Bernard Cywinski, founding principal of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, passed away on March 2 from cancer.
News
Bernard Cywinski, founding principal of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, passed away on March 2 from cancer.

Katharine Jose of Capital New York talks with Interboro Partners and Lateral Office, after attending the first night of lectures by recipients of the 2011 Architectural League Emerging Voices award. She wonders is the next generation of architects really ready to build? In that sense, the new generation is approaching a totalizing sort of architecture: There is nothing that is outside its purview. And that would look, to our friends from the New York 5, very undisciplined and frightening, and, in a strange sort of way, perverted. "Will our colleague firms be calling themselves planners two years from now?" Weisz asked rhetorically. "In addition to architects,” she said, refining the point. “I mean, I think one could have a couple of theories. And i think one of them may be that between quicker communication and the tools you have, all of these fields are easier to think about together. And then I think kind of a design approach is actually being applied to many fields, including business and law and other things, and that architects are starting to realize again that they’re sot of needed, in terms of critical thinking.

Foster + Partners has been selected for the design of the 40-hectare master plan for West Kowloon Cultural District. Discuss...

Rowan Moore makes the case for the far-reaching benefits of a beautifully designed school.

Japan was hit by a 8.9 earthquake. To which Lian one of our school bloggers responds with a thoughtful post exploring her own reactions to the news and offers her thoughts and prayers for all those effected, especially those living near the Fukushima nuclear power station.

School Blogs
Lian also recently interviewed John McMorrough, Chair of the architecture program at University of Michigan Taubman College, when he visited her GSD studio last week. They discuss pedagogy and the future of practice. McMorrough has this to say about the 'fabrication project', I think the fabrication project is now at the cusp of going from skin projects, into just general forms of having an imagination about systematicity, aggregation. I can’t point to an exact result of this yet, but that’s the general direction. Because at some point, one has to realize that we’re not training craftsmen, but architects, so it has to have a level of abstraction.

Dorothy at University of Michigan's TCAUP shares images from midway through her thesis semester including:



Discussion Threads
There were a variety of professional practice threads this last week on topics ranging from: bid rigging, Ethical Realities of Codes and Clients, Billable rates for a three man firm, to a question about a Contractor wanting to take drawings and get them permitted. Does this mean business is slowly coming back?

Then again there are threads like this or this one, on reforming architecture school.

Additionally
Check out Compensation Trends: Encouraging but Conservative, a great article on compensation trends amongst architects, based on results from the DesignIntelligence “2011 Compensation and Benefits Survey. Does it give lie to the idea that architects can't make good money? As it notes The gross revenues projected for 2011 per full-time employee in this year’s research is $204,279. Via Stephen Becker