PageSoutherlandPage's ambitious Oklahoma hospital offers humane, culturally sensitive design

If architecture is to stay fresh and progressive, it needs a continual infusion of new professionals. Although it’s difficult to conceive of hiring during this era of layoffs, we can’t afford to lose the talent that the next generation has to offer.

The narrow, politicized ivory towers of yesterday have been replaced by architecture schools that value diversity of thought and practice.

Discovery Green, a $122 million, 12-acre (4.9 ha) park with a lake, a restaurant, and a cafe located amid commercial and residential towers in downtown Houston, is the product of efforts by civic leaders who envisioned a new kind of urban park - one that would draw together the city's diverse, cosmopolitan population. The park, which occupies the equivalent of eight city blocks on the east side…