In a feature entitled A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down, Chris Hildrey, visited the Brunswick Centre site of the Incredible Edible Gingerbread House - a life-size gingerbread house created by alma-nac, on behalf of the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. Besides the child-like fun and available sweets what really excited Chris about this project was the fact that architects were doing it. He concluded, "This is why seeing a gingerbread house in a London basement can get me excited: it makes me realise that maybe all that design education doesn't need to be put to the side after all. That perhaps, after all is said and done, there's the chance to be a designer with this degree. But what's more, with this divergence seeming to run along the dividing line between larger and smaller practices, it's important and liberating to know that a conscious choice can exist on which route to take." To which chung writes "that the graduate's exchange of gratis labour for recognition in realising something like the ginger bread house is part of the spectrum of shrewd procurement that gets you a starchitect's remaindered maya shape at the other end of the scale."

News
Archinect argues for more snark, highlighting a post by barkitecture Starchitects Design Glamorous Prisons for Manhattan’s Elite. 18x32 comments "How come Stern doesn't get one? oh, this is just reactionary anti-modernism."

Metropolis Magazine re-visited Coop Himmelblau’s wildly ambitious L.A. high school two years later to find out how is it actually working... Donna Sink wishes that these sorts of post-occupancy reviews were more common writing "As Hawthorne says, architectural press is so focused on the brand new object, usually shown with very little context, that we rarely hear about actual successes and failures, both unintended and not, of our buildings. i think we all could learn from these types of reviews. One of the now-gone architecture mags used to do this every month in the late 90s - I wish more would do it now."

Paul Goldberger observed that “the British may lately have begin to realize that, like Lady Gaga, Hadid has rather more to her than a showy exterior” and Orhan Ayyüce argues that "these short cuts on zaha hadid shallow and totally generated by pr directors. they portray her as a caricature and she goes alone with it. high visibility = financial stability and flow of projects in design business."

OpenBuildings.com, looked at  the The Wild Beast pavillion by Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture. The pavilion is notable is how a combination of rotating, sliding, and pivoting surfaces allow the pavilion to easily and quickly adapt both spatially and acoustically to a variety of performance configurations. eric chavkin agrees "This is one of the nicest projects by Hodgetts and Fung. I especially like the 'zoomorphic' logic of the sliding canopy enclosure. It evokes the segmented skin of shellfish."

Schools/School Blogs
Matthew at University of Illinois had the opportunity to travel to Norway and Sweden this summer. He writes "Of special note: The Oslo Opera and the Sverre Fehn works were all breathtaking and inspiring. An earlier study for DIS I did on Korsmo's Villa Stenerson also made that a treat (more on that in my next post I hope)" but then notes that he isn't going to write much about the trip as he would rather share a few images.

Roberto at the University of Edinburgh discusses the EUSAS organised ‘Open Studios Party’ at Minto House. The Gallery, Studios 3,4&5, Crit Rooms 1&2, and Elliot Room, were all open for viewing but for anybody who missed the party he posts some images. He then lets us know that his dissertation entitled "Wikileaks and the Architecture of Data-Loss Paranoia" has been nominated for the 2011 RIBA President’s Medals Student Awards Dissertation Medal! The dissertation explores the data-bunker as "a new building type that was not necessarily derived from traditional architectural discourse."

Firms/Work Updates
I totally agree with Gregory Walker, who ...... is wondering why the 'working on' has become a jobs board.... Paul Petrunia then says "Please use this 'work status update' area for posting what you are currently working on. Please refrain from posting "looking for work" messages. Thanks!

Alfonso Spina is the designer and owner of a timber, ecofriendly, two-family house in Palestrina, Roma. 

Khairy Hirzalla, is working on a new project ''Iron Sculpture''.

OMA is looking for a Recruiter to facilitate our global recruitment processes.

Discussion Threads
J. James R. started a thread on shipping containers. He opens "Wouldn't it make more sense to cut out metal panels from the sides of these containers to use as cladding and roofing over a custom-made, insulated and properly enveloped structure rather than trying to adapt reinforcement, enveloping and insulation to a shipping container?" For his part MixmasterFestus would "like to see more projects where the container is not the entire house, since their dimensions match up fairly well with other materials' modules. They could make good modular bathroom/kitchen/service cores, for example, if they're stacked (maybe with a little extra space between the floors for building services) and spaced out. More traditional building methods could be used to flesh out habitable space between the stacks." While beccabec confesses "I worked on container buildings. I can't recall anything redeeming about them other than the novelty. There I go being blunt again, sorry."

oompa is looking to source Ball Nogues mylar. Donna Sink asks "Have you contacted Ball Nogues directly? They are very nice people."

danklyn is thinking about purchasing a photo of Kahn, Barnes and Yamasaki in Detroit in 1961 and wonders "what these guys were doing together in Detroit on this seemingly-auspicious day."

heavymetalarchitecture wonders "Why haven't natural buildings/materials like straw bale or rammed earth etc received more love? I feel like they would be triple platinum cash money on the LEED scale. What am I missing?" vtarchitect notes that "The early adopters are taking it. But Rammed earth has a long way to go before it hits mainstream anywhere. After completing 3 projects with RE, I am eager ( I mean.. real hungry!!! ) to build more! "

pieroarguello opens with "I know that a lot of people already hate me because I have this economical idea." and then poses the questions Would architect innovate more if they also were developers? citizen's "hunch is that, with their own money on the table, architects would probably behave like other developers, in the aggregate...So, my sense is no: on the average, architects would not innovate more if they were also developers with a financial stake in projects." While rusty! answers "listen dimwit, there are plenty of architects working as developers. Always have been. For many reasons they tend to outsource design services. A better question would be why don't developers provide design services." Finally, RickB-OR offers piero some advice "A better question might be to follow up with is - How do make more innovated designs low risk in real estate development and other developments. Or How do we take the risk out of innovative design and it still be innovative design?"