Nicholas Korody interviewed Smiljan Radić. They discussed Architecture at the limits of instability. Therein Radić explains 

"In Chile, it’s better to do it really brut rather than try to do it perfectly...And here to do something brut it's cheap, but in Europe it's really expensive." 

News

Orhan Ayyüce posted an article by Paul Jargowsky (a fellow at The Century Foundation) which lays out the facts and statistics of decline and poverty's impact on American cities. 

Orhan editorialized "architecture must pay much more attention to this issue and start producing solutions instead of getting shamelessly high on celebrating star architect designed luxury condominiums for the globally rich clientele and elitist minimalist lakeside homes, and teaching their renderings in schools...We are inadequate and limited with our current scope as architects."  Marc Miller later added "It's a hard road, but the ability to define what you do- or the working towards that is one of the things that defines the spectrum of architecture as a pure service versus practice. I'm sympathetic to Orhan's position that architects need to define what architecture and architectural practice are, which often means making new tools or metrics for practice".

Chris Teeter chimed in "everytime a young disruptive architect comes along - they are outside the box and thats where it ends - tragically...I suggest legal language alterations putting architects in better positions for redirecting capital for everything Orhan is advocating."

According to the Rowan Moore of the Guardian, British public housing is not all that bad now, thanks largely to architects. Yet, he also warns "the greater danger is that the fragile flowering of good housing is crushed by the forces of expediency against which it is constantly struggling. It has been, for example, strengthened by support from a planning system which is now being progressively undermined". Mr_Wiggin commented "Damn good reporting".

The New Yorker profiled Robert A.M. Stern. Thayer-D thought it was a "Nice article.  His firm is truly eclectic.  Not all great buildings but ones that contribute a lot more to their streets and cities than could be expected nowadays".

Firms/Work Updates

Christopher Perrodin started a blog, The Global Studio - Community Based Design, to share the community based design process for a rural farming village based in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua. The first few posts covered among other things; Site Analysis, and the exercises and games used by the design team to learn about the communities priorities.

Eli Laipson posted an interview with Eva Perez de Vega & Ian Gordon of e+i studio who had the following to say about the idea of digital craft;

"There’s the misconception that dealing with the digital is quick and easy, but there’s a high degree of craft involved. We’ve noticed that in last year’s we’ve been practicing, possibly also because of the scale of the projects we’re working on which are relatively small, we have a very direct relationship with production."

The Lighting Practice will be responsible for designing the exterior lighting of the new 51 story W and Element dual-branded hotel development, in the heart of Philadelphia.

School/Blogs

New York City College of Technology put out the call "MENTORS NEEDED FOR DESIGN AND TECHNICAL STUDIOS" for the Fall 2015 semester.

snatraj pointed out that UW Milwaukee students Dan Causier and Matt Moulis received the top prize at the Chicago Student Awards in Architecture from AIA Chicago recently, for their project (an urban Capuchin monastery) "Restraining Order".

Discussions/Threads

EKE started a thread to discuss a new list of The 100 Most Beautiful College Campuses In America. Carrera found "the absence of modern architecture in all but 3 on a list" interesting, though David Cole noted "Quite a few of the colleges listed are known for their modern architecture even if the author of this publication chose not to show it in the photo". Given the fact that Cranbrook and Tuskegee were not included Donna Sink argued "This list is garbage".  Andrew.Circle agreed "David Cole - you are right about that, a lot of interesting photo editorial decisions made in this article. Great building shown for IIT, but not showing Crown Hall? Same w/ McMicken at UC...If you are going to make the list, choose the most exemplary iteration of the representative building or natural feature."

Matthew from Blank Space responded to aliucv91’s question about the status of their "Dear Architecture" competition. In case you were also wondering "the jury is currently reviewing all of the entries" and they "expect to announce winners in about 2 weeks."

Finally, after reviewing the AIA Compensation Calculator A.I. was surprised, "expected Principal/CEO salaries to be a little higher" than those for Director of Design positions. Further jp22 was curious "In a lot of firms, wouldn't people fill multiple roles? I wonder how the survey accounted for that."