If all the various proposals come to fruition, Major League Soccer will plunk a 35,000-seat stadium on top of the Pool of Industry; the Related Companies and Sterling Equities will jointly build a 1.4 ­million–square–foot shopping center on parkland turned parking lot next to Citi Field, and the National Tennis Center will creep beyond its current borders — NY Magazine

In order to trim 300,000 square feet of construction costs from its budget, Apple has pushed the entire Tantau Development to Phase 2, which means it will be completed after the main campus is built.

Apple's revised campus plan includes the addition of an expanded section detailing bicycle access improvements, which comes with an included visualization of what bike pathways and sidewalks might look like on the campus. — macrumors.com

In March, the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture Billings Index marked its eighth consecutive month of growth in the demand for architectural design services. While the national score of 51.9 is down three full points from February’s score of 54.9, the architecture industry is still seeing continued strength nationwide, and across all regions and industry sectors. — architectmagazine.com

Housing starts in March rose to the highest level in five years. If developers keep building at that rate, there’d be one million new houses by the end of the year.

So, what are builders building and what kind of homes do consumers want? The granite countertop of the new kitchen is like the leather interior of a new car -- a standard, special order must-have. — marketplace.org

To be sure, I do not believe that design practices do not involve research, or that these practices do not produce new knowledge. Nothing could be further from the idea. All design draws upon knowledge, either produced by existing research or new research. But critically, design is not synonymous with research. Design cannot base its conclusions on design itself. — Plat Journal

In June this year UNStudio will launch the new organisation of its practice as an open-source knowledge-based practice operating projects around four specialised Knowledge Platforms.

As part of the reorganisation of the studio a new interactive online knowledge platform will be launched, aimed at facilitating the open exchange of knowledge, with the ultimate goal of introducing and encouraging the expansion from a collaborative to a co-creative working model for architecture. — unstudio.com

“When one office was doing well, another was not doing as well,” says the source. “But we always managed it so that there was the see-saw effect – one office would be profitable and another would be in the doldrums. But we managed to keep the group afloat.”

“What people are worried about now is that the people who ran the company down are still the ones in charge.” — scotsman.com

Archinect published work from Beyond Prototype, an advanced digital fabrication seminar developed at Columbia University...Nicholas Cecchi was impressed but also offered some criticism "This is amazing student work...However, I would like architecture schools to stop pushing students to contextualize this kind of research-based exploration. Showing these as enclosures (or the one as a gondola) only undermines the amazing generative capacity of this kind of design"

Today, the Freelancers Union is one of the nation’s fastest-growing labor organizations, with more than 200,000 members, over half of them in New York State. Ms. Horowitz, who has never lacked audacity, says she expects to expand the organization to one million members within three years. For some perspective, the United Automobile Workers union currently has 380,000 members. — New York Times

Providence, Rhode Island was recently selected as America's most innovative city at the nationwide Mayors Challenge, taking home the $5M-Grand Prize for its idea "Providence Talks." The Mayors Challenge, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is a competition to inspire American cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life - and that ultimately can be shared with cities across the nation. — bustler.net

In February, the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture Billings Index marked its seventh consecutive month of growth in the demand for architectural design services. With a national score of 54.9, up from January’s score of 54.2, the architecture industry is seeing continued strength and a higher rate of growth of billings than it has seen since the bubble burst five years ago. (A score above 50.0 in the index means that demand is increasing.) — architectmagazine.com

Reflecting on the site of Farnsworth House, an obvious floodplain, toasteroven wondered "who pushed siting the building where it is - the client or mies?". To which snooker-doodle-dandy replied "don't believe Mies would ever let a Client tell him what to do. In fact if they tried, he would most likely stuff out his Cuban cigar on their forehead"

Abu Dhabi, the most oil-rich of the United Arab Emirates, is now home to the world's single-largest concentrated solar power plant.

The 100-megawatt Shams 1 plant cost an estimated $750 million and is expected to provide electricity to 20,000 homes, according to the BBC.

Why, you might ask?

Bloomberg says the less oil Abu Dhabi uses for local consumption, the more it can export. — npr.org

“Any change in the way you do business involves some concerns and issues,” said Richard T. Anderson, the president of the New York Building Congress...“If for New York City construction, business as usual is a challenge, you need to change some of the basic ingredients, and labor and management needs to address this.” — NYT