The argument for preserving old buildings is a very strong one that I wholeheartedly support myself. However. On the rare occasions that I get to visit a forgotten building as magnificent as this one, I can’t help day dreaming about some of the incredible monumental relics I know back home and quietly wishing that a few more of them had been left to grow old and perish naturally rather than being unceremoniously hooked up to the proverbial life support machine of modern tourism... — humanplanet.com

Ruins don’t encourage you to dwell on what they were like in their heyday,before they were ruins. The Colosseum in Rome or the amphitheater at Leptis Magna have never been anything but ruins. They’re eternal ruins. It’s the same here. This building could never have looked more magnificent than it does now, surrounded by its own silence. Ruins don’t make you think of the past, they direct you toward the future. The effect is almost prophetic. This is what the future will end up like... — nytimes.com

Woods belonged to a small group of architects, including Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Liebeskind, working in the 1980s and 1990s who questioned the relevance of the utopian modernist architecture in the late twentieth century. Woods deferred from his colleagues, however, in that with one exception, his buildings were never constructed. — cooperhewitt.org

Architectural illustrations are “meant to be manipulative,” said Gordon Grice, a prominent Toronto-based illustrator. “We’re like lawyers; every case needs to have its best points brought forward.” — news.nationalpost.com

Architects, he explains, “understand about aesthetics; they know about psychology. The next depth to which they can go is understanding the brain and how it works and why do people feel more comfortable in one space than another?” — Pacific Standard

Woods’s work goes far beyond its influence on his more actively building contemporaries and disciples. His thin portfolio has unduly sidelined him from popular discourse, sequestering him from the more audible dialogues concerning contemporary architecture. To consider Woods a mere inspiration to others, a teacher and an enabler, is both deferential and reductive. — artinfo.com

"The cities are often designed based on an architects' ideal understanding of what a modern or a sustainable city should be like, but it is the people living in it that eventually make it modern or sustainable," he says.

"How these former farmers adapt to living in a modern city environment is what we still need to wait and find out." — europe.chinadaily.com.cn

Illustrious modernist Richard Meier and multi-disciplinary creator Massimo Vignelli reflect on their respective crafts, city life, and enduring friendship in this mesmeric film by Johnnie Shand Kydd. — NOWNESS.com

For over a century, a simple dilemma has vexed architects. How to escape the formal monotony of a series of identical stacked plates, without losing the efficiency of the canonical high-rise formula? Through a series of astute formal moves, and by evoking empathy, Chinese architecture practice MAD has achieved a rare breakthrough. — domusweb.it

Singapore now has its first commercial vertical farm, which means more local options for vegetables.

The technique uses aluminium towers that are as tall as nine metres, and vegetables are grown in troughs at multiple levels.

The technique utilises space better -- an advantage for land-scarce Singapore. — channelnewsasia.com

As the tri-state area continues to recover from Hurricane Sandy's devastation, the cast of the "Jersey Shore" is teaming up with the nonprofit organization Architecture for Humanity for "Restore the Shore," a special benefit set to air live on Thursday, November 15. — mtv.com

The people of Beijing seem excited about how their city is being shaped. And so they should be. Architecture in China today is bold and unapologetic.

But it embodies China’s rapid growth in less positive ways, too. Although the industry is buoyant these days, its long-term benefits for the people who live here are questionable. Too often, form trumps function. — latitude.blogs.nytimes.com

The creation of a public monument is a fraught business these days. That the pristine work of an architect nearly 40 years dead should rise intact, in today’s contentious political, legal and aesthetic climate, is a wonder. And how timely it is that the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt should be honored in such eloquent fashion at a moment when powerful political forces in this country seek to dismantle it. — Places Journal

A delegation from the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea, which inspected the building almost 15 years ago, concluded it was beyond repair and its lift shafts crooked.

But in 2008 an Egyptian company, Orascom Telecom, which operates a mobile network in North Korea, began equipping the building.

Mr Wittwer said the hotel will "partially, probably" open for business next year.

But original plans for 3,000 hotel rooms and three revolving restaurants have been greatly scaled back. — bbc.co.uk