The Evelyn Grace Academy, a cutting-edge new secondary school in Brixton, south London by Zaha Hadid Architects has won the prestigious £20,000 RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 for the best new European building built or designed in the United Kingdom. This is the second year running that Zaha Hadid Architects have won the RIBA Stirling Prize; last year they won the award for their MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome... — RIBA

The new library across from the Pacific Design Center strikes an appealingly upbeat tone, borrowing from various architectural influences to become one of the most impressive public pieces in the region in a decade. — Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times

Jordan Parnass Digital Architecture’s reorganisation of a 44 sq m studio apartment in New York in 2009 shows how architects in the Big Apple are designing better, smaller homes. The practice transformed an untidy, student-style pad in Manhattan’s East Village into “a live/work sculpture for a grown up” for its owner, Michael Pozner, head of retail development at American Apparel. — ft.com

An unprecedented architectural public education event is going to take place in New York. After Rome, Moscow, Terni, and St. Petersburg, VELONIGHT, the unique project by professor Sergey Nikitin, founding director of Moskultprog, is inviting to explore the postwar cultural and architectural history of New York City on bicycles in the night between October 1 and 2. — VELONIGHT

The showpiece is a staircase smack dab in the middle of the first-floor work room that leads to a second floor with a gaping white void painted red inside. Taranta says it's “reminiscent of a large droplet of water ready to fall from the ceiling.” Uh, yeah. If a “large droplet of water” looks exactly like a vagina. — fastcodesign.com

A complex scale model of Tokyo is on view by appointment at Tokyo's Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills. The model was built in 2003 by 30 Mori employees over approximately 17 months. All streets and buildings were photographed at street level and from above via helicopter. They were then adjusted in Photoshop and glued to polystyrene models. — thepolisblog.org

I’m please to announce that the issue of AD that I’ve edited with fellow FAT directors Sean Griffiths and Charles Holland alongside Charles Jencks is now out. Titled ‘Radical Post Modernism’, it has three real aims. — strangeharvest.com

Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have camped out in a square near Wall Street since Sept. 17, 2011, as part of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street." — Democracy Now @ Youtube

I've lately been exchanging bile on this subject with a friend, a Tokyo architecture professor who, having seen off earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, is having a harder time surviving the avalanche of well-meant, if simultaneously self-serving, condescension. — smh.com.au

Our first commissions were conversions and residential renovations with no budget. We were looking at how to convert an 1890s Victorian terrace house into something that suits a more modern spirit. Many of these spaces were tiny. But if you coat a wall in a certain colour, the visual experience of the space suddenly changes. You can use the effect of colour... to make spaces that look generous, but are actually quite restricted. — Matthias Sauerbruch, theglobeandmail.com

A review of project invoices... shows $5.17 million in lump-sum payments for work done by Calatrava himself, mostly "visioning." There is little accounting of what Calatrava did and how much time he spent on it — which is not unusual with star architects but isn't always the case.

The records provide other glimpses at the cost of doing business with someone of Calatrava's stature, including more than $640,000 spent on models and animation whose ownership is now in question. — denverpost.com

Builders will use the machine to complete the spire of the Shard skyscraper near London Bridge in south London.

When fully extended the crane will sit at 317 metres or 1,040 ft above ground level, making it seven metres taller than the building's eventual highest point (310 metres).

The Shard will become the tallest building in the European Union and the 45th tallest in the world when it is completed in 2012. — dailymail.co.uk

Times Culture Editor Jonathan Landman: In this case, Michael had some things to say about the approach he will take to this beat that I and my bosses thought were worth amplifying. The old-writer-new-mantle thing played a part, but there’s certainly no guarantee that a writer gets a Page 1 story when he or she switches beats. — New York Observer