News
Günther Domenig passed away on June 15, 2012. Wolf D Prix, design principal at Coop Himmelb(l)au, released the following statement "I insist that Günther Domenig was one of the most important Austrian architects. Important in terms of being weighty. In my opinion the former Z-Bank branch in the Favoritenstraße in Vienna was one of his best buildings. Long before the convoluted computer architects started using parametric tools to give their lame design a boost, Domenig had not only designed the first threedimensional facade, but actually built it, too." 

Meanwhile our own tammuz felt "his steinhous is an beautiful and seminal poem of  architecture" and Dimitri Kim wrote "Finally, an english speaking journal covered the late great Gunther's death. He's work was radical beyond he's time, beyond he's predecessors (Coop Himmelblau, Zaha hadid, EOM, and etc), and clearly beyond mainstream fabric of contemporary architecture."

The NYT Commercial section published a 30-Minute interview with Robert A.M. Stern
by Vivian Marino. They discussed the connection between the label "starchitect"  and his name ("Stern" means "star" in German), the business of his practice and whether or not his designs are too traditional or conservative. In response Orhan Ayyüce posted a photo of Stern from Paul Goldberger’s review of Stern’s 15 Central Park West for Vanity Fair and FRaC argued "pomo ain't conservative".

Global architecture firms, LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) and Designsport, collaborated with local Ethiopian firm JDAW to win the international architecture competition for a 60,000 seat national stadium and sports village in Ethiopia's capitol, Addis Ababa. aphorismal quipped "Well if there's anything a hopelessly poor third world nation like Ethiopia needs, its a 60,000 seat football stadium."

Confirming the significant drop reported last month by American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) for their monthly Architecture Billings Index (ABI), Rusty Shackleford agreed "that layoffs are trending pretty high these days."

An last but not least, the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale which will be devoted to the theme Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, Announced participating projects. The exhibit will feature 124 urban interventions initiated by architects, designers, planners, artists, and everyday citizens that bring positive change to their neighborhoods and cities. Donna Sink pointed out "Hey, anyone notice this name down on the list? Quilian Riano/#whOWNSpace Yay!  Congrats, Q! My friend Start of M12 is also included."

Work/Firms/Blogs
Larry Speck aka lawrencewspeck, a principal in the architectural firm of PageSoutherlandPage and a professor, as well as the former dean, in the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin started a blog. In his first post titled Monument Valley in Dallas? reflected on the newly completed Dallas Arts District, which features buildings by five Pritzker-Prize-winning architects. Mr Speck, opined "All of these buildings are monuments of late 20th century/early 21st century architecture. Collectively, these buildings make a terrible urban environment." rwhtx concurred "Hear, hear. Tremendous talent, tremendous expenditure, and what does the City get ... Let the sun go down and turn on the lights and you have what some might consider gems. Come morning, the reality is just depressing."

Chad Wulleman recently "Added another project to my profile, a more technical set this time" and Orhan Ayyüce recently worked on "Pee relief for dogs wall system construction second floor urban housing balcony specific".

Schools/School Blogs
The University of Minnesota College of Design posted an infographic that PublicInterestDesign.org partnered with ArchDaily, the University of Minnesota College of Design, and Tandus Flooring to create. The basis is a chronology of the public interest design field byJohn Cary (BA Arch '99). It was designed by Megan Jett at ArchDaily.

Jennifer Wong with the Washington University in St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts departed Helsinki for a whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe which began with a 3 hour ferry ride across the Baltic Sea. The trip started with a stop in Tallinn, Estonia.

Ayax Abreu at the Städelschule Architecture Class in Frankfurt blogged about a recent lecture by Sir Peter Cook. Alex believes "Archigram would have been enough legacy for Peter to have a Steve Wozniak moment and leave the discipline, yet some geniuses don't rest and remain active looking for intellectual continuation."

farid rakun, absent for a bit, put up a couple of posts to catch us up with what he has been up to. This has included working as local fixer for a UofM TCAUP Dept. of Arch., Division of Landscape Arch. HKU, Arch. Dept. UI, and ruangrupa, summer studio in Jakarta & Bangkok with INUNDATION as big theme and launching/joining RSTYWTR (pronounced “rusty water”), "a collective of 3 architects, 2 artists, and 1 designer, who met at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the Detroit metro area of Michigan. who are getting ready to participate in the 72 Hour Urban Action competition in Stuttgart, Germany (July 11th-14th, 2012)".

Discussion

Over at Thread Central b3tadine[sutures] recently went to an ncarb event and he noticed "a change-up! seems like the impossible can happen. 110% more responsive to the issues plaguing future professionals, and current ones too...mea culpas all around" More substantively b3tadine[sutures] was told "NCARB is also looking to make the licensure process a bit more uniform across the country...trying to put the hammer down on architects/firms that do not provide interns with the necessary experience required to complete IDP."

jla-x wondered "How about getting rid of idp all together"? Yet, Steven Ward argued "if they're allowing the ARE to be taken earlier, there still has to be some structure for requiring internship experience. whether that's IDP or not, i don't know...Sorry, i sound old and cranky. but, well, maybe i am. i've seen a lot of green, wide-eyed graduates and they need some hours logged one way or another." 

For his part toasteroven "didn't like IDP because my time working under a GC who was also a licensed architect didn't count, but my time fetching coffee and picking up dry-cleaning for a starchitect did count"...

piero1910 admitted he is probably wrong and thus wants to hear from us which firms we think have the most futuristic buildings? metal provided the opinion "the most futuristic firms have no buildings, they don't even have formal firms. All they have is a growing body of research" and miesian offered up "Antonio Sant'Elia”.

industrial-landsapedesign is looking for suggestions on industry standard photo-realistic modeling software and asked "please, no sketchup recomendations". gwharton opined  "In my firm, which has more than 1,000 employees, we don't specify which modeling program designers use. It's just a tool, and you should use the tool you're most comfortable with and that gets you the best results." 

However, i r giv up differed "the modeling software does matter, and it matters because of the way plug-ins handle geometry. if you're actually modeling a curvilinear surface, which given today's fabrication methods, you're bound to do sooner or later, certain plug-ins create odd artifacts out of those. rhino-maxwell is guilty of this. 3ds and maya outputing to mental ray/maxwell/vray don't seem to have those issues." Meanwhile ecnal put in "Another vote for rhino + external render program here. I particularly like the combination of rhino and cinema 4d/vray".

Finally, masses wanted some website/portfolio feedback on layout, ease of use, loading times, and how the formatting looks in your browser, etc? Dani Zoe thought "looks nice, i agree with peter's remarks and wanted to add that the text in the portfolio section should not be fully justified, it makes the word spacing too awkward" and Erin Williams suggested improving the load time, changing the justified type adding "you've got a LOT of images per project, and people grow tired of the never-ending scroll. People will absolutely back out before reaching the last images of your project. I would highly encourage you to edit down a little further."

Additionally
Ana María León presented urbanisms: a guide