“Why do they come to us? Because of 15 Central Park West,” Mr. Stern, 73, said earlier this month from his office on the West Side of Manhattan. The Chinese “don’t want to go home at night to their three-bedroom shelf on the 44th floor,” he added. “They want to live in a place. That’s what we do: we’re place-makers.” — nytimes.com

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced that it had accepted an award from the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration’s Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) to promote the export of American architectural services to India and Sri Lanka. — aia.org

Richard Florida...thinks it needs a “robust community proc­ess,” in which an outside group could help build consensus with the surrounding community and create a plan that takes their wishes­ into account. “You can have serendipity,” he said. “But when you’re building a community, you also need a strategy.” — NYT

Two winning projects and one special mention have recently been announced in the first competition cycle of POST+CAPITALIST CITY, #1Shop. This international ideas competition called for proposals which re-think the concept of the shop, the way we consume, and a city with alternative shopping systems and shopping culture—from small interventions up to global concepts. — bustler.net

Major League Soccer has asked SHoP Architects, the firm that designed the new Nets stadium in downtown Brooklyn, to prepare initial designs for a Major League Soccer stadium in Queens.

SHoP's name is on a July Major League Soccer proposal given to city officials, and obtained by Capital. Last night, MLS confirmed that SHoP is indeed working on the initial schematic designs for a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. — capitalnewyork.com

Terminal workers speak a florid corporate language of “space optimization” and “key performance indicators.” Longshoremen click computer mice and complain about Microsoft Windows as everyone else in the white-collar world does. — NYT

He said it was impossible to re-register his Fake Cultural Development firm because officials had confiscated relevant documents.

The move follows his failed bid last week to challenge a tax evasion fine imposed on the firm. — bbc.co.uk

Curves are to be banned in a new generation of no-frills school buildings, according to a government crackdown on what it believes is wasteful extravagance in educational architecture.

Design templates unveiled for 261 replacement school buildings also prohibit folding internal partitions to subdivide classrooms, roof terraces that can be used as play areas, glazed walls and translucent plastic roofs. — guardian.co.uk

This week, SANAA released a proposal for its first building in the United States , located in New Canaan, Connecticut. The steel, concrete, and wood headquarters for the Grace Farms Foundation will wind its way along a piece of the 75-acre property owned by the nonprofit charitable organization. FRaC labeled it a "running fence" yet, AP simply "love(d) it".

"After a four-month skid, billings at U.S. architecture firms edged up very modestly in August with an ABI score of 50.2, indicating minor growth in design billings. Inquiries for new project activity also improved, showing its strongest gain since the first quarter of the year." — american institute of architects

The recession decimated the architecture profession, with firms closing or laying off large numbers of employees, architects left jobless for months or years, and many leaving the profession entirely. But a survey recently conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction (Record’s parent company) came to the counterintuitive conclusion that some U.S. firms expect a shortage of qualified designers to meet their workloads by 2014. — archrecord.construction.com

The evidence sits in my refrigerator: chevroned tall boys of Saison ale and a meticulous shortbread fruit tart, both crafted by former co-workers and classmates who initially pursued architecture only to search for fulfillment elsewhere. Photographers, typographers, bakers, bikers, and brewers are all disguised on LinkedIn and Facebook as design interns. There’s a renaissance happening among young architects — and it’s not in architecture. — crosscut.com

On the heels of a nearly three-point increase, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) climbed into positive terrain for the first time in five months... The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the August ABI score was 50.2, up from the mark of 48.7 in July. This score reflects an increase in demand for design services. The new projects inquiry index was 57.2, up from mark of 56.3 the previous month. — aia.org

Since the beginning of the recession in early 2008, architecture firms have collectively seen their revenue drop by 40 percent and have had to cut personnel by nearly a third. Despite a national recovery from the recession in 2009, construction activity continued to spiral downward, according to the recently release 2012 AIA Firm Survey — aia.org