Edison’s idea: a house that could be built with one pour of cement. The process could eliminate not only the traditional work of erecting walls and roof but also much of the labor involved in finishing the interiors. Given the right mold, “stairs, mantels, ornamental ceilings, and other interior decorations and fixtures” would all be formed by the same giant piece of concrete. — slate.com

Shopping malls around the country are dropping like flies. Roughly a third have trouble keeping the lights on. And estimates from Green Street Advisors suggest 10 percent of indoor malls will go dark within a decade, due to changing consumer tastes.

But some malls are putting up a fight, even with one foot in the grave. — marketplace.org

Marc J. Neveu, Ph.D., of the Wentworth Institute of Technology has been named Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) for a four-year term starting July 1, 2013. Neveu has previously contributed to the JAE as a writer, a reviewer, a theme editor, and, most recently, as an Editorial Board member and Associate Editor of Media Strategies. The JAE has been the primary venue for research and commentary on architectural education since it was founded in 1947. — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture

The houses aren't difficult to spot. They usually follow some variation of the following pattern: gray or greenish-gray paint, white or brick red trim, a colorful door -- mint green, orange, red -- and sometimes a colorful accent mailbox. Instantly recognizable horizontal wood-slat fencing is the final touch. — kcet.org

Zhang, a Chinese real estate developer, is the seventh richest self-made women in the world, worth $3.6 billion, according to Forbes. She's worth $800 million more than Oprah Winfrey, the world's best known self-made female billionaire.

Not only does Zhang's rags-to-riches story mirror that of China itself, but it is Zhang who has shaped much of the country's modern urban landscape, with the logo of her company SOHO China, on the side of buildings wherever you turn in Beijing. — cnn.com

One of the most gratifying bits of feedback I ever received from one of my Ranger projects came from a 60-something woman who’d attended a campfire program on freeway landscapes in Los Angeles. Months later, she told me that she never looked at a freeway in the same way. Who knows what this kind of change in perception might ultimately lead to? — Places Journal

We hired a human rights lawyer from Human Rights Watch when we started on the Abu Dhabi project. Both we and our client were interested in making sure the project was in the clear. There was a time when they were being beat up on for the conditions of temporary workers. And they did something about it: They built relatively comfortable camps. These issues are important to me when I take a project. — foreignpolicy.com

When Charles Correa was recently in London for the opening of his RIBA exhibition, Rob Wilson spoke with him about some of the key ideas, influences and recurrent themes in his work throughout his long career. — uncubemagazine.com

This summer, the Design Museum in London will be offering a glimpse into the future of fabrication and manufacturing with The Future Is Here: A New Industrial Revolution, a major new exhibition about the sweeping changes in manufacturing that are transforming our world. — bustler.net

Steven M. Davis, a partner in Davis Brody Bond, which designed the museum, said he and his colleagues had been guided by the principles of memory, authenticity, scale and emotion.

The museum will not open to the public until next spring, but officials have begun taking reporters through the unfinished galleries, confident that what was a construction zone a year ago, and a disaster area after Hurricane Sandy, now looks more like a museum. — nytimes.com

Now that the exhibition has opened at the museum's Geffen Contemporary branch in Little Tokyo, where it will limp along through the middle of September as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents series, it's clear that it is the product of an architectural ruling class in Los Angeles that is not so much dysfunctional as increasingly insular. — Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times

It’s odd how little architects have had to say on the subject of sex. If they’re routinely designing the buildings in which sex happens, then you might expect them to spend more time thinking about it. Buildings frame and house our sexual lives — Aeon

Wainwright -
"So Leandro we are sitting on a window ledge in Dalston. Can you tell us why we're here?

Erlich -
"The idea is to create a facade that will resemble the architecture of the . . . neighborhood and um - that has always been part of my interest to bring the ordinary architecture as a stage for the public to participate in a kind of fiction that would be built through the experience." — The Guardian

Crank the A/C in the office just to stay awake,
Espresso and Red Bull till I got a stomach ache.
With our cotton blazers high, we have a sense of style,
But to the rest of the world we just point and smile
I read code books, while I'm on vacation
Take pictures of, my latest creation
We wear black and gray, with no logos on our threads
So many sleepless nights we're like the walking dead — youtube.com