This week the Liyuan Library in Jiaojiehe Village near Beijing by Li Xiaodong/Atelier as well as two projects from the first edition of the Istanbul Design Biennial (October 13th - December 12th) were featured  Archinect’s Showcase series.  Namely; the interactive kinetic installation Cerebral Hut by Guvenc Ozel, and Augmented Structures v2.0, a media installation based on Istanbul's urban texture by Alper Derinbogaz and Refik Anadol.

Commenting on Augmented Structures v2.0  FRaC wrote "i don't know what it is, but i like it" while Derek Kaplan felt the Liyuan Library in Jiaojiehe Village was "Beautiful" and continued "The rough twig facade is a little close to something like camouflage, but... so well executed, and to such effect...assuming there are no sprinklers because they were not required by code for public occupancy there"?

News
Over at the NYT Opinionator blog Allison Arieff examined the pros and cons of micro-units in How Small is Too Small? brooklynmade argued "Depends on where it's being sold. Demand is there. Seems for every person who doesn't like the idea, there's at least one other person who does. 50/50 is pretty good odds", but toasteroven wondered "Who are these micro units for?" and linked to a NYT investigation by Winnie Hu titled Some See Little Room for Large, Poor Families in Mayor’s Housing Plan.

Bustler.net finally published the first place winner in the Korean Daegu Gosan Public Library competition. As sole member of the team Gorka Blas, Spanish architect Gorka Blas Revilla took home the top honor with an ultra-minimalist cube and its careful integration in the urban context. aphorismal opined "After seeing all the awesome projects in the honorable mentions, I was super excited for the winner and then...this?" Click here to see some of the other designs.

MovingCities provided an update on to the question Whatever happened toOrdos100? What Metropolitan Monk found particularly noteworthy was "the discovery of the change in ownership of ordos100-site. ...the transfer further included the entire collection of plans, designs, documents and licenses (and several employees) and all this with none or few of the architects ever knowing about it".

Greg Lindsay profiled the "renegade architect" Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects in the Wall Street Journal Magazine. HandsumCa$hMoneyYo complained "The hell?  How come newspapers & magazine keep plying the narrative that ‘this guys isn't a star’ or ‘she's an anti-celebrity’ all the while they are publishing an article specifically featuring that person? We may be stupid but we can see through this shit". For her part Donna Sink disagreed with the complaints of some commenters "Mediocre as compared to what, jla-x? I love her work and it's the basis in materials that I enjoy - very sensual, very intimate".

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Lian Chikako Chang recently finally met fellow gsd archinect blogger John Tubles and Anthony (TJ) DiFeo, Jr. recently worked on Restoration Hardware Boston.

Joshua Nimmo is Principal at NIMMO American Studio For Progressive Architecture. The firm won the 2011 AIA Dallas Merit for their project Emerging Dallas an example of the Multi Unit Single-Family typology.

Meanwhile, Paul Petrunia announced he has been Working with our development team on some highly requested updates to the Archinect iPhone app.

Schools/Blogs
This fall fall the design/buildLAB studio at Virginia Tech are coming up with schematic designs for the Shenandoah Autism Center in Clifton Forge. So about a month ago students visited the Shenandoah Autism Center to interview staff and students about their specialized needs.

Valerie Friedmann is the new 2012-2013 resident of the New Norris House. She was a part of the New Norris House team since the spring of 2010 as a student of the University of Tennessee Graduate Landscape Architecture Program, and is now teaching design studio in the UTK MLA program.

Last week she gave a presentation to the TN Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Conference in Nashville, TN. The presentation was geared toward landscape architects, and focused on the landscape design and water harvesting and treatment systems of the New Norris House.

Jennifer Wong at Washington University in St. Louis continued catching us up on her summer visit to Barcelona. The newest post covers stops in El Raval and the Eixample including; two houses designed by Antoni Gaudí, La Sagrada Familia, Plaça de les Glòries, Torre Agbar and the Media TIC.

Discussions
Stars + Stripes needed to know whether an architect is liable for the construction of a building if the owner is having a developer have full control over the construction? Steven Ward responded "whether you're held responsible AFTER litigation is an open question but, yes, you can always be pulled into litigation...we experienced this recently...sometimes participating in a settlement (i.e., paying up) is cheaper”. wurdan freo asked for more information "In other words, do you already have a contract?...Hard to understand what your role in the project is and at what stage it is without more details"? Plus, geezertect added "Steven Ward is right.  There is no amount of legal lingo that will guarantee you safety from a law suit".

Later Stars + Stripes provided an update "i've decided not to pursue these projects.  the client and developer wanted to work without a contract.  i laughed and told them to find someone who was willing to take on that liability".

cmrhm was looking for help translating the English name for a type of drawing, believing it to be either a site plan or something like hypsography? curtkram differed from the first two respondents by arguing "i'm going to go with master plan.  there are multiple projects and it doesn't have the sort of utility or grading and whatnot detail that a site plan would have". As usual, Rusty Shackleford provided a zinger "Be more content specific! I'd personally go with ‘nouveau-burb shitfest birds-eye’." and JsBach concluded "I have always thought of a master plan as a site plan based on all the phases of a bigger construction project, that will be developed at different times".

Thecyclist has a mullion material question. Inspired by the mullions designed by H&dM on 40 Bond Street in NYC, Thecyclist  would like to design a mullion with the same basic shape but made out of "cast-iron with a heavier feel". J. James R. noted that  the mullions on 40 Bond Street are "Porcelain-coated cast iron. Good luck finding a time machine to go back to the 19th-century though. The only supplier I can think of off the top of my head is Neolith. And Neolith, I believe, is iron-coated porcelain", although a-f commented "Probably the weight/strength factor of massive cast iron makes it completely unfeasible for window mullions, but I really like the idea”.

Finally, skailian90 started a thread to bring attention to the disregard for preservation. Specifically, in the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel of Philadelphia, now called the "Park Hyatt at the Bellevue".