ICYMI Amelia Taylor-Hochberg published a 3 part interview with Coy Howard, by students in John Southern's “Architectural Media and Publishing” Cultural Studies seminar at SCI-Arc. Ewa Lenart was impressed "Great Work and greatly inspiring teacher!" 

Plus, Nicholas Korody explored ‘Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work’ by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. Chris Teeter thought it was "good work...very interesting...these guys are 100% correct about scale".
 

News
Dame Zaha Hadid DBE passed on March 31st. Frank Gehry remembered "she was one of the guys...[That’s] sexist in its own way I suppose. I don’t mean it that way...She was undaunted by all the stuff that would be against a woman coming into a field at that level. She didn’t pay attention to it…She was very confident."

Daniel Elmore criticized some of commentary "She deserves to be remembered not as one of the best 'female architects' but one of THE BEST architects of our time...A visionary before her time and a gift to humanity." archinet added "A tremendous loss, she transcended so many boundaries on so many levels".

Bustler also rounded up some of their previous coverage on Zaha Hadid's accolades and award-winning projects.

Approximately 1300 slides (culled from the collections of Fritz Block and Pierre Koenig, which both belong to the USC Libraries), featuring work by architects, mostly within Southern California, have been digitized and are now available to view for free online. 

Orhan Ayyüce appreciated the images "SCI Arc used to have some fantastic slide library of the same era. These are great."

Christopher Hawthorne reviewed the newly opened $4-billion World Trade Center by Santiago Calatrava. Contrary to some Christopher Perrodin argued "the World Trade Center site is cool.  If the construction blockades ever go away, it'll be even cooler.  The transit station is great outside, cool and calm inside and has some quirky detailing here and there.  Reading again and again about cost and spikes and bones, I was surprised how overblown the critics have been."

The Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena was awarded the Pritzker Prize during a ceremony at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Shortly thereafter his firm Elemental released four open source plans for low income housing that, according to the firm's website, balance the constraints of "low-rise high density, without overcrowding, with possibility of expansion (from social housing to middle-class dwelling)."

Responding to haters Will Galloway, pointed out "the point of incremental construction is to bring the essentials, especially clean water and sanitation to an area previously built without that support. Its fucking smart. and its done without ego, which is pretty cool. Whether he deserves the pritzker or not is a bit of a question, but alejandro is without a doubt doing something special with this work."

LiMX reacted to Archinect Sessions #57, "Love how Mayne is exploring the emotional and experiential humanism in his work, which is so obviously rich."
 

Firms/Work Updates
Designhaus Architecture wrote about a new trend for Barndominiums. citizen was amused "Some of these look great...picturing the monthly BOA meeting where everyone shows up in designer overalls and chewing a piece of organic hay."

Recently Bill Caplan worked on his new book 'Buildings are for People: Human Ecological Design', while Francine Ngo on "...The Breathing Space - New Gestures".

TrueCADD explained why "Google’s new Tango 3-D sensing smartphone could be a stroke of luck for architects, designers and contractors given its plethora of potentially practical uses, exclusively in the field."

741 Dexter Street Plaza in Central Falls, RI (by Brandon Wang, Liili Dean Hermann, Daniel Feldman, Martin Anzellini, DESINE-Lab RISD, PEI-Pontificia Javeriana) and Times Square Re-Imagined by Toshiki Hirano are just two of the projects to be found on the latest Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Student Work" Pinterest Board.

School/Blogs
Fresh Meat Journal (an independent journal published by students of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago) put out a new Call for Submissions.

snatraj touted the results of Professor Bob Schneider’s "multiyear analysis of severe bike and pedestrian crashes has shown that multilane roads into Wisconsin’s major urban areas are hotspots for fatalities".

Over at the blog affiliated with UMSOA, Joachim Perez reflected on the second annual U-Serve event at the University of Miami School of Architecture, which focused on "Underline, a proposed urban linear park that would run underneath the Miami Metrorail."

Brian Johnsen and Sebastian Schmaling are the latest Fitzhugh Scott Chairs in Design Excellence at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
 

Discussions/Threads
batman is looking for advice on How to employ a lot of glass in an arctic climate? citizen was quick with "I'd think double-glazing at least." Later Wood Guy suggested either "triple-glazed windows...highest-performing, easily available windows you can get" Or if "cost is no object, consider Nanogel". JLC-1 quipped "I know you're batman, but you should look at the fortress of solitude.”

Olaf Design Ninja_ started a thread to gush about projects that are "amazing with new in old." zenza posted the "Obligatory Zumthor" (Shelters for Roman Archaeological Site and Kolumba Museum), while chigurh offered up Herzog & de Meuron’s CaixaForum.

Finally, ctalley5 wants statistics of the average number of drawing revisions for projects, as part of "a market study." 3tk believes "variation is so wide" that tracking this would be difficult. quizzical helpfully wrote "you might want to research design firms that have adopted, and been certified as satisfying, a formal...QMS...such as ISO 9001. Such firms are rare in our profession, but they do exist. For a QMS to actually be meaningful, drawing changes must be documented, along with the reason for the change...in an effort to verity that overall production quality is improving over time." More personally, LITS4FormZ shared "Change management fail or client management fail...unfortunately working on a project currently on its 17th addendum...The key is, get paid to put it in and get paid to take it out."