When she was Growing up in Scotland, Lily Jencks's parents would hold weekend seminars for their circle of academic friends. "At age 5, I had to define my generations' attitudes on topics such as 'feminist spirituality,'" said Ms. Jencks, who, at 31, runs two London-based landscape design firms: LJA + Land, which she founded in 2008, and JencksSquared, a new company through which she collaborates with her father, the architectural theorist and designer Charles Jencks. — online.wsj.com

Since the iPhone is by far the most popular mobile device that Archinect readers own, according to our web analytics, we developed this app for you iPhone (and iPod/iPad!) users as a simple, mobile version of Archinect...Lian Chikako Chang loves the new app because it is "so readable. I can archinect on my way to the cafeteria".

Arctic Architecture: Svalbard is the first book in a series that will explore the inevitability of northward human migration, its impact on the landscape, and the possibility that sustainable architecture can accommodate human expansion while minimizing environmental damage. Additional volumes focusing on other Arctic locations are also planned. But your support for this first volume is critical. — Kickstarter

As Modernist buildings reach middle age, many of the stark structures that once represented the architectural vanguard are showing signs of wear, setting off debates around the country between preservationists, who see them as historic landmarks, and the many people who just see them as eyesores. — nytimes.com

499.SUMMIT is a conceptual proposal for a futuristic high-rise urban penitentiary in Jersey City which seeks to challenge the conventions of traditional prison design. The project, a collaborative effort by grad students Andreas Tjeldflaat and Gregory Knobloch, was part of the PennDesign studio FUTURE PRISON DESIGN. — bustler.net

With the firm Front, in which he is a Partner, Marc Simmons has collaborated on projects with OMA, Asymptote Architecture, ARO, Beyer Blinder Belle, Gehry Partners, Herzog & De Meuron, Kengo Kuma, KPF, Mack Scogin Merril Elam Architects, Renzo Piano, Sejima + Nishizawa Associates, Steven Holl Architects, Toshiko Mori, and many other architects. His lecture will explore themes in his recent work, including the speculative and experimental potential of the facade specialist. — youtube.com

In 2009 and 2010, we visited residents of Lafayette Park with photographer Corine Vermeulen while researching our forthcoming book Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies. Vermeulen’s portraits of townhouse owners in their homes appeared in the New York Times. Here we present the corollary to that series: tenants of the Pavilion and the Lafayette Towers in their apartments. Vermeulen’s portraits are accompanied by Lana Cavar’s photos of the views from each apartment window and by excerpts from interviews — places.designobserver.com

“This is a major win not just for the county but for the nation,” Mr. Astorino, a Republican (ed. and Westchester County executive), said at a news conference. “We took a very principled stand against an unwarranted invasion by HUD and the federal government, and the county won.” — NYT

In 1958, Baghdad was featured in Time magazine—not as a hotbed of revolutionary, civil or sectarian strife, but for its ambitious plans for the world's most famous architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, to recapture through their modern buildings the city's former glory. — online.wsj.com

Google’s new $700 million data centers in Taiwan will make ice at night, when electricity is significantly cheaper, and use it to cool the buildings during the day, reports Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge. It’s called thermal storage, and it’s basically a battery, but for air conditioning. — grist.org

The British architect David Chipperfield will oversee a major renovation of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, a concrete, steel and glass landmark at Potsdamer Platz completed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1968.

Chipperfield has worked extensively in Berlin, finishing work on the war-ravaged Neues Museum on the Museum Island complex in 2009. — bloomberg.com

This ulta-futuristic pedestrian bridge fashioned from hexagonal steel framing and paving links two uneven areas of Motril, Spain. — Inhabitat.com

The Hefner/Beuys House by Jimenez Lai is a cartoonish architectural installation that extends its story into the realm of performance art. Citing two predecessors of performance artists, Joseph Beuys and Hugh Hefner, this project also asks - who is the real extrovert between the two? Hefner may be the obvious answer, but Beuys relocated himself out of his context to a stage-like environment whereas Hefner simply stayed in his mansion. — kickstarter.com