The eccentric California creator of a Mojave Desert compound of whimsical buildings known as Phonehenge West was jailed Friday for failing to obey an order to tear down the illegal structures. — Slate

A short back story. Towards the end of the school year, Julien De Smedt came to UIC to lecture. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview him for a forthcoming Fresh Meat article. Through the conversation, talk of short films came up. This led on to another conversation and then to something else (i don't remember all the details I'll have to review the recording). Long story short, I was asked to come to Copenhagen to work on a small Project for JDS. — University of Illinois Chicago (Matthew)

Itami, whose Korean name is Yoo Dong-ryul, was born in Tokyo in 1937 during the Japanese colonial era (1910-45). He studied architecture at Musashi University’s engineering school and led an active career for over 40 years.

In 2003, the architect’s oeuvre was highlighted in a solo exhibition, “Itami Jun, Japan’s Korean Architect,” at the Musee Guimet in Paris, France’s national museum dedicated to Asian art. — koreatimes.co.kr

Chairs designed by architects for high-profile commissions increasingly are for sale in stores. They are often pricy, but the appeal is the chance to bring a slice of cutting-edge international design into your home. — online.wsj.com

starrchitect relates a story about an acquaintance who "spent three years working in Petey's office, but when the interviewer looked at her resume, he discounted the three years as not being real office experience." Hawkin like others thinks the story doesn't add up writing "I think this post is fake/trolling." However elinor thinks "i believe it. architecture is rife with factions, and so many architects will use any excuse they can get to put down another."

With a cultivated sense of aesthetic, both Bruno Taut and Gordon Bunshaft, although incredibly different architects, possess the Taurus loves of color and jewel-like form and structure — DOMUS

Each fall High Desert Test Sites invites artists to create experimental projects adjacent to California's Joshua Tree National Park. This year HDTS invited Ball Nogues Studio to create a structure in a remote region of the Mojave Desert. This presents a unique opportunity to make an intervention upon an unfettered landscape at a grand scale. — unitedstatesartists.org

Adrian Smith, senior Design Partner at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture in Chicago, is the 2011 winner of the Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat for his extraordinary contribution to the supertall building typology. — bustler.net

As the architect of such curvaceous London landmarks as "the Gherkin" and the City Hall building described as a "glass testicle", it is something of a Damascene conversion, but Ken Shuttleworth has called time on strangely shaped edifices. — telegraph.co.uk

Architecture firm Populous is now playing for both sides in the contest to bring pro football back to Southern California.

The firm, already the architect of record for the 75,000-seat NFL stadium planned for east Los Angeles County, has been hired to do work on a rival proposal that sports and entertainment firm AEG wants to build on downtown Los Angeles' convention center campus, AEG said Wednesday. — mercurynews.com

Peter Zumthor's first completed building in the UK opens this Friday, July 1: the 2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. The concept for this year’s Pavilion is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. One enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. — bustler.net

With its strips of glass windows and clean geometric structures, the building paved the way for a modernist style which became the trademark of the Bauhaus. The factory still produces shoe lasts, the forms used to mould shoes, to this day. — Der Spiegel