"I think that the press has been too fast to reduce the conversation to heroes and villains and martyrs, and to suggest that what MoMA is doing is necessarily bad. We want to get more information out. We want to share the problem with others and invite them to really take a hard look" - Elizabeth Diller — LA Times

The 21-story, three-building apartment project now rising in Portland's Lloyd District will create more long-term bike parking than any other project in the nation, with four huge new storage facilities in four buildings and an on-site bike valet parking service to serve the biggest one. [...]

Bike experts in Canada, Mexico and across the United States said they didn't know of any single project on the continent with more bike parking; Mexico's largest facility, at a train station, holds 800. — Bike Portland

Though Morgan assisted campus architect John Galen Howard with the master plan, Girton Hall is the only building to be designed specifically for the campus by Morgan. — sfgate.com

“In New York, development is a three-dimensional chess game,” said Dan Kaplan, a senior partner at FXFowle Architects, “and the reason we’re seeing an increase in the use of cantilevers above neighboring buildings is linked to the complexity of finding a site that can utilize all available development rights.” — nytimes.com

I wish that it still existed.
— Frank Gehry

It would be the world's biggest nightmare if the Institute were still alive.
— Mark Wigley

It was the moment for something to happen.
— Diana Agrest

// — Places Journal

Madeline Arakawa Gins, a poet-turned-painter-turned-architect who publicly forswore mortality — and whose buildings, by her own account, were designed to pre-empt death for those living in them — died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 72.

The cause was cancer, said Joke Post, the manager for architectural projects at the Reversible Destiny Foundation, which Ms. Gins and her husband, the Japanese-born artist known simply as Arakawa, established in 1987. — mobile.nytimes.com

Sexism is alive and well in architecture, according to research showing that two-thirds of female architects believe the construction industry hasn’t fully accepted the authority of women.

The annual Women in Architecture survey, conducted by Architects’ Journal, found evidence of widespread discrimination and unequal pay in the profession. — independent.co.uk

National and local foundations have pledged more than $330 million to a fund to protect city-owned art at the Detroit Institute of Arts from being auctioned off, mediators in Detroit’s bankruptcy announced Monday.

A statement from Chief U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Rosen’s team of mediators called the financial commitments “an extraordinary and unprecedented effort” to preserve the art collection and raise money for Detroit’s underfunded pension funds. — detroitnews.com

"Sharon's architecture involved not only destruction but also construction. The other major projects he undertook, besides the destruction of the camps, was an attempt to "pacify" the refugees by constructing and forcefully relocating a few thousand of them into Israeli-style social housing blocks next to major Palestinian cities". — Al Jazeera English

The Working Group plan puts forward a number of recommendations that are worth pursuing under any financial model. However, we believe that the contingencies and risks inherent in the proposals are too great to supplant the need for new revenue sources. Regrettably, tuition remains the only realistic source of new revenue in the near future. — Richard S. Lincer, chair of The Cooper Union Board of Trustees

I foresee that major urban spaces of Pyongyang, such as Kim Il Sung Square, will be used as “public” space with a greater variety of urban activities, such as commercial activities and show events. [...]

The last thing that may happen in North Korea, or the thing that should not happen in some sense, is the Chinese model. Considering the scale of the economy and the potential of the North Korean market compared to China, it is hard to picture radical and massive urban development in Pyongyang. — NK News

Remember that buildings shouldn't burn things, windows should let in light and copying others is fine – but just try not to annoy the skateboarders — theguardian.com

The mural project is part of a renewed attention to the Central Library in Grosse Pointe Farms, which received approval from the Grosse Pointe Library Board in October for more than $241,000 in outside masonry repairs, according to Library Director Vickey Bloom. — Eric D. Lawrence, Detroit Free Press