Nine student/architect teams will assemble at a private residence in Portola Valley,  Calif., on Friday, Oct. 26, for dinner to launch a weekend of intense design and serious competition. The assignment is to design an artist's cottage to be built on Sonia Dhillon-Marty's property, Champ de Portola, by 2014.

Nine architects from four countries will be paired with the students. Teams will be given site plans, a project description and a philosophical statement, but little else. — news.stanford.edu

Having been given a prized collection of contemporary American art earlier this year, Stanford University on Wednesday announced plans for a new $30.5-million museum to house it.

New York-based Ennead Architects will design a 30,000-square-foot building devoted to the Anderson Collection –- 121 works by 86 artists collected by a Bay Area family... — latimesblogs.latimes.com

If Cornell University were to win the city’s competition to build a new science graduate school, it would install on Roosevelt Island almost four acres of solar panels, 500 geothermal wells, and buildings with the rare distinction of generating as much power as they use. — nytimes.com