THE WORK OF 48-YEAR-OLD JEANNE GANG may at last herald the end of the starchitect era. The founder of Chicago's Studio Gang Architects puts more faith in her raw materials—and the purposes they can be put to—than in the pursuit of iconic shapes or the mind- bending possibilities of computer-aided design. — online.wsj.com

When Wang Shu won the prize, he was in LA, about to give a lecture at UCLA. Architect Neil Denari, a professor at the school and Wang's host, was with him that afternoon. "His cell phone was just buzzing," Denari says. "Chinese journalists at three in the morning calling him and calling him." The news was leaked a day before the official announcement was made. "He didn't look like a guy who was thinking, This is what I've been waiting for, to be world famous! He looked a little bemused." — online.wsj.com

[Zumthor] runs a small office from his mountain home in Switzerland; he doesn't give interviews by telephone; he rarely makes public appearances; and his projects—like the ghostly luminescent bathhouse he created for the Swiss town of Vals—emanate a high seriousness that could only have come from this oracle of the Alps. Yet recently, the typically solitary Zumthor has taken to palling around with another prominent designer: celebrated garden designer Piet Oudolf. — online.wsj.com

The Curry Stone Foundation has announced the winners of the 2012 Curry Stone Design Prize. In a departure from previous years, and in honor of the fifth anniversary of the Prize, five winners will share the award equally, each recognized with $25,000 for their work as social design pioneers. — bustler.net

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced that it had accepted an award from the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration’s Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) to promote the export of American architectural services to India and Sri Lanka. — aia.org

a Danish architect and part-time aviation journalist is mapping each claimed shoot-down of Assad’s jets and helicopters, resulting in the first running tabulation of the cost — at least in terms of machinery — of the escalating Syrian air war. Bjørn Holst Jespersen’s map, sponsored by journalist David Cenciotti’s blog The Aviationist, marks 19 possible “kills” by rebel forces, as reported in the press or seen in YouTube videos. — wired.com

The Metabolist Movement in the 1960s established the foundation from which contemporary architecture in Japan has emerged up to the present. Even today, the visionary architectural and urban projects created by the leading Metabolist Kiyonori Kikutake continue to shine brightly, according to Toyo Ito. In this lecture, he will consider Metabolism’s significance today through his rereading of Kikutake's works of that time. — archinect.com

“For us, it was really a blend of what’s the right concept for Park Avenue, a place that has not had a new building for almost 50 years, an avenue that is quite possibly the most important commercial boulevard in New York City, quite possibly the United States, and what is the place of a new build down the street from Seagrams and Lever House, two of the greatest buildings ever built,” Daivd Levinson said. — New York Observer

Adding on top of the old Prentice is intended as a thought exercise in what might be called a third way that may not always get its due in preservation battles...And this is where Ms. Gang comes in, compellingly. After our conversation she rapidly crafted a concept for a 31-story skyscraper atop the cloverleaf. — NYT

The fairly rectangular structure, located just a few feet from the new light rail Expo Line’s elevated tracks in Culver City, gets most of its energy from photovoltaics—a 2,800 sq ft array sitting on top of a shaded parking canopy outside. But what makes it all work are the energy savings: It significantly reduces loads through several low-tech, high-tech, and even revolutionary techniques, most of which were developed with engineers at Buro Happold, whose LA offices are just down the street. — archpaper.com

Riding on the tailwinds of last week’s Mirvish + Gehry announcement, Oxford Properties Group today announced plans for the large-scale redevelopment of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and its surrounding areas. Dubbed "Oxford Place," the project will include much more than a refurbishing of the convention centre. Oxford plans to build four towers: one residential, one office and, of particular interest, two for a hotel that would serve a proposed casino... — urbantoronto.ca

Next to interviews with Saskia Sassen and with the Nigerian-born architect Kunlé Adeyemi, and a series of contributions that discuss Next Urbanism in general, we feature eleven articles that focus specifically on the cities of each of the Next Eleven countries. — MONU Magazine