It turns out pedestrians couldn’t be bothered to detour through the pixellated concrete compound. “Stairs were too steep, and people preferred crossing Blaak [the street passing under foot] at ground level,” van Schaik explains. “This left the bridge with serious problems. Most shops were vacant, as was the Supercube for a long time." — fastcodesign.com

A couple of years ago, I took a temp job assisting an architectural model builder. It was an intense experience - meticulously crafting delicate materials into structural works of art. I became fascinated with the craftsmanship and artistic ability that goes into this work. The advent of 3D printing - as exciting as it is - poses a problem for this art form. If a machine can spit out a 3D version of a building, is the era of model-making coming to an end? — vimeo.com

Corporate America is moving away from conventional layouts where an employee's status is measured by the amount of space he occupies. Instead, more compact, playful designs are coming into favor.

People can do their jobs almost anywhere with their cellphones and laptops, the reasoning goes, so let's make the office a place where people are stimulated by close interaction at their workstations and chance meetings in inviting public spaces such as lounges and coffee bars. — latimes.com

Although the Bay is a natural entity borne of great rivers draining the entire Central Valley of California, every inch of its shoreline today is the product of human activity, by either intent or incident. — Center for Land Use Interpretation

Arki is an Augmented Reality platform for real-time visualisation of architectural models. By incorporating AR technology within the architectural design process, ARki is able to visualise 3d models for both design and presentation purposes, helping to create an immersive visualisation technique with multiple layers of interactivity. ARki can be deployed on any ios/ android device which allows the user to explore 3d data with an added level of navigational freedom. — darfdesign.com

And just as prisons in the U.S. are now designed to look not just secure and largely windowless but so nondescript that they practically disappear, architecture firms often coat their prison-design work in several layers of euphemism.

Prisons and jails become "correctional facilities." On the website of the large corporate firm HOK Architects, which designed the 1997 Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown L.A., they are tucked into a broader portfolio of "justice buildings." — latimes.com

The design called for a series of rectangular buildings skewed on an axis comprised of ground-floor retail, office development and proposed residential and flex office space and the upper section would be a hotel, according to city officials.

“I have to say that the Metro Pacific is a beautiful project and you look at it and it’s stunning architecturally,” Davis said. “The affordable housing is kind of an afterthought … . It’s a little unclear of how many units we are going to get.” — smdp.com

President Barack Obama is appointing a known critic of the planned Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial design to serve on the federal commission that oversees the project.

The White House announced Obama’s intent to appoint former National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Bruce Cole last month, but it drew little attention while Congress was in recess. Cole led the humanities endowment under former President George W. Bush. — washingtonpost.com

I think the development of design and planning ideas over the past three decades is where feminism has actually been most effective but least acknowledged...Architecture and planning have been reshaped by these feminist agendas in many areas...but I don’t believe academic culture acknowledges explicitly the influence of feminist ideas on the architectural and urban design practices and projects of the past three decades. - Torre — The Architectural League

Donna Sink offered up her memories "I spent a summer living in that building. It's very lovely and graceful, though I like ‘suavely-curved’ much better as a descriptor! The views are unmatched, IMO, still. Breathtaking...Back then its only drawback was that it was very removed from the activity of the city

Developers have promised urgent action to “cover up” the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in the City after an ultra-bright light reflected from the building melted a Jaguar car on the streets below.

The 525ft, £200 million building has been renamed the “Walkie Scorchie” after its distinctive concave surfaces reflected a dazzling beam of light which blinded passers-by and has now caused extensive damage to vehicles parked beneath it. — independent.co.uk

In 2012, ​filmmaker Leon Gerskovic chronicled the journey of 16 design/buildLAB students as they conceived and realized the Masonic Amphitheatre. The project consisted of the complete redevelopment of a post-industrial brownfield into a public park and performance space. Reality Check is their inspirational story. — Reality Check Film

Baumgartner+Uriu's "Animated Apertures", a housing tower in Lima, Peru, will be featured at the ArchiLab 2013 exhibition at the FRAC (Les Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain) in Orleans, France starting in September. [...]

Staying true to nature as possible, Herwig Baumgartner and Scott Uriu designed Animated Apertures to be "an interactive and intelligent building organism" as opposed to digitalized congruity. — bustler.net