“Cities today have become far too large,” Wang said in an interview while visiting New York in April. “I’m really worried, because it’s happening too fast and we have already lost so much.”

Wang, a sturdy 49-year-old, has built his small architectural practice as a riposte to this heedless destruction. With his wife, architect Lu Wenyu, he runs a 10-person firm called Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city southwest of Shanghai. — bloomberg.com

I call these projects urbicide because of the social and ecological damages they cause, such as land speculation, expulsion of the lower-middle classes from the urban center, and the zoning of green areas for development. Among the projects is a third bridge over the Bosphorus, a canal bisecting Istanbul in the north-south axis near its western border, and the redevelopment of Taksim Square. — researchturkey.org

The Minneapolis Parks Foundation has announced a shortlist of three award-winning design teams for the schematic design project Water Works: A Next Generation Park on Minneapolis’ Central Riverfront. The teams are Gustafson Guthrie Nicol with VJAA and Interboro (Seattle/Minneapolis/New York); SCAPE with Rogers Marvel (New York); and Team West 8 (Rotterdam/New York). — bustler.net

The appointment signals the start of implementing the Menil’s master plan for its “neighborhood of art,” which consists of six buildings devoted to art spread across several blocks, as well as outdoor sculptures, green spaces and bungalows. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

Here is your first look at models and details of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor's proposed new building for LACMA. See these for yourself, along with a look at LACMA's architectural history and an overview of other Zumthor projects, in THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST: PETER ZUMTHOR RECONSIDERS LACMA, on view July 9-September 15, 2013 — facebook.com/lacma

Renderings by Tappan Zee Constructors LLC, the team selected to design and build the bridge at a cost of $4 billion, show a structure crowned by 400-foot-high towers that look like insect antennae waving aimlessly in the wind.

Four pairs of masts tilt outward, from which cables splay to support the road deck. The towers are intended to form an iconic image, but they are just stumpy.

This is a site that deserves the magnificence of the Golden Gate Bridge. — bloomberg.com

The entry Trylletromler by Dutch practice FABRIC has won the international design competition for a temporary pavilion in the King's Garden in Copenhagen. The completed pavilion is scheduled to open to the public on September 13. — bustler.net

Some members of Chicago's design community have said privately that the Navy Pier project's parameters, which limited the scope of changes, stifled creative possibilities, even for highly regarded designers such as Corner.

"Anything that makes it more parklike is all to the good," said eclectic Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman. "It can only go up, architecturally." — articles.chicagotribune.com

The 2030 Palette is an interactive online tool that puts the principles behind low-carbon and resilient built environments at the fingertips of architects, planners and designers worldwide.
Our goal is to inform the planning and design process at the point of inspiration. By curating the best information... highly complex ideas are made intuitive and accessible. Guiding principles are presented as individual “Swatches”, which together make up the larger fabric of sustainable built environments. — Inhabitat

The decision to go with “edible art” as part of a larger park renovation, rather than a standard mural, was seen as a way to foster residents’ participation, said Karly Katona, a deputy to Mark Ridley-Thomas, the local county supervisor. — NYT

"OpenStreetMap is not about crowdsourcing, OpenStreetMap is about community collaboration. This is not you being a mindless crowd adding data to some big company’s map. This is about you putting in data in your own neighborhood, working with your neighbors, working with a larger community to refine and make a really cohesive map. That's the kind of experience that was so successful with Wikipedia." — Atlantic Cities

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

Some of the most densely populated cities across the globe are tackling population growth and food shortages by establishing more rooftop farms. Vertical farms are popping up on unused rooftops in cities across the globe and the outcome is extremely positive. — DesignBuild Source

Almost as soon as the news broke last week that the Museum of Modern Art planned to demolish the former American Folk Art Museum, a movement emerged to save it. Members of the design community—including the architects who designed the building—are registering their discontent with the decision. More than one petition is now circulating to rescue the Folk Art building as a result. — architectmagazine.com