News
This summer the designers of the Union Street Urban Orchard will return to 100 Union Street, Southwark to transform a derelict site into the Urban Physic Garden, a pop-up community built garden celebrating medicinal plants which will host an on-site cafe and summer festival of events.

Archinect is now selling Free Ai Weiwei t-shirts. Click here to buy

Orhan re-evisited USC School of Architecture's end of the year, public spectacle called BLUE TAPE. The two day marathon review sessions bring together nearly half of the architecture faculty from all five schools of the region and from other states.
at the request of Stefano De Martino, RIBA, Director M.Arch Program.

Ralph Lerner, architect and former dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, died in Princeton on Saturday, May 7, following a long battle with brain cancer. This led JeffryBurchard to relate a memory he had from when Ralph was dean of the Hong Kong University "and our P. Scott Cohen led GSD studio collaborated with an HKU studio.. thus of course Lerner was compelled to engage, essentially meaning he took the opportunity with great pleasure to level his critiques at Scott and the GSD via the students. I did not at all take this to be negative, the brusque bluntness of the very directed criticism was not only refreshing but always on point."

Steve Sauer's 182-square-foot Seattle condo showed off the value of a good fit.

"Elevate your game," says master architect Canadian Bruce Kuwabara. 

The Museum of Modern Art announced it is buying the building of the struggling American Folk Art Museum on West 53rd Street, officials said Tuesday. Apurimac says
"Just... wow. AFAM has always been my favorite TWBTA building, and it is seriously one of the best museums I've been in. The art matched the architecture so well. All I can say is I hope MOMA keeps the folk art angle and leaves the building as-is. If they tear it down, I don't give a damn how good the art in MoMA is, I'll never step foot in it again."

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Museum of Art will take over the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Marcel Breuer building in 2015, when the Whitney opens its new museum in Manhattan’s meatpacking district.

All of these big changes and consolidation don't faze n_ at all it seems. She posted "Maybe I'm being an optimist, but I find it hard to swallow that MoMA would even consider tearing down the building. If they appreciate all art forms, they would have to recognize the beauty within the existing TWBTA structure." Alexandra Lange predicts "There's no way the MoMA will keep this building. It will be a backwater, unless they install something like "Starry Night" at the top of the tricky stairs. It doesn't suit the collection, their gallery style, or their pursuit of spaces for contmporary art (so parallel to the Whitney's). " 

Anish Kapoor dedicated his largest ever artwork – a truly enormous cathedral-like space made from inflated PVC – to the missing Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Schools/School Blogs
Matthew at University of Illinois Chicago discussed his review with guest critics Andrew Zago, Rob Livesey, Jose Oubrerie, and Ben Nicholson. He also alerts us to some of the terms used to describe the work including:

"Paper Trumpets
Office Ghettos
Rat Maze
Radioactive Ducks
Spaghetti"

Shannon at University of Manitoba interrupted her normal week-by-week narrative of house de-construction to announce that "The firm I work for in Winnipeg, 5468796 Architecture Inc, along with Jae-Sung Chon, a professor at the University of Manitoba, have been selected to curate Canada's submission for the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture." So congrats to 5468796 and don't forget to check out our feature UpStarts: 5468796 Architecture by William Galloway.

Member work updates

 Alex Whitehead got ready for USC's BLUE TAPE hopefully he finished and has now graduated from USC as a BArch 2011!
 

Discussion Threads

Archinector holz.box starts a thread to discuss the news  that the American Folk Art Museum will close it's MoMA adjacent building. In terms of designed obsolescence and failure of design. toasteroven argues "specificity - this is the old failure of architects wanting to design for programmatic utopia  - some very narrow vision of how their space would be used in the future - always the same way for ever and ever... (which rarely happens) instead of designing for heterotopia" In response to holz.box, won and done williams urges us all to stop and "before we turn this into some navel gazing exercise on the responsibilities of the architect or speculate on all the highly imaginative (and highly improbable) uses for this building, let's look at this situation with a dose of reality."

TK421 wants to talk about the Splash House on Kickstarterhttp://archinect.com/forum/thread/5854483/splash-house-on-kickstarter which leads b3tadine[sutures] to ask "Answer this for me; is this a novel approach, or just an slick way of marketing over the top of traditional fund raising? " Chamfer notes that this is a "Great project! It's a shame that architecture that will actually benefit an underserved community is having trouble getting funding while the cost of the Nanz hardware for the loft renovation I'm working on could fund the whole thing. Unfortunately, architecture is only for the wealthy"

k80k is looking for suggestions of awesome buildings to see across the US (and Canada!) that are public... I would second Paul Petrunia's suggestion to check out Marlin Watson's Archinect Travels series.

Gregory Walker wants to know: aia convention? anyone? Did you go? Want to report back?

Donna Sink quips "When I see stuff like this and the Sears Tower glass box thingeys all I can think is maybe we need an alien invasion so people won't feel the need for manufactured "survival" thrills." To which trace responds with this image.

Also I just noticed this quote on the Best Archinect quotes. It was shared by Orhan Ayyüce: "we visited SCI-Arc...my wife said "I was truly impressed! It's like a fancy club for the chose few. I'm proud of you babe! " - from a student after being accepted to a school.from this thread.

Sounds like the general consensus is that this would be illegal or at least not ethical???

Additionally
Places published two features this week marking the anniversary of V-E day.
The first "Architecture in Uniform" adapted from a book and exhibition of the Canadian Centre for Architecture includes an essay on WWII camouflage design by Jean-Louis Cohen with an introduction by Mirko Zardini, and slideshow of images from the exhibition.  Previously on Archinect. Finally, Nick Sowers, author of the classic UC Berkeley Archinect School Blog, has a piece showcasing Soundscapes: (of the) Atlantikwall which discusses bunker archaeology and acoustic ecology.