all. The administration finally announced its unsurprising decision: the western shard would go, to be replaced by a single-story building. It would fall to the architects to resolve its look and function-and could they please use some of the existing design to make sure it all fit in?

The architects' long campaign to save the design was over. A small building is now being made to measure. This would be yet again the aesthetics of compromise, which to some was intolerable. One of the judges on the original competition jury, Daniel Libeskind, lashed out. "It is a mockery of the art of architecture," he said. "It's absurd for politicians to play with it, because it is just to the detriment of the creation of public space." As architecture critic and academic Philip Goad said, "What's being built is not a plaza for St. Paul's: St. Paul's is fortunate to be a backdrop for a square for 2001." But the Federation Square project grinds on, millions over budget (the estimated cost has now blown out to $181 million) and so behind schedule that it will not be completed for the federation anniversary it was meant to commemorate.

The echoes of this story are uncomfortably familiar for many: in a similar saga of interference and political small-mindedness 34 years ago, Australia chased from its shores the architect of its greatest, perhaps only, international icon-the Sydney Opera House. After winning an international competition with his design, Joern Utzon made it only part of the way through his project before leaving, with the declaration that he would never return to Australia after the treatment he received at the hands of the government. He never has; his contempt has always been, despite the distance, utterly clear. The Federation Square architects of Lab + Bates Smart seem too dispirited now to let anyone know what they are thinking at all. -Virginia Trioli

For anyone who thinks exercise is agony, the Gyrotonic Expansion System looks suitably painful. Poised to become the next trendy workout regimen, Gyrotonic is a technique of strengthening and stretching through nonlinear movement patterns performed on a cruel-looking machine called the Pulley Tower Combination Unit. This six-and-a-half-foot-tall wooden contraption has leather straps dangling in the front and chains strung taut up the back, and is abutted by a bench with two large octagonal wheels. A thick black handle is bolted onto each wheel. Instructor Vincent Macagnone says when people first walk into the studio "they think it looks like a torture chamber."

Gyrotonic's New York-based inventor, Juliu Horvath-a former ballet dancer with no prior design or engineering experience-says form fully followed function. In the late 1970s, while living in a mountain hut in the Virgin Islands, Horvath developed a system of yoga-based movements for dancers. He later realized that the exercises, which he credits with curing a chronic dance injury, could be aided by the use of equipment. His first breakthrough came while experimenting with two swivel chairs. "Right away I was able to do eight or ten of the movements I wanted to do," Horvath says. The prototype was built out of two-by-fours. Looking at an early iteration recently made him laugh: "But it worked-you could do the movements." The eight-year process of developing an apparatus that could do all of the exercises he envisioned included attempts to work with engineers. "They didn't understand the exercises deeply enough," Horvath says. So he designed it himself. His creations are being manufactured for studios across the country by Balanced Body, a company that also builds the Pilates equipment (Julia Roberts's exercise of choice). Horvath is currently fine-tuning a smaller version for home gyms. -Mirja Pitkin

At the same time information designer Edward Tufte tackled ways of compressing three-dimensional material into a two-dimensional format for his second book (Envisioning Information, 1990), he set out to develop an object that no flat view could adequately capture. The result is the stainless-steel sculpture Escaping Flatland-each of its surfaces is a changing 2-D experience. "The surface is like a mirror that reflects the value, hue, and saturation of color but no shapes," Tufte says. "Because it's incredibly responsive to light, perpetual color-field studies emerge." However, the champion of visual complexity cautions against too closely equating the sculpture with his information graphics: "It may just be that a person who loves to see things did both." -Kristi Cameron

If Chicago were a house, it would be a bungalow. Which makes it fitting that Mayor Richard M. Daley's office should be joined by banks, real estate brokers, architects, preservationists, and virtually half the departments of city government in the creation of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative-an all-fronts approach to restoring a housing form that is unique to Chicago.

The American bungalow didn't actually originate in Chicago, but the city has spawned a breed of its own: squat, solid, and rectangular, Chicago's bungalow is one and a half stories of handsome brick. It's a little more leery of the elements than its amply porched California cousins, but has the same Arts and Crafts roots; they show up in its low-pitched roof, rich woodwork, leaded glass, and integration of the landscape.

Between 1910 and 1940, when Chicago's population jumped from two to three million people, the city was built out to its limits with a bungalow belt-80,000 houses wrapping from the far southeast to its northwest periphery. Even now bungalows count for a third of the single-family houses in Chicago.

Urban historian Dominic Pacyga, who is curating an exhibit on the venerable form for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, describes it as the democratization of the city's housing. "The bungalow allowed a lot of people to move out of apartment buildings and buy their own freestanding house," he says. "It was the first mass-produced modern housing." Workers had purchased cottages before, but the bungalows brought electricity, central heating, and plumbing together with the aesthetic of craftsmanship made newly affordable.

