The Spanish region of Valencia has been called the "California of Spain" for its gorgeous Mediterranean coastline and modern architecture.

But now Valencia epitomizes the worst of Spain's problems. It had the country's most inflated property market and the biggest crash. Its landscape is littered with empty and half-finished buildings. — npr.org

The value of an institution isn’t measured in public square feet. But its value can be devalued by bad architecture...The designs have all the elegance and distinction of a suburban mall. I was reminded that Mr. Foster is also responsible for the canopied enclosure of the inner court at the British Museum, a pompous waste of public space that inserts a shopping gallery into the heart of a sublime cultural institution. — New York Times

Orhan Ayyüce published parts 1 + 2 of a multi-part interview with George Brugmans (Executive Director of the IABR)...Thayer-D chimed in "This is an excellent example of how well intentioned architects continue to talk past each other...One of the speakers spoke of the need to create relationships with politicians, developers and the public in general to forge a new way forward...What's amazing is that this has been happening for the last 20 years in the Congress for New Urbanism

"Sometimes if you do a competition, you know you’re taking a risk of it not happening. Many of them that we’ve done remain unbuilt for us, and unbuilt for anyone. We always look at competitions very carefully to try and determine whether it’s just emotion on the part of the sponsors or it's something real." — DWELL

The redevelopment of the Richardson Olmsted Complex will...transform the former Buffalo State Hospital from a place of healing to one of hospitality.

The design builds upon Olmsted's original intent while conserving existing resources, preserving the fabric of the space, and creating connections and purpose. — Buffalo Rising

When you walk in, you encounter what is, at first glance, a small studio apartment. Within that cube are actually 8 functional spaces. The living room and office become the bedroom with a tug of a bookshelf. Open one of the closets and you'll find 10 stackable chairs that go around a telescopic dining table for large dinner parties. An entire guest room with bunk-beds and a closet is revealed behind a wall that slides out on tracks. And of course, a well-equipped kitchen and bathroom await. — gizmodo.com

“I am an architect with a passion for nature’s lessons and man’s interventions” was how Mr. Korab described himself in a statement on his Web site, balthazarkorab.com. — NYT

The Discovery Channel has aired a segment which gets behind the massive 3D printer D-Shape, designed by Italian inventor Enrico Dini and his company Monolite UK with the eventual aim of "printing buildings." The short film describes Dini's childhood obsession with building sandcastles, taking the viewer through the process of conceiving and designing D-Shape, which uses thin layers of bonded sand to build up its constructions. — theverge.com

The National Slavery Museum, which was spearheaded by former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder, never paid Pei for the architectural work. Pei says it is owed more than $6 million, money that the firm hopes to recoup in an eventual sale of the 38 acres.

The slavery museum organization now owes more than $300,000 in delinquent real estate taxes to Fredericksburg. The city has begun the lengthy legal process of selling the land at auction to recoup the back taxes. — news.fredericksburg.com

Fundamentals will be a Biennale about architecture, not architects. After several Biennales dedicated to the celebration of the contemporary, Fundamentals will focus on histories – on the inevitable elements of all architecture used by any architect, anywhere, anytime (the door, the floor, the ceiling etc.) and on the evolution of national architectures in the last 100 years. — labiennale.org

Among Gang’s intentions is to invite a “more wild version” of nature into cities, using what she refers to as “green infrastructure” to support and enhance urban landscapes. “Nature as we see it in cities is created, it’s man-made, it’s redesigned in a certain sense,” says Gang. “I think it’s important not for romantic reasons, but for practical and experiential reasons, to extend biodiversity within the ecosystem.” — businessweek.com

Making a mess of the built environment and the politics of space, one issue at a time. — SOILED

In 2009, Dennis Maher... bought an abandoned property from D’Youville College for $10,000...After he sorted through the junk he found inside, he began to build, reconfiguring the pieces of things like a home entertainment center...and dollhouse furniture... He attached the structures he created to the floors, walls and ceilings, like Joseph Cornell sculptures run amok...You can sense dust bunnies everywhere swelling with importance. — New York Times

It all leads one to ponder the what-if Los Angeles, to imagine the city that would exist today if the best proposals for remedying its ailments had been realized. Los Angeles would now include a ring of thousands of acres of urban and regional parks, a bold, space-age airport, a winged nature center for Griffith Park and hillside housing developments sculpted to the contours of the landscape rather than sitting on graded and terraced scars. We would be living in a very different city. — latimes.com

How can we let geriatrics design the future? There is a creeping conservatism in old age, Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou was genuinely revolutionary, but that was in 1977, ever since then they've been riffing off the same ideas, with decreasing vitality...They are past retirement age and yet they march on, pulling out the same ideas over and over again, while the planet fawns obsequiously at their feet. — Vice