Was it monotonous? Yes. But New York’s grid had its virtues. For one thing, it proved flexible enough to adapt when the city’s orientation did shift north-south, flexible enough to accommodate Olmsted’s Central Park, the genius of which lies in the contrast between its own irregularity and the regularity of the grid. — NYT

Lego has become this former Northbrook architect's life. Tucker is now a "Lego Certified Professional," one of the 13 artists and educators in the world endorsed by Lego to use its bricks in their projects. Though only Tucker has parlayed this into a Lego toy line, he would be fast to correct you: Lego is not a toy, it's a medium, and Lego Architecture is only part of what he has accomplished with plastic bricks. — featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com

Named A Room for London, the accommodation is also an art installation commissioned by Living Architecture and Artangel. Living Architecture is a social enterprise that operates a handful of holiday homes throughout the UK and aims to provide members of the public with the opportunity to experience contemporary architecture at first hand. The Artangel organisation commissions creative projects by contemporary artists. — telegraph.co.uk

Anthony Stephens offered up his euology for Ricardo Legorreta. "Ricardo Legorreta is the reason I began to study architecture...The spaces he designed had something long gone from most architects, soul. Unlike so many of the steel, glass and white wall designs that seem so clever and popular nowadays, his buildings could convey a feeling to those that laid eyes on the spaces he designed."

NYC mayor says money dispute will keep 9/11 museum from opening on time. — Washington Post

People are searching for something more authentic, says Kenneth Frampton, a British architect and critic and professor of architecture at Columbia University, who helped define this movement as "critical regionalism." Mr. Frampton says these houses are a reaction to the past couple decades of "compulsive uniformity," whether it's McMansions or the proliferation of "white box" modern houses. — Nancy Keates

But Madrid Río is a project whose audacity and scale, following the urban renewal successes of Barcelona, Spain’s civic trendsetter, can bring to a New Yorker’s mind the legacy of the street-grid plan, which this year celebrates its 200th anniversary. That’s because the park belongs to a larger transformation that includes the construction of dozens of new metro and light-rail stations that link far-flung, disconnected and often poor districts on Madrid’s outskirts to downtown. — NYT

Three students and a professor from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago are packed into a car, raring to go.

They joke they're the "Cicero crew." Their mission? To locate and survey every piece of religious, educational and commercial architecture from the 1930s to the 1970s. — wbez.org

Just last week, we published the outstanding winners of the 2011 Regional Holcim Awards for the Asia Pacific Region [...]. Taking the top prize in the program's “Next Generation” category was MIT student August Liau for a project to increase bicycle commuting in Beijing, China. The project advocates pedal power as a dynamic alternative for urban transit and recalls its well-proven potential in the world’s former cycling capital. — bustler.net

For most of the first decade of the 2000s, architecture was about the statement building. Whether it was a controversial memorial or an impossibly luxurious condo tower, architecture’s raison d’être was to make a lasting impression. Architecture has always been synonymous with permanence, but should it be? — opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

IKEA has proposed to build a complete neighborhood in East London. The Swedish furniture giant tries to implement its ideas and concepts in new fields of knowledge and urbanism. After its injection of each single family’s interior with cheap design furniture and the introduction of the IKEA standard house by daughter company BoKlok, it seems to be time for a complete IKEA neighborhood... — popupcity.net

Renowned architect Rem Koolhaas is viewed as one of the most important theoreticians of his trade. In an interview with SPIEGEL, he discusses soulless cities, the failings of Europe's largest urban redevelopment project in Hamburg and the problems with SPIEGEL's brand-new headquarters. — spiegel.de

Nine New York Institute of Technology architecture students, three of them from Long Island, will bring their creative designs and skills to Costa Rica to develop a recycling and education center — longislandpress.com

The 2011 Open Architecture Challenge: [UN] RESTRICTED ACCESS challenges architects and designers to partner with community groups across the world and develop innovative solutions to re-envision closed, abandoned, and decommissioned military sites. The six-month competition requires designers to work with the communities surrounding these former places of conflict to transform oftentimes hostile locations into civic spaces built for the public good. — theepochtimes.com