...eye-catching edifices began as China’s way of announcing its arrival as a powerful player on the world stage. Now, however, the Chinese government has changed course: It has officially declared this to be “weird” architecture that must be stopped. Chinese leaders have turned their backs on these structures, a shift that underscores China’s new conception of itself and its ambitions for the future [...] — the New Republic

While cities like Dallas and San Francisco have rebounded strongly since the recession, many other places are still struggling for economic growth and prosperity. As time goes on, we're seeing a divergence between successful parts of the country and the non-successful parts.

More than 50 million Americans live in "distressed" ZIP codes, according to a new report from the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington D.C. think-tank. — Fast.Co Exist

Last week Port Authority decided not to hold an opening ceremony for Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub (followed by their sudden flip flop), citing the fact that it was six years delayed and that final construction costs came in around $4 billion in taxpayer dollars, twice what was projected. But it’s hardly the only public project to face delays and skyrocketing costs. In fact, it’s not even close to being the worst of the lot that are draining tax payer dollars. — 6sqft.com

the federal government’s disaster declaration formula has been broken for years, making it nearly impossible for smaller communities to get help. [...]

The FEMA Disaster Assistance Reform Act requires the feds give greater consideration to the localized impact of a disaster [...]

rural parts of the state ... must meet an arbitrarily high threshold in order to qualify for a disaster declaration. Enacting this language into law will level the playing field — wjbc.com

For a while I’ve held the belief that identifying oneself as an architect is a kind of drag, a mannered persona donned for effect. How else to describe the clichéd sartorial signifiers: extreme eyewear, black daywear and designer footwear? As the education of an architect is so historically weighted to a canon of male practitioners, theorists and educators, a woman entering the field often operates as a kind of architectural androgyne... — Mimi Zeiger | Architectural Review

One in five women worldwide say they would not encourage a woman to start a career in architecture [...]

dissatisfaction among women is lower in practices where a significant proportion of management are women, and in practices with regular career development reviews and/or mentoring schemes, with mentoring the better of the two. [...]

Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of women worldwide say they have experienced sexual discrimination, harassment or victimisation during their career — architectural-review.com

We might think that most of the carbon emission come from the industrial sector and livestock, but a new study suggests that the real environmental problem is represented by the things we buy. [...]

“We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses ... But between 60–80 per cent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well”. — nextnature.net

In 1997 two architects set out to rethink Lagos, an African megacity that had been largely abandoned by the state. Amid the apparent chaos and crime, they discovered remarkable patterns of organisation. Two decades later, Rem Koolhaas and Kunlé Adeyemi discuss the past, present and future of the city – and reveal why their own project never saw the light of day — theguardian.com

The utilitarian décor is in keeping with Bourgeois’s pragmatic nature...She was always interested in architectural spaces, and the rooms of 347 West 20th Street can be compared to her other artistic creations — NYT

Odile Decq has won the Jane Drew Prize and Julia Peyton-Jones has been awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in the annual Women in Architecture Awards.

The judges described Odile Decq as ‘a creative powerhouse, spirited breaker of rules and advocate of equality’. [...]

The judges celebrated Julia Peyton-Jones’ ‘incredible global impact achieved with limited resources – and as someone who has done so much to nurture architectural vision and make architecture available to many people’. — architectural-review.com

“What I realized is that they have very little power,” Mr. Viet, 28, said of his fellow urban planners. “The fates of the buildings were being decided by someone else.”

[...] when Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings — spanning the colonial to modernist eras — were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation. — nytimes.com

The average crow takes less than two hours to travel from Sing Sing maximum-security prison to the Whitney Museum of American Art, institutions separated by just 32 miles of land along New York’s Hudson river. Yet few humans journey between them – museums and prison are at opposite ends of our society’s self-imaginings, and their populations tend not to intersect. — The Guardian