USC Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture) and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) have completed their first visualization for their NASA research grant into the potential use of Contour Crafting robotic fabrication technology to build structures on the Moon. [...] Contour Crafting was recently voted one of the top 15 innovations most likely to change the World. The question now being addressed is how it will change the Moon. — parasite.usc.edu

This new MONU issue on the topic of Post-Ideological Urbanism probably touches on one of the most fascinating and biggest issues of our time and in our culture, or what is left of it: the non-ideological - or better post-ideological - conditions of our society when it comes to cities. (Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, November 2011) — monu-magazine.com

Finally, sameolddoctor wants to talk about architecture and the ethics of working in developing countries vs the ethics of vanity skyscraper projects. Citizen responds:
We don't have to go overseas for ethical dilemmas! How about the shiny new project on theseshores...
whose architect uses unpaid intern labor?
with the bold, avante garde design that is opposed by all the neighbors?
whose objective is to make more profit for an already-wealthy developer?......

Eleven winners and eighteen finalists were announced this week at KRob 2011, the international Ken Roberts Architectural Delineation, Drawing and Illustration Competition. The prestigious contest is the longest running architectural drawing competition currently in operation anywhere in the world, hosted annually by the AIA Dallas chapter [...]. — bustler.net

While only a few of Yona Friedman's designs have come to fruition, he is responsible for the tiered Spatial City movement, which had a big impact on his field, and his ideas have inspired planners around the world. — haaretz.com

The exhibit also has models of grandiose never-built projects, like converting more than 62 acres of what's now Foggy Bottom into "The National Galleries of History and Art".

"Nothing in the built environment is inevitable," commented Moeller, senior vice president of the National Building Museum. "It's very unpredictable. There are some accidents. Often as not, things don't go according to plan." — examiner.com

Consider for just a moment the modern skyscraper. [...] The Chrysler Building in New York. The World Financial Center in Shanghai. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. They transform skylines and help define what it means to be a modern metropolis.

But once upon a time, they were just places for people to work. Kate Ascher traces that history in her new book, "The Heights: Anatomy of A Skyscraper." — marketplace.org

The house was just $1. The catch? A delivery charge of nearly $22,000.

.....Moving a house is, in theory, relatively simple. — New York Times

Households have evolved. But New York’s housing stock hasn’t. In essence, New Yorkers have increasingly had to adapt to the housing we’ve got, instead of designing and building the housing that suits who we have become. — New York Times

When completed in 2015, Hotel Crescent will stand on the banks of the Caspian Sea, its 33-stories housed in a vast, down-turned crescent. A sister project was proposed called the Full Moon Hotel that would have brought something resembling the Death Star from "Star Wars" to the Caspian coastline. — edition.cnn.com

Mongolia is to launch one of the world's biggest ice-making experiments later this month in an attempt to combat the adverse affects of global warming and the urban heat island effect.

The geoengineering trial, that is being funded by the Ulan Bator government, aims to "store" freezing winter temperatures in a giant block of ice that will help to cool and water the city as it slowly melts during the summer. — guardian.co.uk

These spaces (what shall we call them – privlic, publate – let's say publoid) don't always have to be bad things. Cities are made of places with degrees of publicness, including museums, restaurants, theatres, shops, malls and transport systems...But one issue is the honest use of language. — Guardian

Richard.Rozewski, discusses a microtecture solution being developed by a friend Patrick of APOC. Stephanie however contends “ the idea that this will promote sustainable living is patently false...the construction, however small, of individual buildings for individual people, will always inherently mean the opposite of 'sustainable' ” To which holz.box responded “false false false. microtecture can be very sustainable”.

All over Los Angeles, the places where artists, architects and engineers were busy in the postwar years inventing the future are being recast as monuments and historical shrines.

This new attitude toward the city's recent heritage can be seen in increasingly visible battles over the fate of postwar landmarks like Richard Neutra's Kronish House in Beverly Hills and in nascent efforts to preserve and display artifacts from the early years of the computer and aerospace industries in Los Angeles. — latimes.com

Architecture on Film: Rem Koolhaas and Shumon Basar in conversation before the UK premiere of "1,2,3 Rhapsody" and "The White Slave"
10th October 2011, Cinema 1, Barbican Centre, London — vimeo.com