With the latest edition of the Showcase series, Archinect highlighted House Yagiyama in Sendai, Japan by Kazuya Saito Architects. The one-story house for an old couple, located in Sendai's hilly Yagiyama district was photographed by Yasuhiro Takagi.

News
Zaha Hadid Architects was awarded a contract to design and construct a centerpiece, billion-dollar national stadium that forms a key part of Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games. Thayer-D reacted "These images are quite spectacular!  The exterior reminds me of some beautiful animal skull that Georgia O'Keefe would have painted.   I hope the street level view of this building is as sympathetic as these images" while Will Galloway noted it was "within walking distance of my office.  nice area.  olympics would be cool here too, but hopefully this stadium makes sense without them coming.  looking forward to seeing it go up".

David Ng reported, that this past Saturday the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (also designed by architect Zaha Hadid) had a formal dedication on Saturday and opened to the public on Sunday. Plus, in an interview with Huma Qureshi of the Guardian, Dame Zaha Hadid reflected on her career  "You cannot believe the enormous resistance I've faced just for being an Arab, and a woman on top of that. It is like a double-edged sword".

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) has selected a national advisory council of esteemed architectural scholars to oversee the selection of women architects for the foundation’s new special collection, "Making a Place for Women in 20th-Century American Architecture" The work is funded through an NEA awarded grant. snook-dude suggested that Judith Chafee, FAIA and Dominque Bonomour Lloyd needed to be selected, but Donna Sink assured him "With Abby Van Slyck on the Council, snook, I'm fairly confident Judith will be recognized.  I wonder whatever happened to her archive documents?"

Emily D’Alterio examined whether Architects are Failing to See the Potential of BIM? Steven Ward relayed "BIM softwares like Revit and the others, similar to AutoCad and 3dStudio before them, have a lot of capabilities that architects will never effectively leverage because it's not part of the project delivery stream...The few times our office has been able to dig deeper, it's been both fascinating and lucrative, allowing us to offer things we didn't before". This led curtkram to query "steven, you're a smart guy.  what benefits has your firm been able to gain from revit?...it seems to me not uncommon for a firm's management to be so screwed up or process so dysfunctional that they are unable to take advantage of the benefits of revit, but they implement it as a tool anyway and lose a fair amount of productivity due to the learning curve as well as some time sinks inherent to the software"...

All Kos Scarpa Kos could write in response to photographer, Timothy Allen, images of the Buzludzha monument ruins in Bulgaria was "Beauty-fuel  beautiful!".
 

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Marco Dessì recently worked on Bavant road courtyard façade and Stephan Graebner recently spent way too long on the 500 models...

Richard Meier & Partners announced they had completed a new residence in Yalikavak, Turkey. The house is part of a Master Plan composed of twenty-one houses designed by the Architect.

Orhan Ayyüce expressed his displeasure posting "Mr. Meier designs for the new wealth and becomes a part of land exploitation in Bodrum. Architects of his stature should have some say about it instead of joining the gang bang. ‘Best living environment in Yalikavak’ was already there for a long time until the speculators and their architects moved in. El insaf..." he also shared some images from Bodrum: halk yapı sanatından bir örnek, a book by Cengiz Bektas and Selmin Basak on the regional architecture.

Archinect was happy to release some updates to Archinect's Job Application System, as part of an ongoing effort to make the hiring process as efficient as possible for the thousands of firms that advertise job opportunities on Archinect. In summary new features include; "New ‘Star’ Rating" a new "Quick ‘View Application’ window" and "Notes".

In early June 2012 Blaxland Common Regional Playspace the latest project by JMDdesign, was officially opened. The new regional scale playground is one of a number of parks that make up Sydney Olympic Parklands.
 

Schools/Blogs
Christopher Sjoberg is six weeks into his studies at the University of Tokyo G30 program, led by former AA Design Research Lab Co-Director, Associate Professor Yusuke Obuchi.

He writes "our focus is predominately on expanding the field of research of cybernetic urbanism championed by the lab’s professor Yusuke Obuchi". However, he did have the opportunity to participate in the construction of a minimal material pavilion for the Tokyo Designers Week. Dubbed the Circle-Pack Pavilion, the structure consists of hundreds of bamboo rings fabricated to a series of different sizes ranging from 250-450 mm in diameter.

The University of Oregon’s architecture program was recently selected as the nation’s number one program for sustainable design education in the 2013 report of architecture schools, in the Design Intelligence 2013 issue of America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools.

DonnaT of the Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts department at the University of Western Australia started a blog titled Touching the Void.

Her first post titled Capital Isolation explains she belongs "in the first wave of those studying in the newly constructed BDes Design Major for Architecture and Integrated Design".

hsolie a graduate student at the University of Michigan Taubman School of Architecture describes a studio under the supervision and guidance of Taubman College's visiting professor, Matias del Campo of SPAN. 

Matias, along with Taubman College professor Adam Fure, are leading an exploration into what they call "Apophenic Ecologies" which alludes to the phenomenon of perceiving meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data, known as Apophenia.

Discussions
First, Lweiss is an Architecture student at Rice University doing a 1-year internship for Xaveer De Geyter Architecture in Brussels, BE. Currently looking for Housing in Brussels. Any tips???

denyallforks started a thread to discuss how schools adress digital tools in design, more specifically, for examples of schools that are embracing and teaching parametric modelling and digital tools vs schools that are prioritizing hand drafting. Or opinions on How should digital design tools be approached in foundational architecture studios?

acesskb responded "Students should have a voice and bring it up to their director/department head.  For a long while, I was in a school where most profs embraced traditional drawing and shunned digital design tools like it was plague.  We wasted time with tools like FormZ because they gave incentives and sponsored the school, while useful tools used throughout the industry like Autocad, Revit, Rhino, Max etc were brushed aside by the department heads who make the calls" For his part Brian Henry offered "We had one course focused on analog tools, one on 3d modellong in 3DS Max, one on acad (that mostly taught nothing) and that was it for required courses...Overall the idea is that the coursework gets you exposed to various programs and the rest is up to you".

yviemarie is 40 and just went back to local community college this past semester and wants to know Is there still a need for drafters? calculator answered affirmatively, "the position you're looking for/describing is architectural technologist, which isn't necessarily the same thing as a draftsperson.  You're job isn't to draft per se, its to do whatever needs doing in the office.  In some firms technologists can have fairly senior positions, although mostly the ceiling is lower" and lletdownl posted "There will always be a roll for drafts people, but FRaC is right... while AutoCad is an essential skill, Revit, or BIM (building information modeling) is the sorta waaaaave of the future, actually, its already here for some offices.”

Xenaxis chimed in though that, "the only drawback is that you can be pigeon holed as a 'BIM WIT' like I am and find it very hard to progress on the IDP/Architecture path - after 4 years". Which lead finally to his thread titled Pigeon holed as a BIM WIT one just looking for solutions...

toasteroven suggested "when applying for new jobs I'd market yourself differently.  BIM is really just to get your foot in the door (or a fall-back) - now you should be tailoring your resume and portfolio for more designer/junior architect jobs - or - if you aren't as strong of a designer, jobs where you do more CA and back-end project management stuff". Yet, i r giv up countered "1.start bitching about IDP to your current employer. Either get the hours, or get out. Screw whether they're legitimate or not. You've been working for 4 years".