The City Journal's Theodore Dalrymple says "Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform."

Zaha Hadid is meeting the Pope this week - apparently he wants to revitalise religious art and architecture - and it will be one of the stranger celebrity encounters. London Evening Standard

The New Yorker's Paul Goldberger discusses Jean Nouvel's façade designs.

When you catch your first glimpse of 100 Eleventh Avenue, a new apartment tower in Chelsea designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, its curving façade, an abstract arrangement of windows slanting in multiple directions, looks like a gimmick. The building clatters; it jangles like a bracelet. Beside the smooth, milky-white exterior of Frank Gehry’s I.A.C. Building, across Nineteenth Street, it seems nervous, and even the architect’s description of it, “a vision machine,” smacks of trying too hard. But Nouvel, one of the world’s most famous and prolific architects, is anything but insecure.

nice piece on zumthor from the new republic

Slowly but surely, David Chipperfield has come to be seen as one of the world's most important architects. Born in London, where he is still based, Mr. Chipperfield, now 55 years, remains true to the language of classical architecture. WSJ

AKDA Architects director Xu Chengchun gets business opportunities in China with the help of Singapore's 'little red dot' brand appeal. With no in-depth knowledge of the Chinese language and culture, he was able to establish his presence in the Chinese market within a period of six years. Straits Times

To him, architecture has a role in resolving the complexities of culture, not necessarily dramatizing them. LATimes

An oscillation between the virtual and real is characteristic of Morimoto’s total design, and appears, on the surface at least, to be opposed to the tranquility and solemnity conventionally associated with Ando’s architecture. http://djhuppatz.blogspot.com/

The Prince of Wales’s stinging attack on modern buildings in 1984, when he called a planned museum annex a "monstrous carbuncle," still rankles many British architects. Not David Chipperfield. Bloomberg.com | Previously

British architecture gives its top award to Richard Rogers in the year of his bruising public row with Prince Charles.

The cancer support centre in west London was commissioned by Charles Jencks, whose wife Maggie died of the disease. There are already five Maggie’s Centres in Scotland, including designs by Frank Gehry (Dundee) and Zaha Hadid (Fife).

In his acceptance speech Rogers said: ‘The one person missing here is Maggie. She will certainly be the person I am thinking of.’

This prize tops a turbulent year which saw Rogers fall out with Prince Charles, who he saw as responsible for his removal from the £1bn Chelsea Barracks scheme. Rogers has previously won the Stirling Prize in 2006 for his Madrid Barajas airport terminal.

RIBA President Ruth Reed, who presented Rogers with the award, said: ‘The shortlist for this year’s RIBA Stirling Prize was of an exceptionally high standard, and I would like to congratulate each of the shortlisted entries. In the Maggie’s Centre we have a much deserved winner, and I am delighted to award Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners with architecture’s highest accolade.’

AJ NEWS / AJ interview with Rogers / video about maggie centre

The NYT takes a look at the tough life of Rafael Moneo:
"...It’s not just that this project involves inserting contemporary glass-and-aluminum architecture into a corner of Columbia’s main Morningside Heights campus, a landscape dominated by the historic masonry of McKim, Mead & White. Mr. Moneo, who had never before designed a building in New York City, also had to grapple with placing a tall building on top of the existing gymnasium without crushing it or even interrupting the basketball season — a daunting engineering task."

Via the NYT: “Wendy Evans Joseph Pop Up Architecture” (Melcher Media, $75) may be one of the very few architectural monographs in the form of a pop-up book.
Buy it on Amazon.

It's tough being Michael Arad, designer of the 9/11 memorial in NYC:
Every step of the design process has been conducted in public: from figuring out how to list the names of the victims to choosing the trees for the plaza. To get away, Arad slips out every so often to an obscure corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where, in an unkempt field behind an abandoned hospital building, he contemplates a full-scale mockup of the planned memorial.
Via the New Yorker.

Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei has been named today as the recipient of one of the world’s most prestigious architecture prizes, the Royal Gold Medal. Given in recognition of a lifetime’s work, the Royal Gold Medal is approved personally by the Queen of England and is given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence “either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture”. Bustler