This laboratory, as Mr. Hill calls it, for small-space, sustainable and — it must be stressed — high-end living is the first tangible product from his fledgling company, LifeEdited. It comes with an awkward manifesto that nonetheless manages to gather an armful of social and economic trends and philosophies, including happiness research, the booming field of collaborative consumption and data on the proven efficiencies of cities. — nytimes.com

Design Week NYC is almost here, and the plethora of events going on around New York City can be quite overwhelming. But worry not, the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has launched a new tool that will come in very handy: a mobile-ready website, designweeknyc.org, highlighting design-related events around the city during ICFF, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, May 19-22. — bustler.net

Just off the narrow, crowded streets of Greenwich Village is a lush, spacious garden of drooping mature willows and sycamores.
New York University, its owner, fights for its destruction.
If the university prevails, two curvy towers shaped like chocolate drops will arise from the garden. The million square feet of new construction are the space equivalent of a hefty skyscraper. — bloomberg.com

More than a decade after a terrorist attack brought down New York's twin towers, their under-construction replacement will become the city's tallest building on Monday.

The placement of a column of the 100th floor will bring the colossal new steel structure of One World Trade Center tower to a height of 1,271 feet – surpassing the frame of the Empire State Building, which is currently New York's tallest skyscraper, by 21 feet. — news.blogs.cnn.com

The site of 425 Park Avenue now awaits its fate as a star-studded line-up of prospective architects compete for the chance to helm the $750 million project. L&L Holding Co. has tapped Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, Foster & Partners, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Meier, Renzo Piano and others with high hopes to create a "bespoke skyscraper that will both complement Park Avenue's existing architectural treasures and make its own indelible mark in the world's most timeless office corridor".. — artinfo.com

Browsing the Work Status Updates on our sister site Archinect, we recently came across an image of the intriguing structure CMYplay, a proposal of A\V Studio, originally designed for the 3Dimensional Front competition. A\V Studio is an on-going design collaboration between Adam Hostetler of New York City and Virginia Melnyk of Beijing, China. — bustler.net

Released on Sunday by the Center for an Urban Future — a think tank focused on New York City — “Designing New York’s Future” cites that New York City graduates twice as many students in design and architecture as any other city in the country. While extolling the schools’ strengths, the report also advocates for more business coursework in curricula... — thirteen.org

One winner and one Finalist have recently been announced at Tap City, a competition around a drinking fountain. The contest asked undergraduate and graduate students to create a structure, installation, or experience around a forgotten fountain, the Duncan Dunbar Memorial Fountain in Greenwich Village, NYC, to devise a radically innovative proposal for the most particular of urban design sites. — bustler.net

An intern-rights movement is afoot, sparking class-action suits against Hearst and Fox Searchlight; rumors of new rules at Condé Nast; a Times “Ethicist” column (headline: “The Internship Rip-Off”); and a book (Intern Nation) decrying many of the unpaid jobs as boondoggles. Amid the uprising, our interns surveyed 100 other New York interns about the apprentice’s life. — nymag.com

Feeling a little claustrophobic lately? Well, it’s not just you — newly released numbers from the Census Bureau say Angelenos are living in the nation's most densely-populated urban area.

New York still has the highest population, but at 7,000 people per square mile, the Los Angeles/Anaheim/Long Beach area takes the density prize. — scpr.org

Initial designs for the third and final section of the High Line were released Monday by Friends of the High Line. Section 3 will wrap around the striking stretch of rail yards at the center of the Hudson Yards project.

The new stretch will pick up where the completed section ends at 30th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, continue west to 12th Avenue, turn north, and then head back east at 34th Street for about half a block. — NY Times

The Interior Design Department at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) has announced Diller Scofidio + Renfro as this year’s recipient of the Lawrence Israel Prize. [...]

Each year, the award recipient is invited to give a public talk on their work. Diller Scofidio + Renfro's talk will take place on Thursday, March 15 at 6 pm at FIT in the John E. Reeves Great Hall, Fred P. Pomerantz Art and Design Center, Seventh Avenue at 28th Street. — bustler.net

We just published the winners of the design ideas competition, The Harlem Edge / Cultivating Connections, organized by Emerging New York Architects (ENYA). One of the finalist entries was the proposal Greenhouse Transformer by Dongwoo Yim and Rafael Luna of Boston firm PRAUD. The concept received an Honorable Mention. — bustler.net

The Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) Committee of the AIA NY Chapter has announced the winners of its fifth biennial design ideas competition, The Harlem Edge / Cultivating Connections. [...] The competition explored the redevelopment of the decommissioned Department of Sanitation marine transfer station located on the Hudson River at 135th Street. — bustler.net