In March, the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture Billings Index marked its eighth consecutive month of growth in the demand for architectural design services. While the national score of 51.9 is down three full points from February’s score of 54.9, the architecture industry is still seeing continued strength nationwide, and across all regions and industry sectors. — architectmagazine.com

the Neutra Office (and Neutra's son Dion, a partner) has teamed up with the California Architecture Conservancy to offer the architect's plans for license. According to a press release, "For the price of what one would customarily pay for an architect to design and render supervising architectural services, you can build one of the mid-century modernist master's works of art and have Dion Neutra and the Neutra Office supervise the construction." — la.curbed.com

One of the real challenges, since we’re working in so many places—Mexico, Japan, Brazil—is understanding variations, both in terms of culture and context. It’s important to understand differences in scale and environment. — Architectural Digest

Architecture with capital letter A is a short movie, featuring Architects who might have shaped the concept of Architecture itself in the last decade. The movie combines excerpts of their interviews, speeches or documentaries over the last 70 years. This accumulation of scenes expresses somehow the condition of Architecture today - its moments of Glory and Misery. — viavili.com

The off-screen protagonist of Herman's House, Herman Wallace, already has a dwelling for his body: a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola. But the documentary's on-screen protagonist, Jackie Sumell, wants him also to have a place for his soul: a dream house for a man who desperately needs dreams. — npr.org

An almost uncomfortable but intensely fascinating account of how some of the best architects in the world, design giants like Jean Nouvel or Frank Gehry, toil, struggle and strategize to beat the competition. — vimeo.com

Stern's architecture is always steeped in strategic references to past landmarks; there is no doubt he knows how to send, and shape, an architectural message. And the message the front entrance to the Bush Library delivers is clear: This is a building meant to honor a particularly blunt and plain-spoken kind of political power. — latimes.com

Officials at New York City's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art announced today that the school, famously free to students, will begin charging undergraduate tuition next year. — archrecord.construction.com

How should we live together? is the central question of this 18th issue of MONU on the topic of "Communal Urbanism", focusing on contemporary communal living in cities.

(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2013) — MONU

The LA Times reported that Renzo Piano, Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali and officials from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled preliminary designs for a $300-million film museum. Eric Chavkin concluded "A toy chest of architectures related only by location. From the Bruce Goff Japanese Pavilion to the black box Mies bookstore to Hugh Hardy's disco streamlined moderne to Luckmans sorry start. Renzo Piano's 'back-to-the-future cinema spheres just continues the trajectory"

The shrinkage of daily newspapers and news and culture magazines has thinned the already slim ranks of architecture critics. While blogs and social media proliferate debate about architecture and design, many have fretted about the lack of a common dialogue around architecture and urbanism as defined by the work of leading critics. It turns out that architecture criticism is far from dead, however, as three established voices are finding new outlets with newspapers and national magazines. — archpaper.com

Analysis, rather than the promotion of starchitects, was her aim, and a prodigious amount of research underlies her early, punchy pronouncements as well as her late, magisterial style...Her death removes a passionate and particular voice from the shrinking ranks of full-time architecture critics, but also represents a loss of institutional memory for architecture culture...She didn’t offer compromise positions — The Nation

John Hill’s book “A Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture” is filled with examples of the crazy new forms of the last decade, like Frank Gehry’s white wind-filled “sail” on the West Side Highway in Chelsea. [...]

And yet, the United States is in the middle of a great revival of traditional architecture — Georgian, neo-Classical, Arts and Crafts and so forth — that is almost absent from Mr. Hill’s stimulating and enjoyable work. So, what isn’t contemporary about traditional design? — nytimes.com