News
The LA Times reported that a Rancho Cucamonga structure described as one of the last surviving examples of Chinese worker housing in the region has been selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for its 2013 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Archinector Christopher Sison wrote "No, the Chinatown House is not a restaurant at Victoria Gardens Shopping Center. Yes, Chinese immigrants made it to Rancho Cucamonga long before Ice Cube and cousin Day-Day ever did. Unbeknownst to most local residents, Rancho Cucamonga once housed a significant Chinese immigrant population that was vital to developing the agricultural economy of the Cucamonga Valley...Advocates hope that attention from the National Trust designation will gather supporters and hopefully attract grant money for the rehabilitation of the building. The Chinatown House Preservation Coalition and other local advocates hope to save the structure and turn it into an educational space that highlights the contributions of Chinese immigrant labor and the area’s agricultural history".

Over at BBC Future Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE, looked at ways to "design waste to regenerate our cities" using "smart-refuse" resulting in a future "envisioned city...derived from trash".

snooker-doodle-dandy had some questions "I thought crushed cars entered back into the system by  melting them down and reusing the metal.  Anyhow it makes a lot more sense than mining a bunch or rock, crushing it and smelting the iron out of it.  I'm not sure if building wall panels with crushed car parts is really doing us a lot of good if  we have to continue to rape the landscape for iron ore".

Emily Badger of Atlantic Cities interviewed MIT researcher Wei Pan, who explained how super-linear productivity is The Real Reason Cities Are Centers of Innovation. In response Will Galloway queried "Cool. Does this explain Silicon Valley ? As long as people are fluidly connected then density doesn't matter so much...?"...

Paul Goldberger asked Can J.F.K.’ s Pan Am Terminal, a U.F.O.-Like Monument to America’s Jet Age Innocence, Be Saved from the Wrecking Ball?

Alexander Morley suggested

It's time for Starbucks to step in with their flagship establishment!
Check the link below to see how they saved a scaled-down version of this building in St. Louis
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/how-two-st.-louis-landmarks-were-spared-the-wrecking-ball

observant felt "It is beautiful, simple, and evokes the exact emotion it's supposed to - that of flight.  It should be saved.  Both TWA and Pan Am Worldport at JFK are the best buildings there.  The new(er) ones are not iconic and never will be".

Firms/Blogs/Work Updates
Gregory Walker makes the case forget the pritzker, go for the gold...

Specifically, in the wake of the Pritzker prize committee's decision to not act on 'awarding' Denise Scott Brown a retroactive medal, he writes "so what can be done to capitalize on the momentum generated over the past few months? easy. ditch the pritzker and go for the aia gold medal. the timing is perfect - mr. venturi has been nominated in the past and publicly refused to accept the gold medal unless ms. brown was jointly recognized. and, really, this one's almost a no-brainer".

Recently, Dibakar Roy worked on Another rendering while Jeffrey Eyster worked on Breaking ground on 5 unit small lot townhouse.

Alec Perkins an intern working for Tatiana Bilbao's office in Mexico City blogged about Line 12, the secret modernist metro in Mexico City and public space as commercial space.

Amy Leedham wrote a review of Sefaira, a new energy modeling tool built specifically for architects to use in the early stages of the design process. royc wanted to know "have you worked with Autodesk Vasari? I'm most familiar with it and Ecotect, and would love to hear a comparison between Sefaria and them. Vasari is currently free, and it looks like it does many of the things that Sefaria does in terms of energy analysis, plus it integrates straight into Revit...Either way, it's always good to see that Autodesk has some form of competition, haha".

Schools/Blogs
Aaron Willettte announced that as of last week he is done with his time as a student in the  Masters of Science in Architecture at the University of Michigan. Yet, he won’t be going far, he was hired to be coordinator for TCAUP’s FABLab. Also, earlier this year the FABLab robotics lab expanded to include two KR-120s and two KR-Agilus machines.

gruen commented "Fascinating to see TCAUP change. I'm completely jealous of all those toys".

lrenechln pointed out, a selection of GSD events posters has been acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago for its permanent collection.

The College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, named Lawrence Scarpa, an internationally celebrated architect, as its BarberMcMurry Professor, the first endowed professorship in the college’s history.

Mitch McEwen who is blogging her fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, provided  a brief summary of Primate, the plugin that she created to integrate Leap Motion with parametric design in Grasshopper.

Quondam was  impressed "On several occasions, I've 'joked' here at archinect about drawing via talking to the computer--although I'm quite serious about the prospect. Watching your fingers move during the video made me think of sign language, which is also a form of 'speaking'. Is Primate set to evolve into a (nice, loosely flexible) de-sign language where specific jestures come to 'mean' specific formal reactions?".

Discussions
Back in the beginning of July, Dewayne Webb started a thread to discuss Why is everyone bashing OMA and Rem Koolhaas?

sameolddoctor answered "I think the reason a lot of architects bash Rem, Gehry, Nouvel, Zaha et al., is because they will never be able to do something remotely as interesting or intriguing. And really, thats OK. But bashing, say, an OMA building in the context of the crap that surrounds it (say, in Seattle) is really not an apples-to-apples comparison".

For her part Donna Sink disagreed "Gwharton, calling SPL crap is lazy. Why do you dislike it so much?...SPL is wonderfully complex, spatially and urbanistically, for a complex, fluctuating program. The fact that it can mirror such complex demand and be well-built AND provide intimate reading spaces is excellent".  rotterdamarchitect noted "I find it hilarious that this conversation focuses on one building of OMA (now a 300 person corporate powerhouse). Rem is best understood and critiqued through his writing...His writing has brought cultural critique firmly into the profession".

Meanwhile kadam-patil wondered what exactly is the difference between an architect and a computational designer.

jmanganelli wrote "for the roots of architecture's relationships to 'architecting' in the cs sense, i highly recommend Alexander's, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Gordon Pask's article in AD from late 60's, "The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics," and his book, An Approach to Cybernetics, on the similarity of architects and systems engineers. Negroponte's, Soft Architecture Machines with Pasks intro is seminal...in summary, we would do well not to belittle computational designers or information architects because they do similar work but their value is currently more recognized and that is our problem, not theirs, and bashing them is not the solution".

However, curtkram argued "if you walk into an architect's office, at least anywhere i've worked, and said you have a degree in computational science, they would not have a job for you.  there could be a potential that this sort of service would be available on a specific contract basis.  i've only worked at small firms, so bigger firms could be different".

Finally, BYK3 is looking for help finding information on the DMZ of North and South Korea??  More specifically, the JSA (Joint Security Area) for their thesis. accesskb suggested "or you can go make a site visit and document it.. Part of doing a thesis is contributing something everyone can benefit from in the future :)"...

More helpfully Joseph Wassell offered "You might want to get in touch with someone at dmzforum.org about such a specific region.  They've also got a wealth of references that may help to get you moving on other site related information.  Even their overall maps can give you a decent starting place".

Additionally

The Former Occupiers of the President’s Office (Free Cooper Union), the Administration, and Board of Trustees of The Cooper Union came to an agreement on 7-11-2013. A working group will be established promptly to undertake a good faith effort to seek an alternative to tuition that will sustain the institution’s long-term financial viability and strengthen its academic excellence.