The Buckminster Fuller Institute announced the finalists for the 2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge today. Out of 19 semi-finalists--who we previously covered back in August--the distinguished Jury selected the top five after a day of deliberation on Oct. 7. — bustler.net

It appears that cities of today, and especially big cities, all around the world, are all struggling with similar problems, as they all have developed huge territories - their metropolitan or "greater" areas - during the twentieth century that cannot be properly understood by anyone in terms of their form, but that now need to be recognized as something that truly exists, because it is a form that is in perpetual transformation and without limits. — http://www.monu-magazine.com

This week, as Goldberg’s famous work is pulled apart by wreckers, nothing about its loss seems symmetrical or graceful. Within 40 years, the building transitioned from a proud symbol of civic renewal and design innovation to the victim of old-fashioned Chicago politics. The controversy surrounding the demolition of Prentice, however, injected the preservation movement into an urban design discussion with a presence not seen in a long time. — nextcity.org

The Plaza hotel is suing the city and Citibank — complaining in scorching court papers that the block-long bike rack outside the landmark building is a traffic-clogging, advertising-festooned “eyesore.”

The row of bright-blue Citi Bikes that now stands across from the hotel along Grand Army Plaza is an affront to both architecture and city drivers, according to the suit. — nypost.com

Meier supplied the project’s master plan, doing without the sculptural gymnastics he’s known for -- at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and elsewhere -- to keep costs down.

The firm designed a clean-lined four-story box, one of the first two buildings that have opened for the present school term.

Rough and smooth brick patterns echo a mix of clear and translucent glass to make a surface composition as rich as a Mondrian painting. — Bloomberg

"The concept of the building,'' said Oppenheimer, "is collaboration and fluidity. It'll provide a very open-spaced system, so that at one point in the day you may be in offices on one side of the circle and find yourself on the other side later that day.'' — mercurynews.com

I step out into the street but realize that I’d better not — there’s a current — and as my hallway fills, I remember the electrical panel in the basement. It shorts out, and I hear the breakers fall. Then there is an explosion outside, and the neighborhood goes dark. — Places Journal

My bewilderment quickly yields to a growing sense of dread. How is it that even in the heart of Silicon Valley it’s completely acceptable for smart technology to be buggy, erratic, or totally dysfunctional? ... We are weaving these technologies into our homes, our communities, even our very bodies — but even experts have become disturbingly complacent about their shortcomings. The rest of us rarely question them at all. — Places Journal

Look outside the world-class offices and luxury homes, and little works – not the sanitation, the power supply, or even the public transport. Every company is like a self-contained island. They have backups for everything – water, electricity and food — BBC Future

If green roofs can be seen, they are a constraint for architectural design. Either you acknowledge them or they become an afterthought. — toskovic.com

Ikea is to sell solar panels at its British stores for the first time in an attempt to tap growth in the heavily subsidised green energy market.

The world's biggest furniture retailer, best known for cheap basics such as its Billy bookcases and Ektorp sofas, plans to offer solar panel packages at all of its 17 British stores within the next 10 months. — theguardian.com

While tiny housing of this kind has existed in Hong Kong for many years, it has expanded as soaring property prices have pushed more and more low-income earners out of the market for regular housing in recent years. Rent on these spaces has risen nearly 20 percent in the last four years, and now gobbles up about a third of the residents’ incomes. — New York Times

This proposal seeks to demonstrate the potential for re-purposing the historic American bridge infrastructure as possible sites for sustainable urban housing and linear parks...an aerial garden, as the cities newest park through which you could walk and wander and enjoy the most spectacular views of the bay — Rael San Fratello/reThink Bay Bridge

"We'd like to leave, but the company won't let us," — theguardian.com