The latest edition of Working out of the Box: featured Hendo Hoverboard inventor and co-founder of Arx Pax, Greg Henderson. You can hear the full interview with Greg with his wife Jill, co-founder of Arx Pax, as part of episode 4 of Archinect Sessions here.  Click here to subscribe.

 Meanwhile, the latest Showcase:  - No.4 High School Fangshan Campus is located in Beijing and designed by local firm OPEN Architecture.

News
On episode 5 of Archinect Sessions co-host/NJIT grad Ken Koense took issue with NJIT's statement against Kean University's upcoming Michael Graves School of Architecture. Listen to Koense's take on NJIT's statement, or download the whole episode here. 

Sebastian Mlekicki argued "Including NJIT there are already 7 NCARB accredited architecture schools in a 25 mile radius of NJIT,  and there here have been less students signing up for architecture in NJ all together. How is adding another program economically feasible?".

On a visit to Cleveland, Monica Ponce de Leon made the case for diversity in the architectural profession.

"If you have a profession that has no diversity -- very few African-Americans, very few Hispanics -- then you end up with buildings representing a very narrow segment of the culture"

Orhan Ayyüce was impressed "I'll make sure my transferring students apply to the Taubman College of Architecture and Planning from East Los Angeles College. I definitely agree with her".

Billionaire Barry Diller pledged $130 million of the $170 million total to build a floating park and performance venue known as Pier 55 off 14th Street in the Meatpacking District. Donna Sink noted "Carnegie built libraries….while Diller is interested in entertainment, apparently. And frankly I think that park looks ridiculous...little better than Ski Dubai".

Yale Daily News reported that following nearly two decades of leadership, School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern ARC ’65 is planning to step down.
 

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates

               Recently, Franco Chen worked on Site Plan Overlay.

Fladängskolan in Lomma, Sweden by Link Arkitektur and Upshur Playground in Washington, DC by Landscape Architecture Bureau are just two of the projects from the recent post Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Kids Spaces" Pinterest Board.

School/Blogs
"Three interesting architects came to lecture at the University of Miami School of Architecture last week: Vicente Guallart who is the chief architect of Barcelona City and of his own practice Guallart Architects, and Gianfranco Bombaci and Matteo Costanzo of 2A+P/A" Read more, thanks to jp88.

The University of Southern California School of Architecture announced the appointment of Kelly Shannon as Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program and Landscape Architecture Discipline Head, effective January 1, 2015.

Nicole Doan wrote about Cal Poly Pomona's fall lecture series. She included a few photos.

The Architecture/Landscape/Interiors Department at OTIS College of Art and Design hosted a lecture by Patrick Tighe, Principal and Lead Designer of Patrick Tighe Architecture, Los Angeles,  Thursday, November 20, 2014.

Jeff Maeshiro currently a Designer at Future Cities Lab and Research Assistant at the Urban Works Agency at CCA in San Francisco, reported in from The Creative Architecture Machines Colloquium. The colloquium "ended with a lively discussion, mostly dominated by conversations of intellectual property rights and the monetization versus open-sourcing of design technologies".

Discussions/Threads
bennysmall started a thread to get feedback about the topic(s) of his undergraduate thesis The Anthropocene and architecture. curtkram suggested "think you should include 'Eschatology' as a sub-theme". Yet, Ben Small felt it was perhaps "a bit theological/tangential". Non Sequitur agreed with midlander "You need to decide if this is pure fiction, dystopian or utopian, or a work of reductio ad absurdum". ReddishEgret advised "Consider the Anthropocene as a condition rather than a problem".

9093bsbk is looking for precedents for Railway Parks? midlander offered up a list; Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park, Chicago - Millennium Park and Chicago - Ping Tom Memorial Park. Stephanie Braconnier pointed to a number of examples in Berlin, ranging from Gleisdreieck (by LOIDL) to Schöneberger Südgelände or Nordbahnhof.

Finally, Tamar Partamian was recently called into a last minute meeting and is now wondering Can I design a gas station without a license? chigurh answered succinctly "the short answer is probably no".

Richard Balkins, Assoc. AIA had a bit more to say "If the gas station is located in California, I wouldn't recommend it. I don't believe it is legal in California to design non-residential buildings without being licensed as an Architect. If it is in Oregon, (meaning you having to travel a bit from Los Angeles area), that is another story". Although a number of Archinectors were critical of Richard’s verbosity, shuellmi had only love for him "I love the firestorm that seems to follow your posts and I always learn something, which is the whole reason i started visiting archinect in the first place".