Photovoltaic panels are the latest building material to gain a black market. NYTimes View full entry

We just posted a new ShowCase feature - Towards Paradise, a landscape installation sited at the end of the Arsenale, by Gustafson Porter (London) and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (Seattle), for the Venice Biennale. View full entry

This week we serve up another hat-trick in the features section... In Memoriam: Cooper Mack - Anthony Vidler, Cooper Union's Dean and Professor of Architecture, authors a bitter-sweet tribute to William Cooper Mack. Mack, a talented young architect and recent graduate from the Cooper Union... View full entry

One nice thing about online bookstore giants like Amazon is that the smaller niche-market shops have become much more interesting, offering thoughtfully curated collections targeting highly specialized readers. One of my favorite sources for design books is YouWorkForThem... and they're currently... View full entry

Michelle Kaufmann , Oakland-based green prefab architect, has released a white paper that suggests 'Nutrition Labels' for houses. The paper addresses some of the challenges facing the world of green home building and discusses the potential for sustainability labeling to serve as a clear... View full entry

Called the "G1", Google's handset is rumored to have both a touchscreen and a slide-out qwerty keyboard and will run a new open-source OS called Android. T-Mobile will offer the phone in the US this fall for an estimated $199. The official announcement will be made today in NYC. Guardian | Core... View full entry

The new Basque health department designed by Spanish architects, Juan Coll-Barreu and Daniel Gutiérrez Zarza is nearing completion in Bilboa. Its gleaming, angular facade makes it look - at a glance - like an enormous, glass version of a mangled tin can. Guardian View full entry

Wayne Congar - who's diligently school blogging for GSAPP Columbia University - was just awarded 3rd prize winner (in collaboration with Arielle Assouline-Lichten) at the White House Redux competition that announced the jury results today. Congratulations, Wayne & Arielle - we absolutely... View full entry

Elisabeth Rosenthal explores Alan Berger's proposal to redesign wetlands in the Latina Province of Italy (aka the Pontine Marshes). His proposed master ecological plan for this highly polluted region of Italy would have the state buy up to 500 acres of land to create a manufactured wetland which... View full entry

Norman Foster and Richard Rogers have been approached by French energy giant EDF Energy, but both practices have rejected the opportunity to contribute designs to a new generation of nuclear power stations. Building > View full entry

This week's recap of the activity in the discussions: thanks to LIG: The annual M.Arch. admissions rat race is beginning to heat up. Dr. Architecture has posted a thread with the dates of upcoming graduate open houses, and the 2009 M.Arch. Comisery thread continues to chug along. Who has it... View full entry

Evan is devouring Hong Kong, comparing its verticality with the horizontality of his old hometown Los Angeles, while his reading list at University of Hong Kong continues to grow. We got lots of sweet coverage on Gehry's Serpentine Pavillion in Hyde Park from our London boys Mustafa... View full entry

This new exhibit at the Swiss Architecture Museum explores how the collapse of the socialist economic system in the Western Balkans has given rise to extensive informal building activity that represents a new form of urbanization. Balkanology brings together leading architects and urban planners... View full entry

What if the same ratchet-scaffolding that jacked the roof of the Neue National Gallerie into place were re-installed and thrown into reverse, crushing everything inside? The world's largest clear-span crushing machine is a perversely appealing idea, regardless of whether you agree with the... View full entry

While the pavilions, installations and exhibitions at the 11th Architecture Biennale Venice have already been drawing much attention this week, another very exciting event within the Biennale event framework is coming up this weekend: MACE (Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe), a... View full entry