It is not the first time, though, that a design like this has been pitched for the university. However inadvertently, the DS+R design resembles another proposal for the campus—a draft project that was eventually revised. While the resemblance between two draft renderings is hardly consequential, this one comes as a surprise, given the nature of the projects and the history between the firms. — City Lab

This biennale was not perfect. None are. And frankly I wonder whether Venice can ever be a fit venue for a serious interrogation of issues more profound than the Campari or Aperol conundrum. The vernissage is, at heart, a schmoozey, boozey networking knees-up in which the architectural great and good cheek-kiss their way down Via Garibaldi occasionally glancing in a pavilion. Arevena knew this all too well when he set out to give the festival some bite. — Architecture Foundation

The new building design introduced massive 40 foot sliding glass doors that could one day turn that store into an iCar showroom if they wanted to.

The estimated breakdown of the costs started with the shell of the building costing Apple $19 million. Some of the other costs included $1 million on the staircase alone. If there's 30 stairs that $33,333 per stair. — Patently Apple

...Mussolini, at least for his first decade in power, wasn’t quite as interested in architecture as his fellow dictators. While enthusiastically censoring film-makers, writers, academics and journalists, he let architects do as they please [...]

The resulting architectural output, between Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and the late 1930s, when he began to exert more control, embodies an accidentally healthy pluralism. — The Guardian

the destruction of the Bavinger House is not surprising. Back in 2011, the home appeared to suffer damage in a storm, and when a crew with News 9 attempted to see the house, they were “greeted with gunfire.” [...]

the house remained something of a mystery (it sat on private property, accessed by a rural road) until last July, when PraireMod reported that it had been contacted by Bob Bavinger’s son, Boz, who claimed to be putting the property up for sale for the price of $1.5 million. — hyperallergic.com

For decades, bosses [in certain professions] have groomed their assistants to be the next generation of big shots by working them long hours for low wages.

Call it the “Devil Wears Prada” economy, after the novel depicting life working for a fictionalized Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor.

But now, with the Obama administration moving to require time-and-a-half overtime pay for most salaried employees making less than $47,476 a year, that business model is suddenly under assault. — The New York Times

Girls Inc. was looking for ways to get their girls interested in fast-paced, high-paying jobs where women traditionally have been left out. Architecture and engineering certainly fit the bill. [...]

the girls will travel to various construction sites and talk to professionals in the field. Girls Inc. also is looking to build a new, bigger facility, and the summer camp girls will play a large part in the initial design, even being given a chance to pitch their project — newsherald.com

The original plan [for a new park in Brooklyn] would tear down the graveyard of rusting oil refineries that sit on the site, which stretches from Greenpoint to Williamsburg along the East River, and return the reedy riverbank to something closer to nature. The new idea, called Maker Park, would keep the refineries and turn them into a sort of industrial theme park — “a beautiful and otherworldly industrial topography,” according to the website of its advocates. — the New York Times

Aravena’s main show, though full of timely and meaningful projects, doesn’t succeed terribly well strictly as an exhibition — as a sensory and visual experience on its own terms...

In part this weakness may be explained by the quick time frame; it also seems to flow from Aravena’s generous sensibility, his interest in opening his arms wide to the architecture of the moment and featuring a range of voices usually not heard in Venice. In that sense a desire for inclusion is his Achilles’ heel. — Christopher Hawthorne | Los Angeles Times

A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.

“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said. — theguardian.com