"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

Staples, the world’s largest office products company and second largest e-commerce company, today became the first major U.S. retailer to announce the availability of 3D printers. The Cube® 3D Printer from 3D Systems, a leading global provider of 3D content-to-print solutions, is immediately available on Staples.com for $1299.99 and will be available in a limited number of Staples stores by the end of June. — businesswire.com

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

It's easier to conceive of creating such schemes for an un-built structure on a computer screen. But as we try to re-purpose an aging building stock in our cities – not just treasured cathedrals, but also old offices and unremarkable apartments – we're going to need new ways of documenting and thinking about the buildings we already have. Historically, this has been a tedious process, but technology (albeit currently costly) means that we might be able to appraise an old building in hours. — theatlanticcities.com

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

A new apartment complex in Hamburg, Germany, intends to generate heat, as well as revenue, from growing the micro-organism. The five-story Bio Intelligent Quotient (B.I.Q.) building, which was expected to become fully operational on Wednesday, has a high-tech facade that looks like a cross between a Mondrian painting and a terrarium but is actually a vertical algae farm. — nytimes.com

The LA Times reported that Renzo Piano, Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali and officials from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled preliminary designs for a $300-million film museum. Eric Chavkin concluded "A toy chest of architectures related only by location. From the Bruce Goff Japanese Pavilion to the black box Mies bookstore to Hugh Hardy's disco streamlined moderne to Luckmans sorry start. Renzo Piano's 'back-to-the-future cinema spheres just continues the trajectory"

Departing with the familiar tradition of producing a hefty physical volume, GSAPP offered its most recent Abstract in the form of an iPad app. In addition to (or on cover-like behalf of) this app, students received an object: It looks like a book, but turns out to be a book-shaped plastic box, and its contents consist of a URL, where the app can be downloaded. This object, as you can see, has not been universally embraced. — observatory.designobserver.com

Sources close to the project said Foster + Partners... is helping Apple on the retail store design brief. — marketingmagazine.co.uk

Back in January, we had published the shortlisted nominees in the Architecture category of the sixth annual Designs of the Year Awards, hosted by London's Design Museum. Today now the final winners across the seven categories—Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product, Transport—were announced, too. — bustler.net

Since 2011, the budget for Apple’s Campus 2 has ballooned from less than $3 billion to nearly $5 billion, according to five people close to the project who were not authorized to speak on the record. If their consensus estimate is accurate, Apple’s expansion would eclipse the $3.9 billion being spent on the new World Trade Center complex in New York, and the new office space would run more than $1,500 per square foot—three times the cost of many top-of-the-line downtown corporate towers. — businessweek.com