Julia Ingalls highlighted the work of Design Build Research (DBR), based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Currently a non-profit institute led by architect Michael Green and creative entrepreneur Scott Hawthorn, one of the earliest projects was building a theater when TED headquarters’ moved from Long Beach, California to Vancouver. 

zenza commented "I was a part of the TED Talk stage design/build (I`m in the last photo actually!).  It was a fantastic experience and I learned a lot...Having learned extremely little about construction and the act of assembling things in school, this program offered an awesome addition to my design education."

Meanwhile the latest edition of Screen/Print: featured the October 2015 issue of the Journal of Architectural Education, volume 69: "S,M,L,XL".

News
Belmont Freeman (principal of Belmont Freeman Architects, an award-winning design firm in New York City) penned an essay questioning whether preservation has become too conservative and elitist? What Evan Chakroff found most interesting "is that Freeman stops *just* short of suggesting NYC Landmarks get (explicitly) into the development biz". gwharton admitted "Preservation is elitist because it serves to protect the position of first-movers and established occupants to the detriment of newcomers. And it's obviously conservative, because it is seeking to conserve something of value" but argued "Neither of those are bad".

In dappled afternoon sunshine at VDL House’s backyard in Silver Lake, senior Archinect Editor Orhan Ayyüce sat down with Enrique Norten, winner of this year’s Richard J. Neutra Award for Professional Excellence, to talk about modernism’s legacy and evolution since the mid-20th century. Orhan had this to say

"Enrique Norten is a bright spot in the world of architecture and wonderful human being. His way of talking architecture and modernism is what the discourse needs"

Listen to highlights here.

Justin Testado reported in from the Bing Theater at the LACMA, where guest lecturer Caroline Bos (co-founder and principal urban planner of UNStudio) spoke.

Seeing the work of Canadian architectural photographer Chris Forsyth, Non Sequitur expressed looOooove for "the montreal metro stations. They are like time-capsules from the 60's megastructure/brutalist's years".

Firms/Work Updates
Jessica A.S. Letaw put together a list of the 10 strongest installations from the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial which is almost through its first month (running through 3 January 2016). Nate Hornblower complained "Its amazing how far socialist agendas will get you--NOT. Most of these play off the strength of the existing architecture. Mostly they disappear altogether." vado retro sagely replied "^what have you got?"

Virginia Melnyk recently worked on Geometric Curtain...(shown at)...CAW gallery New Haven which combined fabric and lights.

For those looking for a different/better job - Morphosis Architects is seeking a full-time advanced technology team member (for a "highly collaborative position") to join their Los Angeles office. Otherwise you can apply to be an Architect for The Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), a Washington, DC based non-profit veterans service organization.
 

School/Blogs
Kevin Clement affiliated with the Advanced Design Studies Program at the University of Tokyo, shared the work of one of the researchers there, Jan Vranovsky, who has been documenting the seemingly mundane spaces of Japan for the past year. Since Kevin graduated earlier this year he also posted a short video intro for his thesis. The project looked at turning food-waste into bio-plastic.

Joachim Perez integrated Wintercroft Masks (low-poly masks made from recycled paper products created by designer Steve Wintercroft), as a design thinking exercise for the small group of graduate students taken his course on visual communication.

Meredith Garda attended the recent Stair Sessions with Robert Somol and Neil Denari at Knowlton. Donna Sink was also there and "found the conversation really interesting and rich but exceptionally hard to follow. What excited me about that was thinking that a bunch of students in a seminar were being exposed to these very upper level conversations about the discipline".
 

Discussions/Threads
force structure asked why there was No more aura? The question was instigated by a viewing of ‘Symposium on Architecture: Organization or Design?’, a presentation of the GSD moderated Sanford Kwinter. chigurh "skipped around that video to a few different speakers - bunch of mumble mouths struggling through (reading) essays laden with archispeak" a sentiment Carrera seemed to agree with "When an architect says these words in describing architecture...you can then be sure that he has his head completely and squarely up his ass."

ItsVera was looking for opinions regarding plans for living in a container house. Many respondents (such as midlander) questioned the premise "have you considered cardboard boxes?". While haruki suggested doing some research if serious "There is an architectural designer in Los Angeles named Jennifer Siegal of Office of Mobile Design...You might want to google her contact info and research what she has done."

Finally mj100 had a code question Specifically, "looked at 1008.1.2 and was unsure of the interpretation (it is an R-2 classification)." Anecdotally JLC-1 noted "I have yet to see a residential entry door that swings out" but Olaf Design Ninja_ pointed out "if you have 75 people shacked up there the door will need to swing out". To gwharton it was clear "It's a cultural thing...In other parts of the world, different cultural expectations prevail". gruen later confirmed "Spaces w low occupancy can have one egress door and it can swing in . Number of occupants is based on use/occupancy."
 

Additionally
Back in October Catherine W. Zipf (Research Scholar in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) published Teaching Architecture and Gender: Why we're still not getting it right. Therein she reflected on the lack of courses teaching "a gendered space course", at the "top ten undergraduate and the top ten graduate architecture schools, as ranked by Design Intelligence".