The American Academy in Rome recently announced the winners of the 116th annual Rome Prize Competition. Recipients of the 2012-2013 prizes are provided with a fellowship that includes a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board for a period of six months to two years in Rome, Italy. — bustler.net

Over the past ten years a lot has been researched, analyzed, written and said about cities in the largest developing countries and emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China. (Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief of MONU Magazine, April 2012) — http://www.monu-magazine.com/

As a measure of the influence of all these ships, one need only look at the cities in which these museums are sited: London, Portsmouth, Southampton, Belfast, Bristol. All have been shaped – literally as well as metaphorically – by their seafaring pasts — Guardian

A public forum today at Union Station provided the public with their first look at conceptual visions for Union Station and the surrounding area by six architectural firms bidding to prepare a master plan for the facility.

Metro Executive Planning Director Martha Welborne told the several hundred people in attendance that the point of the vision boards was to energize the teams submitting bids to prepare the master plan, and energize the public that uses — or will someday use Union Station. — thesource.metro.net

If you're in Berlin this weekend, you might wanna check out this exhibition as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin: JOH3 - J. MAYER H.'s newly-opened residential building in Berlin's Mitte district - will open its gallery space with carpets and furniture from J. MAYER H.'s 2011 exhibition "Rapport" at Berlinische Galerie. The exhibition was organized as a collaboration between the Berlinische Galerie, Euroboden and Vorwerk. A model of the building will also be on view. — bustler.net

The proposal would replace a parking lot and a low building near the northwest corner of Market and Van Ness with a 34-story, 400-foot residential tower designed by New York's Richard Meier & Partners. — San Francisco Chronicle

Mitchell Joachim, founder of Terreform ONE, was featured in the May issue of Dwell Magazine for the Now 99- Today's Design Landscape: Ideas, People, Products & Plans. An interview with Diana Budds explores Joachim's designs for biologically based architecture as the future of housing. The published interview follows. — Dwell magazine/ GSD

The Italian government has 20 days in which to decide the fate of the country's national contemporary art museum, the Maxxi, which opened in Rome just two years ago and was designed by the Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. — The Guardian

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) today called for Congress to pass legislation that includes architecture school graduates in the same programs that offer other graduates loan debt assistance if they donate their services to their communities and elsewhere. — aia.org

“In looking at these designs, I think back and remember that some people predicted the terrorist attacks of 2001 would end our lust for travel,” notes Albrecht, who teaches in the decorative arts masters program at Cooper-Hewitt and is currently working on an exhibition of airports—another architectural hotspot. “But today, some ten years later, one of the ur-building types of tourism and globalization—the hotel—is alive and well and remains on the cutting-edge of architectural trends.” — Forbes Magazine

The site of 425 Park Avenue now awaits its fate as a star-studded line-up of prospective architects compete for the chance to helm the $750 million project. L&L Holding Co. has tapped Jean Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, Foster & Partners, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Richard Meier, Renzo Piano and others with high hopes to create a "bespoke skyscraper that will both complement Park Avenue's existing architectural treasures and make its own indelible mark in the world's most timeless office corridor".. — artinfo.com

Things are changing enormously in almost every sense. The effects of globalization have been positive and negative. My generation of architects is the first that could work almost anywhere in the world. We had the option to repeat the same building everywhere or to push ourselves forward, to create an encounter between ourselves and the local culture. — americancity.org

On Thursday, Briganti’s group honored two well-known Americans whose grandparents once waited on line in Ellis’ main building — former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and New York architect Richard Meier

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ellis-island-building-turned-a-museum-immigration-article-1.1064757#ixzz1suJate93 — New York Daily News

Your message is really a philosophical message to architects. You’re trying to show us how we can build cities and break out of the old modes of urban planning and urban design.

And even thinking about or imagining cities that we have had for the past few hundred years, you’re offering a new way. I don’t know anyone else that’s done that today. Maybe someone will say Colin Rowe. OK—Collage City, but this goes far, far beyond Collage City and any urban theory of Corbusier or anyone else. — lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com

CNN's The Next List profiles innovative Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. — youtube.com