For the latest Working out of the Box feature Archinect interviewed Prutha Raithatha. Raithatha is actually a full-time  architect but also an experimental fashion blogger, stylist and writer. She writes a personal blog called Don’t Shoe Me that captures New York City’s rebellious street fashion and my personal experiments with styling in a storyline or an artistic concept all captured in cool photography.

News
Philip Kennicott interviewed Frank Gehry and analyzed the current proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial and what has gone wrong to date with the process. Donna Sink, felt it "was an excellent article.  The slideshow is the first time I've really understood the urban context of this memorial, and OMG I love it completely now!  it makes a wonderful outdoor room, and the narrative opportunities of the tapestries are great. Bringing a kid to this memorial will be fun, as they'll be able to have a level of understanding one doesn't get with a Classical building or a simple figurative statue..."

Last week Rem Koolhaas and the entire OMA team officially completed  their iconic CCTV building in Beijing, OMA's largest project so far. rolon.leandro noted approvingly "$155 per sq/ft...Bravo OMA! the Walt Disney Concert Hall that opened in Los Angeles in 2003 cost about $935 per sq/ft the Rem Koolhaas (REX) - library in Seattle that opened in 2004 cost about $273 per sq/ft".

The Whitney Museum recently inaugurated a brand new exhibition and studio space designed by shipping container architects-extraordinaire LOT-EK. The press described it as "An ultra-modern and eco-friendly addition" but edit settings wrote "Shipping container specialists drop a deuce at Whitney's doorstep. Lo-Tek's views on ecology are as misconstrued as Whitneys selection of them."

After five months of positive readings, the Architecture Billings Index slipped back into negative territory during April, an indication that demand for design services declined. Rusty Shackleford exclaimed "Well fuck. This is actually a very optimistic way of representing the data. It's a velocity chart of sorts. Were you to graph this in speed/time manner, it would look like more like this (ed. see alternate graph)" jla-x chimed in "red represents my hopes and dreams over the last few years, and blue is my disgust with this friggin profession."

Last week saw the Argentine artist and architect Tomas Saraceno officially debuting his new project "Cloud City" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  A sculptural constellation of 16 geodesic pods, Cloud City "floats" above the museum's roof anchored by steel cables... Fred Scharmen thinks"This project is incredible".

Work/Firms/Blogs
Stratus v1.0 prototype is comprised of a thickly arrayed suspended textile consisting of a three-dimensional networked structure that organizes and supports operational components, designed by rvtr, an award-winning design research practice based in the Great Lakes Megaregion of North America.

Designed by jones | haydu the Offices of Buck O'Neill Builders, Inc in San Francisco, CA is a soon to be LEED certified office space for a young contractor and his growing company.

Built in Mexico, Mexico Dumas + Horacio designed by firm Central de Arquitectura consists of thirteen apartments and the building´s expression is based on one material in the façade, glass block.

In his post titled Here's to looking at you...neighbor Tyler Kvochick reflected on the new tower proposed for the Yongsang Business District of Seoul, South Korea by the firm REX. He began "If the conditions that address contemporary architectural practice are asking ‘How do we live in the largest and most complex cities that have ever existed?’, architecture’s apparent answer is ‘We stare at each other from a thousand yards distant in our well-lit living rooms’."

Schools/School Blogs
AAbelS at Columbia University announced that he will be going on the China Lab Workshop with Jeffrey Johnson to research megablocks in Beijing and uncurated museums throughout China and  will definitely be blogging in China!

Plus, the students in Virginia Tech’s design/buildLAB shared that the interior of their Masonic Amphitheatre will be clad with four different natural metals; a montage of aluminum, stainless steel, titanium and zinc panels of Alpolic.

Discussion Threads

gv2229 needed help identifying an image. Justin Ather Maud correctly provided the knowledge "Étienne-Louis Boullée.  Newton's Cenotaph. (proposed, never built)." and b3tadine[sutures] sighed "the real question though is this; how does this individual know where to find the image, and then post said image, but doesn't know the architect? steven is on point though; youth is wasted on the wrong people."

In a recently published Inhabitat interview the always provocative Joe Lstiburek opined that in terms of building science architects are "leaving money on the table" because of their use of consultants. baosol therefore asked Are architects losing money because they cannot design good wall systems?

a mouse responded "I think this oversimplifies the issue by conflating specialization of disciplines with good architectural practice. I don’t know if you were being trite, but I don’t have a consultant t keep the rain out, or the air in...That’s our job...In the end we’re the lead consultant. Its our job to get the best design/built outcome for the client, which in my mind includes acting as an editor for the other consultants." However, CMNDCTRL disagreed "i just don't think buildings are all that much more complex than they were 50 years ago. sure, some are BIG enough that more people need to be on the team. but i think we have just forgotten how to put on the various hats we used to. or maybe we as a group are less WILLING to take on the responsibility".

Finally, Transparence wanted to discuss problems that architects will face in the future? HandsumCa$hMoneyYo quipped "Wait, WTF?  Did somebody actually propose a lack of space as a serious problem?  Wow hilarious, yo!" alec1313 reflected on something Tadao Ando said in his recent Archinect interview. "Years ago, there were specific styles that architects wanted to portray and define the era they worked in and tried to create a cohesive building style while straying just enough to make everything unique. You can clearly see the evolution between styles of architecture (as they teach us in school)....when you get to today's architecture, it's too business oriented." While, mebeyou concluded "The problems architects already face both academically and professionally are deeply structural in origin. I've heard photographers refer to their discipline as 'the most expensive hobby in the world.' Hearing this, I used to raise my brow and think to myself, 'oh yeah, I think I can top that one.'  Architecture sadly is such an outdated profession, and so low on the economic totem pole that it has been relegated to a gentleman & ladies game... This disconnect from reality has already taken its toll and will continue to erode the discipline."