According to English Dept doctoral student Irene Yoon: "Architecture school floats tents in the air at occupy cal. :)" And @DarthNader: "In response to police demolition of the encampment, #Occupycal floats tents with balloons!"   And more here from @zunguzungu: “thy life is a flitting...

Forest City Ratner has released renderings of their SHoP-designed high-rise condos for Atlantic Yards. And let's face it, assuming Ratner doesn't backtrack on the design yet again, the project resembles the same ho-hum, cookie-cutter vertical sprawl of a thousand-and-one other transit-oriented...

Dear Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor (UC Berkeley), I wanted to express my concern for your troubles, sir. Your message is not getting across and your power is in jeopardy. First of all, the Associated Press characterized the brave actions taken by the police in front of the storied Sproul Hall...

[with 11/10 updates] Police mobilized in force to remove #OccupyCal tents today. A couple of small groups had managed to set up just two tents after UC Berkeley police confiscated most other ones, following a large rally. There were maybe two hundred people congregated to block off the shock...

[edited w/ updates!] Two weeks ago I posted a note about "Architecture noticing Occupy" that mentioned Reinhold Martin's participation in a panel at Columbia about Occupy Wall Street, etc. Today, Design Observer features Martin's post "Occupy: What Architecture Can Do". David Gissen also...

Altering our scholarship policy will be only as a last resort, but in order to create a sustainable model, it has to be one of the options on the table — Jamshed Bharucha Further, you tell me how to run admissions to make sure that you get enough wealthy students in classes? Do you...

There is a must-read article by Fred Bernstein in the Huffington Post, mostly for some of the facts that, if proven to be verifiable, are alarming (while not all that surprising), such as: There are at least 14 million vacation homes in the United States. That means that for every...

Via @bldgblog: Kevin Slavin writes... (w/ emphasis added) The former president and current trustees have imperiled the future of the only tuition-free undergraduate degree in the United States, and unless someone has an idea for how to make up $16MM a year, it ends soon, quietly, after...

Highly recommend reading, in its entirety, "Not Your Friend: Dissensus and the Police," by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi aka @southsouth, a response to certain olive-branch pleas to the police. But most especially, on political space, she writes: One of the most useful and succinct definitions...

Following up on Mapping POPOS in NYC yesterday, I woke up to find this next item in my inbox this morning, from the friends at DSGNAGNC, in collaboration with Do-Tank Brooklyn and not an alternative: #whOWNSpace... ...goals are: 1- TO REVEAL conflicting rules and ownerships in the increasingly...

Privately-Owned Public Open Space (POPOS), or their cousins, POPS (apparently not exactly open, yet accessible)... Spurred by Zuccotti Park, WNYC and NY World ask you "to map and report on New York City's Privately-Owned Public Spaces, aka POPS. We want to figure out how public these public...

Photo at http://twitter.com/#!/markasaurus/status/129616697987575808 "(Oakland Mayor) Jean Quan's lawn fence has been turned into art! #occupyoakland http://lockerz.com/s/150748238"

[post was edited Tues. AM.] This just caught my eye: Some great folks are going to be discussing Occupy and public space at Avery Hall, Columbia University. Again, the link... Would love to hear more of what they discuss, if anyone can live blog or something. I am curious. But, I'm having a...

Note: I'm saving clippings and thoughts in preparation for the event (poster) on Nov. 19th at the VDL Neutra House. (More: see this post; all posts tagged--ahem--"glam"). Saturday servings: This blog post by Joel Olson, on "Whiteness and the 99%" begins to raise some of the issues that pertain...

As people think a bit more critically about what it means to “occupy” contested spaces that blur the public and the private and the boundaries between the 99% and the 1%, and as they also think through what Occupy Wall Street might do next, I would humbly suggest they check out the...

Some of you might have noticed that Orhan is hosting a series of talks at the VDL Neutra House in Silverlake, Los Angeles. Aside from doing my part to continue gentrifying the neighborhood, at least with my overaccumulated low-culture, I'll be in conversation with Stefano De Martino on...