A historian might spend decades undertaking research in archives and writing up discoveries in scholarly journals, but if the work does not have a presence online — and, specifically, a presence that is not behind a paywall — it is all but invisible outside academia. As Ridge states, “If it’s not Googleable, it doesn’t exist.” — Places Journal

Architecture with capital letter A is a short movie, featuring Architects who might have shaped the concept of Architecture itself in the last decade. The movie combines excerpts of their interviews, speeches or documentaries over the last 70 years. This accumulation of scenes expresses somehow the condition of Architecture today - its moments of Glory and Misery. — viavili.com

Yet another treatise on Steve Jobs? As an “architect” — really? And with Apple seemingly waning, aren't we behind the curve on this? Suffice it to say that my interest is not solely in Jobs himself, but rather in the challenge he poses to the methods and purpose of an architectural historian.... But since architectural stories are surprising rare here on the edge of the continent, I need a shtick; no matter my connoisseur-ish personal tastes and leftist political dispositions. — Places Journal

In Santa Barbara, Calif., the hot architect in town is George Washington Smith. In Charlottesville, Va., it's Eugene Bradbury. And in the small town of Washington, Conn., homes by Ehrick Rossiter are prized. These architects have a few things in common: They're long dead, they're relatively unknown outside the small, affluent pockets where they practiced in the early 20th century and they've all made a comeback. — online.wsj.com

In its most far-reaching aspects, container urbanism proposes to take the fundamental organic/architectural condition of containment further by exploring how a boundary might be better coordinated, even merged with the flow of material/ideas. Can containment equate more closely with transmission and, in so doing, position architecture and urbanism more in line with societal mobility and change? — Places Journal

Eighteen feet below one of Rome’s most-trafficked junctions is a 900-seat arts center dating back to the second-century reign of Emperor Hadrian, Italian archaeologists have announced.

The discovery, widely seen as the most important in Rome in 80 years, came as a result of digging for the city’s third subway line. Archeologists spent the last five years excavating two halls of the structure under the Piazza Venezia, which is believed to be an arts center, or auditorium, built by Hadrian. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

We tend to think of architecture as solid, stable, enduring, something that at its best will outlast us and possibly say something about us to future generations. Demolition makes powerfully evident the vulnerability, the mortality, of all things standing. — Places Journal

For retailers, daylight offered one additional advantage the advertisements did not mention: the implication of moral virtue. Large department stores were described as cesspools of fraud, filth, poor working conditions, child labor, anti-competitiveness, potential press censorship (because of their advertising clout), disease, drunkenness, savagery, prostitution, suicide and darkness. A well-lit interior, it was said, could do much to counter such negative associations. — Places Journal

If you drove far enough, from Maine to Georgia, from the Midwest to Southern California, or simply from one end of Los Angeles to the other, you would start to notice that there were different ecologies, and that some were geographical and some were cultural, but that they intersected and collaged to form a vast, sprawling, layered network whose patterns were discernible only if you took the long view and just kept driving. — Places Journal

How should the state pursue the goal of making decent housing affordable and accessible to all its citizens? How can we mobilize our collective resources in the service of social justice? In what other ways might we imagine living together? What is a house? — Places Journal