“It had such a low budget. I was criticized for putting the windows in too small, but it got more expensive the more glass I had. I wasn’t the one who put the workers near the windows, limiting the light let in. Most people don’t realize I didn’t design the interior.”

Despite proceeding to design award-winning buildings and products worldwide, Graves holds the Portland Building as one of his greatest achievements. He still enjoys talking about the sculpture that sits in front, Portlandia. — djcoregon.com

From patterns in a trail of caterpillars in Spain to the geometry of a whitewashed house on the Greek island of Rhodes, renowned British architect John Pawson’s personal photographs reveal the visual details that intrigue him. Known for a minimalist aesthetic that places emphasis on light, material and proportion, Pawson has lent his modernist sensibility to everything from a Cistercian monastery in the Czech Republic to countless private homes, luxury yachts, and the Calvin Klein store in NYC. — nowness.com

When the Museum of African American History and Culture opens on the National Mall in 2015, it will be "not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life," as President Obama said during the ground breaking ceremony on the site today. — whitehouse.gov

Spanish architect Luis Moreno Mansilla has passed away at the age of 53. Mansilla was a founding partner of Mansilla+Tuñón, whose work includes the Fine Arts Museum in Castellón, the Auditorium of Leon, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla and Leon MUSAC, which received the Mies van der Rohe Prize.
Mansilla, was a professor at the School of Architecture in Madrid, and had been a Visiting Professor at Princeton University. — El Pais

For three straight months now, the Architecture Billings Index — a measure from the American Institute of Architects — has shown slight increases in work levels at architectural firms, with the latest figures showing a score in January of 50.9, compared with 51.0 in December.

... the index tends to provide a decent lens into the mood of the real estate world, and an increase may lay the groundwork for new construction projects months down the road. — blogs.wsj.com

Directed by Ai Weiwei (China, 2012). Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012.

Ordos 100 is a construction project curated by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. One hundred architects from 27 countries were chosen to participate and each design a 1000-square-meter villa to be built in a new community in Inner Mongolia. The 100 villas would be designed to fit a master plan designed by Ai Weiwei. — youtube.com

In 2008, the substantially updated town center of Plessis-Robinson, a suburb of Paris, was named “the best urban neighborhood built in the last 25 years” by the European Architecture Foundation. A composite of six connected districts ranging in size from 5.6 to 59 acres, the revitalization comprises public buildings, retail, market-rate and subsidized affordable housing, parks, schools, gardens, sports facilities, and a hospital. Construction was begun in 1990 and took a decade to complete. — switchboard.nrdc.org

Earlier this month, we published the winners in the competition for a new cultural venue in Montreal's Verdun Borough with Les Architectes FABG taking home the First Prize. One of the four outstanding finalist entries was submitted by Montreal-based Saucier + Perrotte, Architectes which we present here in detail. — bustler.net

In an international design competiton for the rapid development of satellite cities along Chinese high speed rail corridors, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Beijing Bohai Innovation City master plan has just been named the winning submission. — bustler.net

Some aspects of biomimicry have been played around with for a long time for example mimicking the structure of termite mounds. There have been a lot of architects who have toyed with biomimicry, but have been quite dependent on seductive imagery such as spiders' webs, but often the designs haven't been seen through in a particularly thorough way. Sometimes the examples from nature are just used as a departure point for developing original and whacky forms. — Michael Pawlyn, via wired.co.uk

The city was initially prepared to contribute €77 million to the project – but this figure has since gone up by nearly five times to more than €323 million – more than half the expected €600 million total cost. And the original completion date of 2010 has been pushed back to 2014.

The building’s designers had underestimated certain costs – such as an acoustic panelling for the main concert hall which cost five times as much as expected, adding more than €10 million to the bill. — thelocal.de

To create a smarter space, Kennedy constructed a 160-square-foot test home (the smallest legal-sized apartment for California) inside a Berkeley wherehouse. SmartSpace 1.0 is filled with innovations like the SmartBench, an adjustable banquette that converts from a dining table to a guest bed. — youtube.com

A bond forged in storm-ravaged New Orleans between actor Brad Pitt and a local architecture firm is bearing fruit in Kansas City — and may show the path forward to reusing dozens of empty schools.

The long-closed Bancroft School at 4300 Tracy Ave. will be renovated into affordable apartments and a community center with the aid of the Make It Right Foundation founded by Pitt... — kansascity.com

A few days ago, we published BudCud's finalist entry to the Kiev Islands Master Plan Competition. Here is now also the winner of the First Prize, the concept THE BLUE LINE by Romanian team Wolf House Productions and Gabriel Pascariu. — bustler.net

Foreclosed, a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, shows ways of radically rethinking suburbia, homeownership and housing. But are such drastic measures what the suburbs really need? — Next American City