I love the mall as much as I love the urban walking experience, museums and movie theaters. Today the stripmall is not just a part of my everyday life in Los Angeles [...] it is also a memory from my own suburban adolescence growing up in Illinois.

Jon Jerde, the LA architect both celebrated and loathed for his role in spreading shopping malls across US suburbia, died this month. Some might scoff at his life’s achievement. I am not one of them. — theguardian.com

The architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre’s extravagant urban mansions in El Alto, Bolivia, have been derided as kitschy-looking cohetillos, meaning “spaceships”—giving his work the nickname “spaceship architecture.”

But the admirers of Freddy Mamani, as he is generally known, say his colorful “new Andean” style has also served to reinvent a city once aesthetically monochromatic, and that he has found a way to bring traditional Andean and Tiwanaku cultures into an urban setting. — qz.com

It looks foreboding in pictures, but in reality it’s a lovely, tree-lined complex set at the street level with a string of cafes and shops. — NYT

In times when the rest of the city is rapidly becoming extremely expensive, Amsterdam’s ugly light gray and pink-yellow housing blocks are staying affordable, with rents contingent on income. Their continued presence in the city is becoming a memorial for a once-existing Amsterdam, in which almost all space in the city was equally distributed. — failedarchitecture.com

Times Square runs on spectacle. Bigger and brighter is always better. And though plenty of New Yorkers wear their criticism of Times Square as a badge of local honor [...] one of the most iconic public spaces in the world. In recent years, as stretches of Broadway formerly open to vehicular traffic have been repurposed as pedestrian plazas, opportunities to activate the “crossroads of the world” with events, performances, and public art installations have ballooned. — urbanomnibus.net

Cultural giving among America’s top philanthropists fell slightly in 2014, according to an annual ranking of the 50 largest charitable donors released last week by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. This news might come as a surprise to US museum directors, who have been swiftly—and quietly—raising eight-, nine-, and ten-figure donations from eager patrons. Their ambitious capital campaigns make the austerity measures of the recent recession feel like a distant memory. — theartnewspaper.com

I’m extremely concerned that if you leave Gaza in the state it’s currently in, you’ll have another eruption, and violence, and then we’re back in a further catastrophe, so we’ve got to stop that,-Tony Blair — +972

The Vatican said Friday it had finished renovations on public restrooms just off St. Peter's Square that will include three showers and a free barber shop for the city's neediest. Each "homeless pilgrim," as the Vatican called the clients, will receive a kit including a towel, change of underwear, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, razor and shaving cream. The showers will be open every day but Wednesday, when the piazza is full for the pope's general audience. Haircuts will be available Mondays. — Star Tribune

The aftermath of a deadly winter storm paralyzed much of the eastern United States on Tuesday and forecasters warned of the worst cold in two decades from another arctic front this week. — Reuters

Following a nine-month stretch of positive billings, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) showed no increase in design activity in January. [...] The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the January ABI score was 49.9, down from a mark of 52.7 in December. This score reflects a very modest decrease in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 58.7, down from the reading of 59.1 the previous month. — calculatedriskblog.com