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

Foster + Partners recently added another international airport to its portfolio, the just-opened Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan. According to a press release, the flight hub boasts a “highly effective passive design, which has been inspired by local traditions,” namely a canopy of shallow concrete domes that mitigate Amman’s hot climate and mimic forms in Islamic art. — blogs.artinfo.com

Lord Norman Foster, the hyper-modern British Pritzker Prize winner, is having a moment in New York, with numerous projects underway across Manhattan. But his latest hews away from the slick techno-futurism for which Lord Foster is best known, instead embracing a city landmark at one of our most famous intersections. — New York Observer

Richard Meier & Partners’ mixed-use building was selected in an international competition topping submissions by Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects. The challenge, Bernhard Karpf, associate partner-in-charge, said was to create a hybrid building that was “like a city in itself,” which creates “property lines” that carves out distinct areas for rentals, offices, and shops, but still comes together in a unified and coherent design. — The Architect's Newspaper

The Park Avenue tower rises from a monumental covered plaza to two setbacks, where the 42-foot-high garden levels expose those massive, dramatic building supports. The top two floors of the tower, tentatively planned to rise 49 stories, form a glass- roofed garden. Elevator shafts morph into glowing blades that slice the sky above the roof. — bloomberg.com

The series of videos below offers a fascinating insight into how this generation of "starchitects" behaves under pressure, as they each pitch to win one of the most high-profile competitions in recent years: a new tower for L&L Holding Company on Park Avenue in New York. The site has such daunting neighbours as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building, and it will be the first full-block office tower to be built on the street in almost half a century. — guardian.co.uk

Developers in San Francisco are loath to take architectural risks because the city’s approval process for new development is long and rigorous, perhaps the most onerous in the country, architects say.

It’s hard to fault their caution when you consider how small San Francisco really is — 47 square miles (Manhattan alone is 23 square miles) — with much of the area consumed by neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes. — The New York Times

From William Zeckendorf’s work with I.M. Pei and Minoru Yamaski in the 1960s and ’70s to his grandsons’ projects with the likes KPF and, most notably, Robert A.M. Stern, who created both the brand new 15 Central Park West and the newly renovated 18 Gramercy Park South, the Zeckendorfs have a thing for high design. — New York Observer

Within the station, the proposal creates wider concourses, with new and improved entrances. Externally, streets will be reconfigured as shared vehicle/pedestrian routes, and Vanderbilt Avenue fully pedestrianised. The proposal also creates new civic spaces that will provide Grand Central with an appropriate urban setting for the next 100 years. — fosterandpartners.com

Riding on the tailwinds of last week’s Mirvish + Gehry announcement, Oxford Properties Group today announced plans for the large-scale redevelopment of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and its surrounding areas. Dubbed "Oxford Place," the project will include much more than a refurbishing of the convention centre. Oxford plans to build four towers: one residential, one office and, of particular interest, two for a hotel that would serve a proposed casino... — urbantoronto.ca

“We are grateful to each of the firms for the thoughtfulness and creativity they demonstrated throughout the process. There is no doubt that each group was fully capable of helping us realize our vision of a 425 Park Avenue tower that redefines the modern office environment while also respecting and enhancing the timeless allure of the Plaza district.” — New York Observer

Masdar City is a project in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Its core is a planned city, which is being built by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company, with the majority of seed capital provided by the government of Abu Dhabi. Designed by the British architectural firm Foster and Partners, the city will rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy sources, with a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste ecology.

"You have to accept that 50 years have gone by, but the changes should be done by the architect who was in charge. If this architect is no longer able, this is another thing. But the last time I saw Garatti, he was thinking clearly. So there's no reason to put him aside. I don't think it's ethical." — npr

A reliable source provided us with some official blueprints for the Apple Campus 2 yesterday, and these are just a few of the images that illustrate the mammoth building currently being planned in Cupertino, Calif. A single one of these slides leaked out today, so we are putting these up now; we are resizing and still have to watermark. — 9to5mac.com