finally releases Episode 12 of Archinect Travels: American West and as Orhan Ayyüce says over on the Archinect Travels thread beautifully done. the whole series is a gem. the last episode was worth the wait.. Go watch it here.
News
Marlin finally releases Episode 12 of Archinect Travels: American West and as Orhan Ayyüce says over on the Archinect Travels thread beautifully done. the whole series is a gem. the last episode was worth the wait.. Go watch it here.

Also, two new features went up. With the first Orhan has served up his latest interview, this time with Ole Bouman, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute. In the second, guest contributor Sergio López-Piñeiro addresses the architectural thesis and how it can be broken down into different practice models using well known firms as case studies.

Der Scutt architect to "the Donald" died.
Boston.com's The Big Picture series featured several recent photos from Shanghai as construction nears completion for the Expo 2010.

There are no surprises in the fact that some of the biggest names (and the usual suspects) in architecture are among the shortlisted firms for the planned expansion for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art according to the leaked list. See for yourself.

Technically, it is a 3-D Printer Creates Entire Buildings of Solid Rock from Powdered Rock Bound with a Magnesium Glue as 18x32 notes.

Discussion Threads
Over on Thread Central architphil started a great discussion amongst TCs teachers regarding BS, research and rigor. Jump responded seems like your job has to be to teach them to be rigorous and keep their opinions to themselves...it is a hard haul especially for architecture students but my advisor for phd really beat me over the head with what kinds of statements can be made and not made and wouldn't take any rubbish - which was great. i didn't get it for a while but finally figured it out. until students can substantiate their ideas students should be hit over the head with their muddy thinking. it will make them better designers and thinkers whatever they end up doing later on... Go read the rest here.

RealLifeLEED asks for some suggestions for Adroid apps for architects.

School Blogs
Chris_Hildrey announces his return to Bartlett where he will be joining the Advanced Architectural Research programme.

Micah at Kent State is having a crisis of authenticity and motivation and his stay in Florence isn't helping. Also he is reading Architecture Depends by Jeremy Till.

Eratta
Two seemingly unrelated posts, both however in their own way explore the end result of the recent real estate boom/bust on architecture and housing.
Kazys Varnelis in his post Today we collect nothing writes Could it be that the real estate bubble finally unloaded the house? Is it possible that this recession isn't just a recession but a fundamental restructuring, a restructuring of architecture that will undo the dumb box? By this I don't mean that the house will simply become smarter, more sentient, more technological but rather that in turning architecture into a virtual product in the financial realm, the bubble allowed it to become a virtual product in the physical realm?

And the boys at Mammoth in their reposting of their contribution to MONU 12 entitled the Shelter Category dissect the contemporary HGTV vernacular of equity-urbanism wherein the house is conceived of as wealth-generator. They conclude that HGTV and other shelter category media ultimately present a direct challenge to the relevance of architecture. Though the very title of this media category — “shelter” — would seem to reinforce the importance of shelter as the central function of the home, the media content consistently undermines that understanding. If homes now exist to generate wealth, not to provide shelter, then architecture, whose most fundamental disciplinary territory has always been the provision of shelter, faces an identity crisis.