Boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and around it.

A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety — a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops — or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones. — nymag.com

For Brazil’s economy, the near future probably features a period of stagnation, as a government paralyzed by political crisis dodges the tough choices created by strong inflation, rising budget deficits and, at best, a touch of economic growth in 2017 after hitting rock bottom in 2016. [...]

Demonstrators have turned out in numbers larger than in 1984 — when Brazilians of all stripes united to throw off military rule— to demand [President] Rousseff’s ouster — ibtimes.com

”...it might be that loneliness is often due to circumstance.

The thing with cities is we are absolutely surrounded by people...We can see other people living richer, more populated lives than our own. At the same time, we can feel very exposed … there are lots of eyes on everyone. That is why the loneliness of the city has a particularly distinct tang to it.

Loneliness, however, is often like bad weather, “it passes through our lives”. — The Guardian

bastardized visual language has become the de facto standard of Dallas residential architecture development. The explanation for its ever-increasing prevalence, however depressing, is fairly straightforward. Developers find something that’s profitable and want to reproduce it. Risk-averse banks are happy to lend them money given their track record, at least in the short term. Architects, stuck with low budgets, tight schedules, and conservative developers, serve to please and follow convention. — artsblog.dallasnews.com

All of us, including myself have been engaged in catering to the 0.1 per cent through our work. Our training has always been in material and designing architecture for that one per cent.
The kind of world we live in today, we need to democratise architecture. I know that it may give an impression that I am saying this only because I am retired now, but I have become deeply involved in how architecture can provide social justice and (grounds) for an equitable society. — TheNews on Sunday

As the stories of Hadid and Scott Brown show, the pairing of architecture prizes (or at least the big ones) and women raises hackles. Hadid won the Pritzker Prize amid talk that she did not deserve it; Scott Brown did not win the prize amid talk that she did not deserve it. No solo female architect has won the Pritzker Prize since Hadid, nor has a husband-and-wife architectural team ever been honored. Indeed, to date, of the 39 Pritzker Prize laureates, only two (or about 5 percent) are women. — Despina Stratigakos

He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?” — telegraph.co.uk

The suspicion is that the Pritzker judges haven’t changed all that much, and are backing an iconic-humanitarian architect, a flipside to the starchitects they previously promoted rather than a radical alternative [...]

Some scepticism is in order, as to whether the Pritzker committee have suddenly become experts in the vastly complicated business of humanitarian architecture and whether there might be a large dose of gesture and symbolism in their actions. — theguardian.com

you can spend a lot of money, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to come to an outcome that is going to be good over the long run. I think that, you know, it really comes to the design of the building, how the material transitions are treated, color is a huge issue that often doesn't get I think enough attention and can hugely influence the outcome in a building — Colorado Public Radio

“New York Horizon” would be virtually impossible to implement in the real world, given the actual urban landscape of the proposed site, which includes some of NYC's subway lines for starters. That being said, the criticism “New York Horizon” has sparked in recent weeks raises bigger questions — particularly involving the rise of “meme-tecture”, the cultural value of landscape architecture, and re-evaluating the setup of open ideas competitions. — Bustler

the firm founded by Harvard-trained David Mizan Hashim has made a name over three decades as a stalwart of the Malaysian architecture scene [...]

It is now the country’s second-largest architecture firm, with 330 staffers led by 14 architect principals; 5 of them head Veritas offices overseas. [...]

“I purposely don’t want all decisions to come from me,” [Hashim] says ... “My strategy is planned obsolescence.” — forbes.com

“The lots that determine the Flatiron shape have previously been avoided since the resultant interiors are unusual and not easy to market,” Patrice Derrington, director of the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University, wrote last week in an email. “However, ‘as needs be’ developers are attending to these less favorable sites, as they eke out every last possibility.” — The New York Times

“This kind of pedagogical approach, where students are engaged with a ‘real’ client, has the potential to be very informative for the design process ... Usually people view constraints as detrimentally restrictive, but I think in this case it allows students to always have parameters by which to judge their work.” [...]

[Yanbo Li ’16] said that the studio is a “perennial favorite” among senior architecture majors from year to year, and said his own experience was not an exception. — yaledailynews.com