Evan Chakroff penned Art Basel comes to Hong Kong a report wherein Mr. Chakroff analyzed "During the yearly art fair in Basel, Switzerland, the city is activated and reconfigured, and art is brought to the forefront of civic discourse. What, if any, impact could the fair have on daily life in a city of 7 million? How would this art world mega-event translate to the Hong Kong context?"...

News
Orhan Ayyüce drew our attention to #occupygezi in Istanbul where mass protests and battles are still raging over the government plans to build a "Shopping Mall” on the site of an historic civic park.

Parad0xx86 shared "I was in Besiktas and Taksim today. Taksim is like a total war zone with windows smashed, cars turned upside down, beer cans all over the streets..All the buildings have anti-Tayyip graffitis. There are thousands of people in Taksim right now and they aren't going anywhere". mantaray pointed out "that NPR interviewed protesters today, and one of them turned out to be an architect!  She spoke forcefully, too!  It was great!".

Adobe’s XD team revealed a few projects they're working on at Adobe MAX 2013. The team has been exploring how new form factor displays, new interactions (like touch and gesture), cloud connections and even new hardware might change how you all create and in turn how it might impact what software we need to build.

Spike Cyclone poked fun at the accompanying video "yummy. I 'ideated' for a whole day once, had to go to the emergency room". Donna Sink was kind of impressed "First, that guy is so smiley it's hard to resist what he's selling! Good choice...Second, the pen looks like there is a very slight delay between the movement and the mark, which you do not have with a physical pen/cil. I think I would find that so annoying that I'd want to hurl the pen across the room...But, watching the video made me sufficiently interested that I'd actually like to try it out".

Bustler.net posted a transcript of Toyo Ito’s Pritzker Prize Acceptance Speech. jla-x was puzzled "Why can't all the starchitects be so pleasant and humble like Ito.  Ando and zumthor also seem like really nice guys"?

Orhan Ayyüce highlighted an editorial by Patrik Schumacher published by The Architectural Review this past January, wherein he lamented "The submissions to the current RIBA President’s Medals demonstrate once more that architectural education in Britain is operating in a parallel universe...Accordingly, the resultant works are statements or allegories rather than designs".

At the time The Funambulist retorted "I felt the urge, the necessity to send you a response as such rebuttal would almost constitute a manifesto since your discourse seems the exact opposite of the one I am defending on this platform".

tammuz x argued "I believe Patrick Schumacher is being snide and condescending here... there is a difference between an underlying critique and n indulgence in  fantasies that are actually devoid of critique...as such, his criticism is not really about the place of such approaches within architecture but rather about ideological exclusion".

James S. Russell, critic for Bloomberg News reviewed the reopening of Donald Judd’s SoHo Loft after a $23 Million Makeover. Eric Chavkin didn’t understand "Why then all the fussy-ness of presentation and placement. Judd's art-objects should 'work' as is.  Unless of course it is all about the context which to me contradicts Judd's premise of the primacy of the object itself"? Darkman chimed in "Donald Judd is awesome. 101 Spring is great. However, it is sad in a way that a once creative hub for artists is now mummified--like so many NY spaces. This says more about New York then anything".

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Gregory Walker pointed to an editorial by Thomas Friedman, which examined the current gap between job seekers skill set and employer expectations. Mr. Walker noted "this is the dilemma we're all working through, stated quite eloquently".

Last week Jessica Englund Completed a collaborative installation in Boston Children's Museum! while Jeremy Segal posted a Recent photograph of the Yokohama InterContinental hotel made at dusk. Amazing design by Nikken Sekkei Ltd.

Alec Perkins an intern working for Tatiana Bilbao's office documented his first impression of Mexico City ("On the ground, you are overwhelmed by the density and complexity. Mexico city is full of people, it’s kind of dirty, but tropical, warm. Lots of concrete everywhere"), Mexico City’s transit system and metro ("The system is very easy to navigate") and a walk from El Angél to El Zócalo.

McClelland Residence in Salt Lake City, UT by Imbue Design and OUTSIDE-IN at 22nd International Garden Festival of Chaumont Sur Loire, France by Meir Lobaton Corona and Ulli Heckmann were just two of the projects featured in the latest post Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Outdoors" Pinterest Board.

Schools/Blogs
Students in design/buildLAB at Virginia Tech had a busy last week. They finished fabricating the sections of their bridge offsite, including testing the bridge/calculating it’s deflection, installed the hub

SCI-Arc released some details about DALE (Dynamic Augmented Living Environment), the Net Zero micro house, a team of architecture students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and engineering students from California Institute of Technology (Caltech), are building for the Solar Decathlon 2013

Charting The American Bottom was a project Kelly Corcoran did during a Graduate Option Studio.

Plus, goswin announced the AA's visiting school in CALABRIA this summer is still looking for a few more applicants...

Discussions
Emily Kemper started a thread to discuss "a new report was released today on unemployment amongst various recent college grads.  It's still not great for architecture".

Thecyclist asked for some clarification "Can someone sort out the 12.8% number for me? Because it seems a little higher than that based off what I hear of recent grads I know. 12.8% doesn't seem that bad...maybe unjust spoiled". LITS4FormZ answered "You're only ‘unemployed’ when you're actively looking for a job...Since many graduates move on to other fields, they dont count...I'd place the number closer to 25%..."

Along the same lines Aka115 wanted to discuss a possible connection between Revit and the unemployment rate explaining "The fact that Revit  can reduce work hours for drafting may affect negatively our future employment opportunities in arch firms".
observant believed "It won't change much.  People asked the exact same question of Auto-CAD, fearing automation". Yet, gruen confirmed "We employ fewer people today than we used to, including typists, draftsmen. Trend will continue".          

Finally, s=r*(theta) needed some advice, "My current employer is a real "Richard" in every sense of the word! Because I am prisoner of my respect for authority (but a greater respect for my self) I wont go into anything else, outside of the fact in my 11 month tenure, we have went thru 8 employees!! with my self resigning it will be 9". s=r*(theta) therefore wanted to give his boss a copy of Winning with People: Discover the People Principles that Work for You Every Time by John C. Maxwell on his last day.

citizen cautioned "If you don't plan on listing this job on your resume', yes, give him this ‘gift’?If, however, you plan to list that job as work experience...then, no, I'd resist the urge". Though Aaron DeWoskin advised "Don't be cutesy and clever with a book. Just stand up straight, wait for a moment when you two are alone, and say what you want to say without profanity...Don't make it personal, but keep it tough".