Architectural practices and academic programs should rethink their wholesale replacement of teaching hand drawing and model making with computer skills alone. Digital tools can enhance the tactile interpretations of architectural concepts, and there should be room for teaching both when educating architects of the future. — nytimes.com

In a letter titled ‘Kicking against the Prix’, the RIBA gold medallist claimed the Coop Himmelb(l)au founder had failed to attend the biennale despite issuing a critical press release last week describing it as ‘banal’. — architectsjournal.co.uk

A reliable source provided us with some official blueprints for the Apple Campus 2 yesterday, and these are just a few of the images that illustrate the mammoth building currently being planned in Cupertino, Calif. A single one of these slides leaked out today, so we are putting these up now; we are resizing and still have to watermark. — 9to5mac.com

“We don’t believe architecture can solve anything,” Andraos said of the relationship between environmentalism and design in WORKac’s creations. “Rather, we feel this is a question of impacting culture. In the architect’s Sisyphean relation to power, we believe in the visionary, and his agency to radicalize and to move culture.” — yaledailynews.com

The report, entitled The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse, has been said to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental benefit of building reuse to date. Most notably, it concludes that, when comparing buildings of equivalent size and function, building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction. — earthtechling.com

IT has become fashionable in many architectural circles to declare the death of drawing. What has happened to our profession, and our art, to cause the supposed end of our most powerful means of conceptualizing and representing architecture?

The computer, of course. — nytimes.com

The Architects' Journal reported that Wolf Prix referred to the Venice Architectural Biennale as an ‘expensive dance of death’ and went on to claim a ‘great’ biennale would have featured forums and themes looking ‘behind the scenes’ at decision-making. mimiz took on the charge "having just come back from venice where I moderated several panel discussions on the behind the scenes making of interventions at the US Pavilion, I think Prix is sucking on some sour grapes."

"Zawia#00:Change discusses the significantly changing realities imposed on all social, political and economic systems and their influence on design disciplines. Zawia#00:Change will attempt to demonstrate whether architects are ready to embrace changing ideals and new modes of operation, and whether they are willing to help better people’s lives rather than focusing on glorifying design or architecture." — www.zawia.co

Three winning projects were announced in the Future Cities, Planning for the 90 per cent competition: ateliermob (Portugal), Municipal Housing Secretariat of São Paulo (Brazil), and Interazioni Urbane (Italy). The projects are part of the exhibition Future Cities: Planning for the 90 per cent in Venice during the 13th Architecture Biennale. Ten projects were selected for the exhibition from more than 100 participants from several countries. — bustler.net

Last week, Bustler presented the project Connecting Greenland: AIR+PORT, designed by BIG, TENU, Julie Hardenberg and Inuk Silas Høgh, as part of the exhibition Possible Greenland in the Danish pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy. Today's featured project from Possible Greenland is Greenland Migrating, developed in a collaboration between Henning Larsen Architects, David Garcia Studio and KITAA Architects. — bustler.net

Frank Gehry is arguably the world's most famous architect, and while hist projects are notoriously expensive to construct, they may be worth it, at least for residential developers. In Manhattan, the penthouses at New York by Gehry are up for rent for $60,000 per month, and in Hong Kong, an apartment in a newly completed Gehry-designed condo tower overlooking the harbor has just sold for $61 million. Talk about a Pritzker prize. — New York Observer

Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) argues that, seen in their totality since 1967, these home demolitions amount to an intentional "policy of displacement". — AlJazeera

Labelling the festival an ‘expensive dance of death’, the Coop Himmelb(l)au-founder went on to claim a ‘great’ biennale would have featured forums and themes looking ‘behind the scenes’ at decision-making ‘instead of boring exhibitions’. — The Architects' Journal