By E. Graydon Carter

Among the great skyscrapers built in Manhattan during the 1920s and '30s, the 56-story Chanin Building has worn its years well--as has its creator and namesake, Irwin Chanin, 91. The architect is being honored by his old alma mater, New York's Cooper Union, in a retrospective. Chanin designed eight Broadway theaters and two monumental apartment houses on Central Park West. Perhaps his most cherished work is his personal suite of art deco offices on the top floor of the Chanin Building. The bathroom alone, done in glass, mirror and gold plate over bronze, cost $15,000 when it was built in 1929. "After all these years," says Chanin, "the offices still inspire me to come into work every morning."

When a Manhattan publisher offered her six figures for yet another diet-fitness manual, Christie Brinkley, 27, leaped to a task she was long destined for. "I grew up on the beach in Malibu," says she. "It was literally my front yard." A sampling of Christie's tips for Beauty and the Beach, which Simon & Schuster hopes to bring out this spring: rub potatoes on the back (good for soothing a sunburn), cover the eyes with cucumbers (eliminates puffiness), and to prevent dry skin, apply alligator pears. In short, real women don't eat avocados, they wear 'em.

It was to have been the most compelling performance of her career, but Elizabeth Taylor's "mission of peace and understanding in the Middle East" closed out of town last week. In and out of hospitals since arriving in Israel a fortnight ago--first for a breathing problem, then following a minor car accident--the actress, surrounded by her courtiers, braved her way through early rounds of meetings with a professional elan that would have warmed the heart of Eleonora Duse or, for that matter, Philip Habib. Swathed in a neck brace and with bandaged leg and finger, Taylor, looking a bit like someone who had been wounded in the Lebanon fighting, persevered to keep her appointment with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, 69. Although Liz tried to keep her chins up, her woeful appearance seemed to win both the sympathy and the admiration of the Prime Minister.

He barreled beautifully down Gstaad's ice-covered Horneggli-Schoenried ski runs last week, but though the style was fearless, the conditions were fearful, and Spain's King Juan Carlos, 45, an expert skier, took a wild tumble that cracked his pelvis. Taken by stretcher to a hospital in the nearby Swiss town of Saanen, Juan Carlos was flown with his wife, Queen Sofia, to Madrid the next day aboard the royal DC-8. Ordered immobilized by his doctors for at least a month, the King will be fulfilling his duties from bed.

Obeying a court order to return kickback money he had accepted for lucrative state contracts while Governor of Maryland, former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, 64, paid up last week. The check was made out to the state for $268,482 (the $142,500 he pocketed plus interest). Said the ex-Veep, now a foreign trade consultant, from his luxurious desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.: "This just doesn't seem to add up to the kind of justice the framers of the Constitution had in mind."

--By E. Graydon Carter This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.