Nicholas Korody penned an essay on White Space: The Architecture of the Art Fair, "the so-called photographic-seamless" and "The aura of art works".

 His conclusion  "Art exists now in a strange truce, in which an object is used as the establishing point for a market as much as the market is used as the establishing mechanism of the object".

Olaf Design Ninja_  thought it was a "hefty piece" and posed the question "so now that the containers of art became art, the architecture, the art has moved on?"

Plus, Julia Ingalls featured Andrei Zerebecky (left) and Lukasz Kos of Shanghai-based architectural firm Four O Nine, for the latest edition of UpStarts.

News
CurbedLA reported that Ray Bradbury’s home was demolished by architect Thom Mayne. Eric Chavkin was a "friend and client" of Bradbury and sorry to see the "house go".

For his part, Orhan Ayyüce believed "Three underground levels is pretty curious and strong....Going down three floors in Los Angeles is unusual and very artistic concept...LA has an interesting geography and I've never seen a digout like this in local residential and small commercial"

Justine Testado reflected on Archinect’s Get Lectured series and Branding. Lightperson commented "University of Toronto wins. ‘Branding’ is a dubious term for lecture poster design...Graphic Designers use the B word to oversell their importance".

The Taipei Times pointed out that the Taichung mayor has balked at high cost of a tower designed by Sou Fujimoto. Will Galloway admitted he would "totally go to see that. absolutely".

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Amenta Emma Architects linked to an op-ed from late 2014 by Michael J Crosbie (architect in Essex and chairman of the architecture department at the University of Hartford), welcoming the new WCSU arts center, they codesigned with Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture.

Simin Cao recently worked on Koreatown Bumblebee Elementary School.

In honor of MLK Day, Mitch McEwen reposted a portion of an article written for the current issue of STUDIO magazine in Italy, titled Crime! Crime! Crime!: Black Leisure and American Cities. midlander found the topic interesting "Zoning is insidious - it's an obscure way to shape policy where the public won't pay much attention".

United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City, UT by Thomas Phifer and Partners and House in Sang-an, South Korea by studio_GAON are just two of the projects from the latest Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Architect Sure!" Pinterest Board.

School/Blogs
darrenb wrote about 'Under the Influence' a book based upon the eponymous symposium, published by SA+P Press the publishing arm of MIT's Department of Architecture.

Kyat Chin started the blog CPP, which he promises will at least mostly be "about architecture works done by Cal Poly Pomona students".

New York City College of Technology released a CALL FOR MENTORS for Spring 2015 semester.

The School of Architecture at UNC Charlotte is offering a two-year Dual Degree in Architecture and Computer Science/Information Technology. Randy Deutsch suggested the curriculum was clear evidence that "Design's become important to computer scientists at same time computation's become important to designers".

Discussions/Threads
Vendetta had a question about the material used for Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel. Specifically, "what is rammed concrete? the material that use for ...Is it mean rammed earth mixing with concrete?"

Gregory Walker guessed it was a matter of nomenclature and what was used was "a really stiff concrete mix that the owner could install, by hand...it's so thick in the sections (in places), i can't imagine there's any possibility of it being true rammed earth". Yet, jw468 quoted "From A+U 2008:09 No.456, p.30", the material was a "mixture of river gravel, reddish yellow sand...and white cement".

Janosh added "Where true rammed earth has no lime or portland cement, and uses clay exclusively as the binder, rammed concrete omits the clay and uses only sand and gravel, with 8% or more portland cement….The final material has properties similar to 1000 psi concrete".

Albert Montenegro is a new hire tasked with creating\organizing "a Details Library for our office" and isn’t sure the best way to structure the archive. "one of the best organizations" BulgarBlogger has "seen is by price". Meanwhile urbanity agreed with "ODN's suggestion about organizing the details by building assemblies is the way to go". Abraham Melendez recommended "CSI Format in a binder".

conorplus  started a thread to get advice on the legalities in naming an architecture firm? Donna Sink clarified "This is a topic that also varies by state.  Some states that register architecture firms as professional corporations require the partners' names to be in the firm name, some states don't". A bunch of Archinectors also chimed in with the specifics of their states. gwharton had a request "a simple name or initials...And for pete's sake, NO PUNS".
 

Additionally
Jay Owens penned "a sharp & concise review" of ‘Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space’ by Keller Easterling, for Icon. h/t @Justin Pickard