The structures in Architecture Without Architects reveal a kind of purposeful, iterative, social design process that, while dating back centuries and originating in primitive cultures, offers a powerful parallel to contemporary shifts towards collaborative creation. — theatlantic.com

... the 8,400-square-foot residence known as the Andrew Fuller House and designed by modernist A. Quincy Jones may be doomed to a wrecking ball. The city has issued a demolition permit to the Frost Bank trust department, which is officially listed as the owner but is acting on behalf of Amon Carter III, the grandson of former Star-Telegram Publisher Amon G. Carter Sr. — star-telegram.com

Human beings and their communities are fragile because they are sustainable only within a narrow range of conditions and possibilities. It is the main task of architecture to maintain this range or to create it where it has not existed before. To some extent it is also architecture’s responsibility to expand this range when people require it not only for survival but also to flourish within the demands of change brought on by catastrophic events such as earthquake and tsunami. — lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com

Academic institutions have a mandate to contribute to public knowledge, but the structures that support the transfer and dissemination of research, and the application of research within urban design practice, are often weak. There is a widening gap between what happens within the academy and what happens on the ground in cities — often a retrograde, generic and ad hoc agglomeration of politically or financially motivated initiatives. — Places Journal

The U.S. Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, devoted to the theme Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, has launched a new website to share information about the exhibition and to broaden the call for projects to be considered for inclusion. — bustler.net

The portuguese architect Diogo Burnay to head Faculty of Architecture and Planning of Dalhousie University, at Halifax, Canada, after being selected among three finalists in an international competition. — Público - P3

Following last year’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima, there has been a great deal of public concern over the contamination of local food sources and water and now, newly constructed buildings can be added to the list of radiation fears in Japan. A three-month long survey of students in Nihonmatsu City turned city officials onto the presence of high levels of radiation in one recently built three-story apartment complex. — Inhabitat

Why is it that cities from New York to Shanghai, Dubai to London and Kuala Lumpur to Atlanta can throw up iconic skyscrapers like so many murals, while L.A.'s boxy tops look more like the Appalachians after strip-mining?

The answer? Blame well-meaning text inserted in 1974 into the Los Angeles Municipal Code. — kcet.org

In the last decade, much has been written about architecture for the greater good, and it would seem that the field, as a whole, is invested in bringing design to underserved communities. Yet all of this talk — at conferences, in the press, at universities — has focused hardly at all on how to put together a career in social design. — Places Journal

BOARD's Europan 11 entry for the Dutch city of Deventer suggests abandoning the idea of agriculture in cities. — http://www.b-o-a-r-d.nl/projects.htm

Archinect member applet sounded offended by Sherin’s focus on passive technologies writing "The information you are writing is so main stream and only shows you are just discovering things known to first year architecture and design students". Yet, as Amy Leedham, correctly pointed out "While the passive strategies here sound obvious and simple, most people are not using them, hence the need to remind people."

Works like the infinity room...are not designed with the end purpose of creating illusion or destabilizing perception. The works...use those things as tools to enable an experience of light and space in a much more direct way than is normally possible, “without...the diminishing effect of a learned associative response to explain away” the essence of what is being seen. — New York Times

Data from the AJ’s first Women in Architecture survey show that 47 per cent of women claim that men get paid more for the same work, and almost two-thirds believe the building industry has yet to accept the authority of the female architect — architectsjournal.co.uk

Skyscrapers have an 'unhealthy' link with impending financial collapse, according to banking experts. [...]

Researchers pointed to the fact the world's first skyscraper, New York's Equitable Life building, was finished in 1873 during a five-year recession, while the Empire State Building coincided with the Great Depression. — dailymail.co.uk

Reviving the Maida Vale model is often talked about but rarely done, and although the athletes' village version hasn't quite captured the lushness and generosity of the originals, it is at least there. It is also welcome that there is a degree of calm to the buildings, compared to the frenzied gesticulations, the visual shouts of "buy me, buy me" that typify most works of regeneration. — Guardian