Beth Mosenthal penned a thoughtful Op-Ed titled The Ego and the Architect. Therein, she briefly examined "the idea of ‘leadership’ in an architectural office".

News
Celebrating the fact that "the Museum of Modern Art blinked" Michael Kimmelman wrote an article Defending the Former American Folk Art Museum Building. Donna Sink commented "A lovely, calm argument and well- written article. Fingers crossed that MOMA's less egotisticsl and more community-focused board members will listen".

Archinect talked to Ivan Blanco, designer of the competition-winning entry in the LA Film Festival Director's Lounge Design Competition.  Ivan heads LA-based multi-disciplinary design studio Blnko Design Labs. Eric Chavkin enjoyed the interview but had a couple of  thoughts "The scheme is, well, kind of typical but does address the very important IMHO the after film-aspect of going to a screening. The 'windows frame' metaphor is just weak".

Following the release of CLOG: Brutalism—the NYC-based architecture journal's most recent issue—CLOG and DoCoMoMO NY Tristate  co-sponsored/moderated a panel discussion that focused on the politics, opportunities, and constraints surrounding these structures. The conversation addressed common issues faced by Brutalist buildings including their structural potential, aesthetics, and how these factors and more make the question of preserving Brutalist structures difficult and oftentimes contentious.

observant was struck by the photo accompanying the news and asked "What and where is the above building?  I think of brutalism as oppressive.  The scale and scalloped features of this building don't make it seem brutalistic to me, although it does look dated.  There's actually something appealing about its overall proportions. The only foreboding elements are those 2 ‘chimneys’ or pilasters up front".

Since announcing that the international architecture competition to design the Central Mosque of Prishtina, Kosovo had not (yet) turned out a clear winner, Bustler.net has received and published many, many mosque design entries. Another entry well worth featuring is this design collaboration between Portuguese firms OODA and AND-RÉ with AFA CONSULT / Rui Furtado as the engineering partner.

tammuz offered some criticism "two things i like about well..most mosques. first is the dynamic overlap between the orientation towards the kibla and the building's positioning within its immediate setting. grounds for a lot of creativity. second is the correpondence between structture and the module of the prayer matt, the module of the praying individual. i don't see this here. not that thats a criticism in itself but add that to this craze everyone has with mashrabiyah-derivatives ...and when is the tortoise going to come out its shell? however, i do like that the outer rims act as a shelter above an in-between space...which is important when its too crowded inside and people have to pray outside. but...!...how will they know to direct their prayers if their reference is a semisphere?".

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Alec Perkins who just began a six month architecture internship at Tatiana Bilbao's office started a blog which he promises "will focus on my free time, which I mostly spend trying to get to grip on the astounding breadth and depth of the city via museums, taco stalls, parks, forgotten monuments, obscure corners, public space, and avoiding death by cars, death cults, muggings, volcanoes, and taco stalls".

London based studio, Marques&Jordy (M&J), have been announced as the winners of an invitation only competition to develop the design of a new kind of car expo and showroom centres across China, the Oasis Expo Centres. The client is a young and visionary Chinese developer group aspiring to improve the urban landscape of new cities. Bahareh.A’s commented "wooowww interesting!!!!!"

Elliot Lazarus who works at Matti Rosenshine Architects, Design Architect recently completed a new office and shared "Shots of the steel stairs to gallery" while Laura Della Sala, worked on Public Space and Archaeology.

Studio RHE posted photos of The Old Vicarage, Rendham a handsome Regency flat fronted villa built in c.1820 which they recently restored. This was achieved with "a new lightweight building that connects the various spaces turning external windows into internal open frames".

Inspired by the book - Soft City  from the author Jonathan Raban, Matthew Rust began a blog of the same name. The Soft City - Architecture’s Public?

Schools/Blogs
Lian Chikako Chang live-blogged final reviews at Harvard GSD, leading Orhan Ayyüce to remark "From the images and the juries I have been to last couple of weeks, it looks like most of the schools, more or less, have caught up with each other. Architectural education is in the process of evening out. Tuition price drops might follow. I see a trend of doing architecture again...Thanks for writing. The best part is your blog".

The University of Kentucky College of Design closed the 2012-2013 academic year with the annual End of Year Show at Lexington's Land of Tomorrow Gallery. The studios on display included: The Taipei Office Studio, The Performa Studio, The Harlan Studio, The Form and Phenomena Studio, The Retail Design Studio and The Lexington Distillery District Studio.

John Tubles at Cal Poly Pomona resurfaces and explains "Yes I have fallen in dark muddy ditch that somehow mysteriously led into a well and then eventually to a cliff, that is why I have not blog for a while. In short, LIFE and GSD, chewed me up and spat me to the ground, (but in a good way I might add) and this semester was a long recovery process". Part 2 of his post included what "may or may not be a love letter to Architecture".

amy.pinkston affiliated with the University of Oregon School of Architecture published a call for proposals and abstracts for consideration as part of the 2013 International PUARL Conference - BATTLE FOR THE LIFE AND BEAUTY OF THE EARTH.
 

Discussions
Andrew Liebchen started a thread to discuss Source / version control. He went to graduate school for architecture, but is now a designer for a software startup and can't imagine how he would would "work on code collaboratively with my co-workers without Git and GitHub". He believes "that simple source and/or version control would be really important for architects (especially because in school I remember having folders filled with version after version of the".

curtkram had a suggestion "keep an 'old files' folder.  whenever you want to keep an old file, move it to the old files folder.  only 1 drawing in the root folder" but gwharton agreed "This is a major issue for architectural firms, and nobody's come up with a good/easy solution to it yet".

simonmou wanted to talk about laser cutters, personally simonmou thinks "they are appropriate in some case i.e.. a context model or an organic model where scripting have been involved. However I think it's a real shame when models of ‘ordinary architecture’ have been laser cutted". natematt chimed in "like everything... they are great if you just do them right. For the models of a lot of the projects I see now they are indispensable...I think if you really want to be critical of them it would be best to start by looking at how they influence the way we design. A specific example might be the emphasis on 2 dimensionality and layering". 

However, orgufiel argued "I'm a grad student and I have to say that students have gotten even lazier than laser cutting. Now a lot of the students just 3d print their models regardless of how easy it would be to make it by hand". Similarly threadkilla noted "I worked as the laser lounge lizard during my time at grad school, and I wish that job came with the option of banning people from the tool for mis-using it....The worst is the casual attitude espoused by the profs towards this horrible downward trend in craftsmanship - in fact, where I went to school good craft and manual ability was ridiculed, dismissed for its earnestness, and discouraged wherever possible under the pretense of effective time management".

Finally, SeriousQuestion wondered Is Michael Maltzan the greatest American architect actively practicing? juventus7 posted "I had never heard of that guy, looked at the website and I did like some of his projects. However, I like the work by Will Bruder, Rick Joy, Wendell Burnette waaaaaay more than his. (As those are american architects' work I have actually EXPERIENCED and can talk for myself.)".

heavymetalarchitecture replied "So what do you mean by greatest? I tend to think of greatness as something happening over a long period of time, versus avant-garde how I would describe Maltzan"

Additionally
Under the auspices of VENUE, Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley documented a trip to  Fort Irwin a U.S. army base nearly the size of Rhode Island, located in the Mojave Desert about an hour's drive northeast of Barstow, California. There they visited the National Training Center, to learn more about the simulated battlefields in which imaginary conflicts loop, day after day, without end.