The bungalow belt was also a step toward suburbia. Featuring front and back yards and garages for the recently introduced automobile, it engendered new zoning rules. "Back in the old neighborhood if you wanted to put an icehouse in the middle of a block you could buy lots and put that icehouse up," Pacyga says. "In the bungalow belt, by 1923, you couldn't." Through the years, many families left their bungalows, heading westward to more prominent garages and stricter, single-use zoning. Their departure made way for new waves of white ethnics, Latinos, and blacks to buy a spot in the middle class. Now the tide has turned, and former suburbanites are taking a new interest in the virtues of urban living. Proponents hope that the bungalow belt, with its neighborly scale and comfortable walking distances, will be attractive to families on their way back.

The condition of the houses varies widely. "Last year prices for bungalows ranged from $7,000 to $560,000, and I think that tells you something about the repair of them," offers alderman Virginia Rugai, who helped start the initiative. Designed to assist existing owners in fixing up their homes as well as to attract new owners, the initiative consists of loans with low down payments and waived fees for the purchase or rehabilitation of certified Chicago-style bungalows. The loans will be augmented by perks such as fast-track service at the building and zoning departments, energy conservation grants, and even free architectural assistance. For people at or below 80 percent of the area median income, there are low interest rates and tax credits.

Recognizing that bungalows might require alterations to fit contemporary needs, the initiative imposes few restrictions on the improvements applicants can make. "We wouldn't want somebody to cover up the brick of their bungalow with new vinyl siding or something like that," Housing Commissioner Jack Markowski says. The bulk of the guidelines are suggestions for appropriately adding space, opening up interiors, or updating the electric wiring for today's appliance-enhanced lifestyles.

The initiative may bring a new cachet to the bungalow-but it would be a shame if that were to spoil its role as a stepping-stone to the middle class. "We wanted a program that appeals to everybody across income levels," Markowski says. The same houses that once provided economical shelter for generations of Chicagoans may also be a means of urban diversity for the future. -Kristin Ostberg

On a sunny day last fall in Valencia, Spain, I walked through the Turia gardens. Led by footbridges over ponds and pathways through sculptured greenery, I landed in the midst of a construction site. It's a trip that the city hopes many tourists will begin to make, and not just by accident.

When floods necessitated diverting the river Turia to the south of the city in 1957, a six-mile stretch of dry riverbed was left winding around the historic center and east to the Mediterranean seaport. After two decades of indecision, the regional government, the Generalitat Valenciana, commissioned Spanish architects to create a series of gardens and cultural/recreational facilities there in the 1980s. The former riverbed became a place for locals to indulge in such outdoor activities as swimming, skateboarding, or taking a Lilliputian climb over a gigantic sculpture of Gulliver.

The government also has something to offer those less athletically inclined: the City of Arts and Sciences, an immense, $2.8 billion grand finale to the Turia River development. Just a 20-minute walk east of the historical center, this mini-city is composed of three structures: the Hemispheric, an IMAX theater-cum-planetarium (open since 1998); the Prince Felipe Museum of Science (open since November); and the Palace of Arts (currently under construction and set to open in three years), which will include an opera house, ballet and music conservatories, and a rooftop open-air auditorium. Designed by architect and native Valencian Santiago Calatrava, the complex features his characteristic white sci-fi fossil forms in concrete and glass.

And after an absence of 40 years, water is making a spectacular comeback to the riverbed. Calatrava's three space-age structures appear to have just landed in a shallow pool, which extends the length of the 87-acre site on an axis parallel to the river. "Water has a clear cultural significance in Valencia, and I wanted to re-create with these pools the presence of water in the city," Calatrava says. "They create a microclimate and reflect the buildings-it's another way of doing landscaping."

In a sense, the design is less about the structures and more about creating an inviting urban space. "Part of the intended purpose of the project was to regenerate a section of the capital city," says José Olivas, first vice president of Valencia. "The east side of the city of Valencia has been completely transformed from a deteriorated former industrial neighborhood into a very modern residential area." Even unfinished, the project has prompted a building frenzy of high-rise apartments in its vicinity, now the most expensive place to live in Valencia.

"From the beginning I wanted to create not only buildings but a piece of city," Calatrava says. "My idea was to link all those buildings together by promenades, by plazas, by pools of water, so that a person can walk through the space without having to buy a ticket and traverse the whole installation at several levels." Although Calatrava has given the City of Arts and Sciences a visually distinct presence, this city within a city has firmly established its roots in Valencia. The science museum emphasizes local contributions to scientific history, and the acoustical design of the opera house took into account the demands of zarzuela, a traditional Spanish opera form. The Generalitat Valenciana hopes that this distinctly local project will turn Valencia into an international destination alongside Paris and London.

Whether or not this self-proclaimed "cultural emblem of the twenty-first century" draws tourists, it has already succeeded in creating a cultural heart for the geographic spine of the city. -Krystal Chang

From Norman Bates's decaying Victorian to the Brady Bunch's split-level, the homes of our Hollywood heroes and villains reveal a lot about them-and their creators. Sara Burton knows this well. A ten-year veteran of film location scouting, Burton is a name in the credits we often ignore. But when Hollywood goes on location, scouts like Burton take the first steps in a long journey from screenplay to celluloid. "We're acting as the cinematographer, the director," says Burton. "We're the eyes of every department before they get there."

