Students and faculty from the University of Virginia created a temporary addition to Thomas Jefferson’s vision for a living and learning community. The final product – a series of interlocking arches made of nontoxic, recyclable polypropylene plastic – is very different from the neoclassical style that Thomas Jefferson admired. However, Jefferson, who had a chemistry lab installed in the Rotunda, likely would have been fascinated by the technology used in its production. — UVA Today

"I cross a bit my fingers,” Renzo Piano told me. “It may work. We shall see.”

We were standing inside the concrete shell of the main auditorium of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, an ambitious but troubled project that after a series of delays is expected to open in 2019. [...]

Construction workers hammered away all around us, producing a ring of noise that occasionally made it tough to hear Piano, who at 80 speaks more softly than he once did. — Los Angeles Times

Pier 55, the elaborate $250 million performing arts center on an undulating pier in the Hudson River, is back from the dead.

Forty-three days ago, Barry Diller, the entertainment mogul behind the plan, pulled the plug on the project [...]

Now, in an agreement brokered by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mr. Diller agreed to revive the project, known as “Diller Island,” and opponents who had filed a series of lawsuits to stop the plan agreed to drop their legal battle. — The New York Times

But the Vali-e-Asr mosque, designed by the Iranian architects Reza Daneshmir and Catherine Spiridonoff, is stirring controversy in a country that hosts some of the world’s most glittering places of worship. Iranian hardliners are refusing to recognise it as a mosque, complaining that it does not have a minaret or proper dome, and that it is dwarfed by the theatre. [...]

The conservative Mashregh News said: [...] It was “an insulting, postmodern design” that is “empty of any meaning”, it said. — The Guardian

Closings commenced at the late Zaha Hadid‘s futurist 520 West 28th Street at the end of June. According to a press release from developer Related, now that move-ins are underway, the architects have revealed the fully amenitized interiors, which include one of the world’s first private IMAX theaters, a 75-foot sky-lit lap pool, a High Line-adjacent terrace and landscaped courtyard, and a fitness center complete with a 24-hour juice bar and plunge pool. — 6sqft

Ten years after a Dundee V&A museum was first considered, the finishing touches are being applied to the exterior of the £80.1m building ahead of its opening next summer. [...]

No amount of artist's impressions and computer-generated fly-throughs could have prepared the city for the true size and scale of the imposing design of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who will inspect the building on Wednesday. — BBC

Architects have a thing for strong men, and the big global practices – from Norman Foster to Zaha Hadid – have piled in in a bid to help Kazakhstan’s dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, build himself a trophy city — The Guardian

In an emerging subgenre of architectural documentary, Nathaniel Kahn, Tomas Koolhaas, and Eric Saarinen take a personal look at their mythologized fathers. [...]

Whether a film deals in the social or monumental legacy of an architect, the idea of the genius—which has been so unevenly applied—should come under scrutiny. As the children of architects have conferred through these films, nobody can be all things to all people. — citylab.com

The mysterious images of the physical manifestations of military power hover between abstraction and information, between the inscrutable and the mundane. They are at once compelling as visual compositions and chilling as photographic documentation of activities that are otherwise based on speculation. — MacArthur Foundation

Frances Bronet, senior vice president and provost at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and a distinguished educator at the forefront of interdisciplinary curricula and collaboration, has been selected as the 12th president of Pratt Institute, announced Bruce Gitlin, Chair of the Institute’s Board of Trustees and Co-Chair of the Presidential Search Committee [...].

She will be the first woman president to lead Pratt Institute, one of the world’s most renowned art and design colleges.  — pratt.edu