x architekten’s OASIS, Pastoral Care Voestalpine project, a polygonal, built landscape is featured in the latest ShowCase.

With her latest edition of CONTOURS titled Urbanism, Housing, and the Economy, Sherin Wing examined the significance of the fact that housing and mixed-use projects in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America are rapidly increasing. She then went on to question "what are some strategies that firms or individuals working in these nations are taking now? And what are some of the pervasive difficulties and issues stemming from the inherent economic and social factors?"

Patrick Decaix of Twoto; art director, designer and flash developer for large-scale online campaigns and web specials, is profiled in Archinect’s latest Working out of the Box.

News
Jonathan Glancey wrote his last article as the Guardian’s architecture and design correspondent, after 15 years on the job. Donna Sink commented "But what really matters today is the creation of good homes for millions of people, and the nurturing of towns and cities that are lovable yet distinct from one another. ..It's time to aim for a world of intelligent, crafted architecture – one that projects a sense of true worth – and to leave the era of limitless aspiration behind. Is a world made of beautiful, healthy cities populated by happy, healthy people on a non-expolited landscape not a bold and challenging aspiration?  I think it's a challenge we should embrace, and damn the skyscrapers.  Kennedy said it best: We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard.  Building the next-momentarily-tallest-and-shiniest tower is easy.”

Reacting to the Beach & Howe Tower proposal in Vancouver by Bjarke Ingels Group holz.box argued "still beats 90% of what's out there. i'd love to see this built."

Orhan Ayyüce wondered if China's Real Estate Bubble may have just popped? but Evan Chakroff gave his read from on the ground in Shanghai writing "the general sense on the ground here is that the *housing* bubble is undergoing a gov-assisted deflation... other markets are still going strong. growth might slow down to 7 or 8% this year... still a crazy number."

Will Galloway posted a wonderful image of Frank Gehry, at the 1985 Venice Biennale where he staged a performance piece in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, entitled "Il Corso del Coltello", as part of the discussion in response to Blair Kamin’s piece on the battle pitting Richard Driehaus and Leon Krier against Gehry's Eisenhower Memorial design. Therein, Steven Ward and Gregory Walker argued over the necessity and size of the screening elements in Gehry’s proposed design and just for grin and giggles davidd agreed with what Aaron Betsky wrote in his Feb 13 piece for Architect Magazine "Like many recent structures of the sort, it moves away from only putting a statue on top of a pedestal and towards shaping a space to make us remember certain qualities. It started, at least in this country, with Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and continued with Lawrence Halprin’s more elaborate FDR Memorial. The 9-11 park is a recent example of the trend."

Schools/School Blogs

Brian Driska and Bronwyn Charlton two MArch students from Washington University St Louis who are traveling for a semester abroad to Helsinki, the arctic circle, and Baltic region started blogging. On a whirlwind tour of Stockholm they found a stunning church on their way to Gamla Stan, the medieval part of town. Once in Helsinki they visited Suomenlinna, until 1918 Viapori (Finnish), or Sveaborg (Swedish), an inhabited sea fortress built on six islands.

Megan Basnak canvassed the campus at SUNY Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning with Architect Barbie.

MADianito gets back in the train of the Archinect Blogs. His first post goes "hope you would like reading how has it been after school, the rise and fall of the architecture professional... also lets see if this helps to get me back in love w/architecture again or if its a lost cause...”

Michael Bergin at University of California Berkeley provided a review/synopsis of the recent inaugural Studio One Symposium he wrote "Ultimately the symposium brought about a well balanced survey of where we are in architectural discourse today. There is a good deal of material experimentation and tinkering with parametrics with the whisper of environmental salvation, and a whimsical, cybernetic industrial aesthetic that is embodied in projects that are unabashedly amateur spanning disciplines from neuroscience to bioengineering and artificial intelligence."

Chris DeHenzel at UC Berkeley Department of Architecture analyzed the organizational structure of the Oaxacan food distribution system and visits the mothership of the system a wholesale market, known as Central De Abastos.

Work Updates/Firm Updates/Blogs

Naha City Gallery & Apartment House by 1100 Architects includes a gallery, retail space, partially submerged parking lot, and three rental apartments that each occupies an entire floor.

Aperactive is an operable aperture that interactively reacts based on user proximity. It was designed by Hunter Ruthrauff  as a research and design project for the Master of Science in design computing open house 2012 and Matej Gasperic recently worked on

House H - 1:100 scale study model.

One of the inhabitants of the New Norris house asked whether it is better to  "live in a highly efficient home and commute to work, or eliminate a commute and live close to work and other amenities in a house or apartment that’s not as energy efficient?" Will Galloway responded "the books say density is the answer, but my experience says it is mixed bag...i get the feeling there is no easy answer to this problem."

Discussion Threads

Keith Carlson watched an interview with Michael Bell regarding his team’s contribution to MoMA’s exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream. Keith was intrigued by Michael Bell’s goal of putting architects back in the driver's seat of the building process by re-casting the financing business model and working with members of that community to create a new paradigm. Louis Arleo however wasn’t as impressed arguing that "The problem with any utopian model is that it usually works in theory, but is completely unrealisable due to the given societal constraints with regard to culture and economy.  I have been arguing on threads here that we need to become developers and offer realistic alternatives to crap suburbia.  Once again, architects are thinking of top down solutions to what can only be achieved with bottom up models." However, Kevin W. countered "Builders, developers and real estate people have been telling people how to live for years....it's obvious now, more than ever, thats how things are done....people don't know what they want...Architects stopped telling people what they want in the 1960's....see what we have now?"

kenny108 started a conversation about how to create cities that are sustainable Sam Watkins wanted kenny108 to refine the question a bit more and queried "Do you mean cities that are incrementally more sustainable than our current cities? Cities that are significantly more sustainable? Or, cities that are indefinitely sustainable?" MixmasterFestus also wanted to define sustainable first "Again, this seems to result from different definitions of 'sustainability' - here, resources (e.g., how 'Soylent Green' is sustainable) vs. 'healthful environments' (e.g., how suburbs are sustainable)"

Larchinect queried Archinectors' opinion on whether it is appropriate to ask a junior level designer to lecture at our university? Donna Sink thought yes "A recent grad, young architect type is an excellent idea for a lecturer." while Phillip Crosby offered up the fact that "way back during my undergrad studies my school had a lecture event called something like '5 after 5,' which featured five recent graduates who had been out in the profession for approximately 5 years...it was really interesting and informative and really opened my young eyes to a range of opportunities that the profession has to offer"

Finally, oompa is looking to compile a list of international firms with offices in asia and the way I read the general consensus from the How many architecture students are there in the world? thread, there are too many architecture students and not enough architectural jobs.

Additionally
Over at Library Bazaar, Fiacre O’Duinn a librarian who is interested in issues of digital justice, maker culture and emerging technologies, argues that the recent partnership between Make Magazine and DARPA, to create makerspaces in 1000 high schools as part of the MENTOR program, is the beginning of a division in the hacker and maker communities across North America. In the post Make, DARPA and the line in the sand, #1 he lists his three chief concerns regarding the Make/DARPA partnership and in a second post Make, DARPA and the line in the sand, #2 O’Duinn examines three possible issues with the Make/DARPA partnership, specifically around openness, military recruitment, and the need for dialogue.