Take Burton's latest assignment: director Barry Levinson has sent her to Portland, Oregon, in search of a Modernist house for use in a new Bruce Willis vehicle called Bandits. Hollywood prefers Modernism for its clean lines (easily identified in split-second shots) and because it evokes both the future and the past. But Modernist masterpieces aren't common in Portland, which was probably chosen for other reasons (it's cheap, beautiful, and a two-hour flight from L.A.). So armed with her camera and cell phone, Burton embarks on her latest expedition to find that perfect house. Sometimes the process is a sprint, but more often it's a marathon. First she tracks down a sleek gem off fashionable 23rd Avenue, but the kitchen is too small. Then the owner of an award-winning house across town refuses to allow a shoot. Desperate, Burton sends Levinson's team some photos of a wood-festooned home in the Northwest style of Pietro Belluschi. To her surprise, the filmmakers go for it. With one click of the shutter, Burton has changed the face of a multimillion-dollar movie.

It isn't always enough that a building looks good. "Things that are beautiful aren't necessarily filmable," says Beth Melnick, who's scouted for David Fincher and Oliver Stone. "There's an elegant simplicity in most great locations." Burton's top choice for Bandits was nixed because of its purple kitchen cabinets. "In person they tied beautifully with the rest of the house," she recalls mistily, "but on film they never would have worked."

Conversely, everyday locales can gain new contexts in the right project. When the sci-fi opus Gattaca called for a retro rendering of the future, Burton helped writer-director Andrew Niccol uncover a variety of midcentury buildings (including Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin County Civic Center) before his script was even finished. It was a rare but satisfying chance for her to help shape a film-not just in style but in meaning-from its inception. Likewise, for Anywhere But Here, director Wayne Wang envisioned Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman's Southern California pilgrimage as a trip down the Yellow Brick Road, and sent Burton to find shimmering Century City skyscrapers and green Beverly Hills lawns that evoked Los Angeles as an Emerald City.

Soon an army of filmmakers will arrive in Portland, but before a single donut is consumed, Burton will be long gone, searching for that undiscovered Xanadu just over the next hill-unless of course it comes with purple cabinets. -Brian Libby

Vassar College senior Brooke Budy first learned of plans to renovate the shabby interiors of Noyes House, a 1958 dormitory designed by midcentury master Eero Saarinen, when he approached a campus administrator about the possibility of moving to another dorm. Over the years the dorm's space-age interiors (the common area was dubbed the "Jetsons Lounge" by students) had suffered many incongruous changes. Budy, a studio art major, became intrigued by the renovation proposal when he saw historic photographs of the lounge's original décor. "What I had always thought of as a dark, drab room had once been full of light and color," he says. "It seemed a worthy thing to bring back." Under the direction of Vassar president Frances D. Fergusson and project manager John McEnrue, Budy joined the renovation effort as a student liaison, conducting research from campus records.

Thanks to Cesar Pelli, who had recently renovated the lobby of James Renwick Jr.'s original Main Building at Vassar, the college was made aware of its unique opportunity to hire one of the dorm's original architects to oversee its renovation. Leonard Parker, principal of the eponymous firm in Minneapolis, had helped with its design as a junior assistant in Saarinen's office. He was happy to return to Noyes, which he considers illustrative of Saarinen's approach to design. "Saarinen's philosophy wasn't doctrinaire-every building had to respond to specific conditions of program and purpose," Parker explains. "Here Saarinen created a concave facade that followed the outline of a historic circular lawn. The lawn is partially bordered by pruned conifers, and Saarinen designed the building's window bays to terminate in points that suggested the forms of these trees." These spires also echo Vassar's neo-Gothic architectural heritage, and the handmade brick of the facade imparts a sense of nineteenth-century artisanship.

In contrast to the exterior contextualism, the restored interiors suggest the symphonic calm of a Kubrickian space station. Sleek Saarinen pieces have replaced the tatty institutional furnishings that had accumulated. Even with Parker on hand, however, extensive research of decorative and structural elements was required to ensure accurate restoration. A special order had to be placed with Knoll to procure new Tulip and Womb chairs upholstered in the exact bright oranges and reds originally specified by the designer. Some changes were deliberately made. "Because better lightbulbs are now available, we improved lighting throughout the structure in a nonobtrusive way," Parker says. The dorm's most infamous feature, a circular conversation pit, has been refurbished in stripes of green, turquoise, and violet. (A reminder of Vassar's days as a girls-only school, the area was intended as a space where students could entertain male callers; it was accordingly dubbed the "passion pit." Incoming students, who associate the restored design with the Austin Powers films, have enthusiastically renamed it the "shagging pit.")

As President Fergusson notes, there's as much value in the recent architectural past as in traditional historic buildings. "These spaces are equally deserving of our attention, particularly since we are still able to revive them accurately and preserve the intent of the architect," she says. "In Noyes we have a gem of Saarinen's art." That is one lesson Budy didn't learn in a classroom. "I initially had little affection for Noyes," he says. "As I researched Saarinen, I finally saw it in its proper historic and architectural contexts. It became, in curving brick and sloping glass, a very beautiful building." -David Griffin