The latest Archinect ShowCase featured Cassia Co-op Training Centre by TYIN tegnestue Architects. The project is located in Sungai Penuh, Sumatra, Indonesia.

News
The New York Observer reported on Cornell’s plans (unveiled this week) for a brand new 12.5-acre tech campus on Roosevelt Island this week. The master plan is by SOM and Field Operations, the first academic building is by Thom Mayne. snail commented "So they would have us believe that a great center of future technological innovation will look like a standard tower-in-the-park development with a few curves thrown in, and an atrium borrowed from John Portman?"

For his part toasteroven thought “cornell is trying to recreate MIT's medialab in NYC - on an island - by making a fancy new campus - BEFORE they've even established the program?...The city is making such a huge deal about this - but it seems like it's primarily being used as a marketing ploy to sell NYC as a new tech hub or something...it seems like there's a bit of putting the cart before the horse.  why not build up the program for a few years working out some of the kinks before deciding what facilities you really need?” but metal countered “Columbia and NYU have been building from within and it's not enough...he faculty are pretty good, and with Google on board, this is not going to be a place for code-monkeying, despite whatever earth shattering innovation is missing from the design”

SOM also has proposed a hovering pedestrian donut in response to NYC asking them to imagine “the next 100 years” of Grand Central Station and the surrounding Midtown cityscape. SDR couldn’t help but ask "So, would it have killed our latter-day interventionists to have respected and reflected that symmetry (ed. note: referring to the timeless Beaux Arts symmetry  of Grand Central), with a couple of matching towers to support their donut-in-the-sky ?  Or would that be too prosaic -- or not sufficiently reflective of the realities of bifurcated ownership, or solar orientation, or..."

Jeanne Gang and Michael Kimmelman proposed a wonderful piece of design fiction, a third way (not demolition but not pure historic preservation) to save Chicago’s Prentice Women’s Hospital. 18x32 loved it "As a quick design provocation, I think this is great. Goldberg's concrete monolith is robust and object-y enough not to get lost in the renovation and probably actually benefits from the juxtaposition.  And in the meantime, they can clean up the plinth and street level". lletdownl also liked the proposal "the concept itself is REALLY interesting to me.  Its like sedimentary rock.  Additions on additions on additions, some day in the future the prentice could read like a history lesson in architectural technology and taste.  I think its a really interesting idea, and a fantastic precedent to set..."

Christopher Hawthore reported that a team of designers led by HNTB and local firms Michael Maltzan Architecture and AC Martin Partners won the design competition for a new, $401-million 6th Street bridge over the Los Angeles River. In Orhan Ayyüce's opinions it seemed a "eco/nomically very risky project. without the public, it can turn into a desolate white legacy elephant and  ‘we had to do something’ disaster. on the other hand, if it becomes a popular recreational destination, it becomes a successful gentrifier. it is always the public works which paves the way for urban transformation. time will tell”.

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Nicholas Winter recently worked on ...Study Model 1 and Amit Khanna recently worked on ...Wrapping up a multi-apartment residence.

Diana Benavides Jenkins recently, successfully finished and defended her thesis for a masters, so she now officially has a Masters in Environment and Bioclimatic Architecture.

AzCA Experimental Playground, Casa la Punta, Stöðin and HSU House Mass Wall were some of the top projects featured on Archinect's "Concrete" Pinterest Board.

amlocke wrote movingly of Doshi's Ahmedabad, pitted Gandhinagar vs Chandigarh and followed his earlier visit to the Ajanta caves with a visit to Ellora's earlier Buddhist caves.

Gregory Walker continued his examination of the architecture of constructing a practice with a post analyzing the future of profit per partner... He ended the post with a request" what i'd really like the aia to do is expand their annual salary surveys to do an in depth analysis across multiple firms, analyzing the data from each to help answer some of these issues and questions. how much are shareholders of different sized firms really seeing as the PPP? what are typical overhead ratios? and the thornier question: how are we really defining our 'value' to our clients?"... sykesarch  added "I am actually curious how the profits per partner dynamic shifts in the coming years due to two factors; 1) more architects are working at large firms and 2) more of these firms are being structured (or re-structured) as ESOP's (employee stock ownership plan)".

Schools/Blogs
Earlier this week Jimenez Lai of Bureau Spectacular led a drawing workshop for 15 students from the School of Architecture at University of Kentucky. Each student participant contributed to a tiled drawing featuring scenes of augmented domesticity. Thereby, gaining insight into novel ways to rethink conventional forms of representation - in this case, freehand figural drawing.

David Cuthbert a teacher at the Carribean School of Architecture shared a few fuzzy photos of some work by third year design students. Currently they are all working sunset to sunrise huddled around a large context model. He also wanted to shout out to the new Head of School - Dr. Rohan "Kermit" Bailey.

Lian Chikako Chang at GSD Live-Bloged Toyo Ito’s lecture, "What Was Metabolism? Reflections on the Life of Kiyonori Kikutake".

Discussions
jla-x wanted suggestions on how to publish an unbuilt project that “is pretty dope and original”? Will Galloway recommended "put it on archinect as a project is easiest” and jholguin71 offered that "AV proyectos is another magazine that publishes unbuilt projects, competitions".

piero1910 asked Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, who of those two architects you like more and why? won and done williams argued "While Corbusier's thinking paved the way for Mies, the world we see is Miesian. Why? Economics. He taught architects and builders how to build in an economical modern language" and eric chavkin commented "Mies is inspiring. Miesian detailing is so very rational at the time it was for  me an inspiration, even a revelation. It then became obvious to me who inspired the SoCAL case study program when I came back to Los Angeles”. Interestingly, miesian contended "You can find Mies in industrialized western countries that could afford steel and glass. You can find Corbu in countries that couldn’t".

Finally earlier this month thakopian started a thread to ask if anyone uses Microstation by Bentley Systems explaining "I ask because there might be a position available for a user but I don't know if I can pass as at least having familiarity with it"?

Maria M chimed in "Microstation is used in most practices in London, its much simpler then AutoCAD...We use in in our office, but we are not using Bentley BIM software”, washingtonian pointed out "Morphosis uses almost exclusively Microstation, for what its worth" and 12x12surface argued "It has one VERY BIG ADVANTAGE. It's great for massive megastructures and ultra large projects. The file doesn't take forever to load/save. Also, the features available to overlay CAD drawings from another file is great - you don't have to copy and paste".

There was also bit of a misunderstanding regarding whether it was requested when doing government contracts in the USA. ii r giv up first stated it was "if you ever end up doing any facilities work (equipment replacement, room rehabs, etc), government clients often request microstation files" but gwharton disagreed “On government work, GSA and state entities typically used to require DWG deliverables, not DGN (this is a major reason why AutoDesk was able to dominate the CAD space)”. ii r giv up clarified "gw: you're right: for architectural deliverables,  that has been the case. ...but every time we've gone into a facilities contract where we are running only coordination and not actually producing much in the way of drawings (because MEPs/Struct/Civ/Elec are producing the bulk of the deliverable), DGNs have been the requirement" Then Isaac Gaetz posted "Microstation is used extensively on civil engineering projects in the US, including roads, airport runways, etc. It is popular in the power industry for 3D modelling of power plants as well".