The [Marina Abramovic Institute] was launched last year, and designed by none other than OMA, under the direction of partners Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas. The architects are poised to explore programming for the center and produce mock-ups--depending on Kickstarter results. The funding Abramovic is after is to cover this "first phase" work on the project. — Co.Design

“Louvers won’t work, they reflect light too,” he wrote in June in a blog comment on dallasnews, “and retrofitting on a 42 story building has never been tried and the makers say they would rip off in high winds prevalent in Dallas.”

An honest opinion, except that there is no such Barry Schwarz.

This post and others proved to be the work of Mike Snyder, long a fixture in the city and now a public relations executive who had been hired by the tower’s outside law firm. — nytimes.com

According to data released by New York City last fall, the Bank of America Tower produces more greenhouse gases and uses more energy per square foot than any comparably sized office building in Manhattan. It uses more than twice as much energy per square foot as the 80-year-old Empire State Building. - Sam Roudman — Co.Design

As incorrigible collectors we are all too aware of the gap between the desirability and availability of Dieter Rams' work. das programm was conceived to correct this. We only sell Dieter Rams designs for Braun and Vitsœ, and Braun products issued between 1955 and 1995, the period of Rams’ office at Braun, for the greater part as Director of the Design Department. — dasprogramm.org

My own conviction is that the most meaningful prolonged response to the Pritzker — but much more, to the entrenched discrimination it both reflects and reinforces — will involve political action directed toward measureable change. It will involve ramping up the current professional and cultural conversation — now focused on sharing experiences, promoting awareness, influencing leaders in the field — and articulating specific goals, definable outcomes. — Places Journal

With our first foray into 3D printing technology, we have partnered with Sculpteo, MakerBot, and Hot Pop Factory who are leaders in 3D printing technology to hand-select a range of special products including, iPhone cases, figurines, and jewelry. — exact.ebay.com

The company will be moving all of its teams from its current office near Grand Central to two floors at the new office, the interior of which architect Frank Gehry has agreed to design.

Gehry is already leading the expansion of Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, CA. A source familiar with Facebook's plans said the company is "extraordinarily pleased with [Gehry's] ability to delivery an incredible quality of design at a remarkably efficient price"... — mashable.com

Sears Holdings, the 120-year old retailer (which now includes Kmart), plans to start converting its struggling and defunct department stores into data centers, Data Center Knowledge reported today. A new unit of the company, Ubiquity Critical Environments, will lead the charge.

Thanks to Walmart, specialty shops, an economic downturn and—the sweet irony—online shopping, department stores are heading toward extinction, and Sears is feeling the pain particularly hard. — motherboard.vice.com

For the first time since Henri Labrouste (1801-1875), currently the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, formulated the conception of the new, democratic library, the central library is fighting for survival. The relevance of these gloriously inflated book boxes is being questioned in an age that looks to the Internet for its intellectual resources. — online.wsj.com

This film was shot in October last year when the Internet Archive celebrated a landmark --10 petabytes of stored media. Tour the space, which still looks more like a church than a library and see where millions of books are digitized and stored in a facility in Richmond, CA. — theatlantic.com