After dabbling at the edges for political discourse for several years, the AIA's New York chapter has jumped in with both feet by releasing this week its first-ever mayoral platform.

"We just felt these issues were too important to stand on the sidelines anymore," said Jill Lerner, a principal KPF and the chapter's president. "Whether it's zoning and building codes or sustainability issues or climate change and Sandy, politicians set the agenda for how the city gets built." — crainsnewyork.com

In Makoko, a sprawling slum on the waterfront of Lagos, Nigeria, tens of thousands of people live in rickety wood houses teetering above the fetid lagoon. It’s an old fishing village on stilts, increasingly battered by floods from heavy rains and rising seas. Because the settlement was becoming dangerous, the government forcibly cleared part of it last year. — NYT

In contrast to postmodernism – to Krier but also to Tschumi and Koolhaas, who tended more toward approaching architecture through the political issues of that time – we started solely from architectural issues. We also wrote our first book about that, about how architecture itself can again be a source of fascination. — uncubemagazine.com

The Municipal Art Society asked four design firms to draw big: Reimagine the ideal Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden.

The proposals — by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, SHoP Architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture — will be introduced on Wednesday at the TimesCenter. All plans expect the new station to include high-speed rail. — nytimes.com

In the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect interviewed Larraine Henning who is currently seeking funding for A Practical Guide to Squatting on Indiegogo.

@bawshaw commented "@LandMass - agreed. although the thesis is interesting, this is not out of the box in terms of a career"...Yet Connely Farr disagreed "@ LandMass - yep. you sound like an ass".

How would the design of the built environment, the process and practice of architecture change if women were leading and equally represented? — indiegogo.com

The exhibition at the MAK Center in West Hollywood, curated by UCLA architectural historian and critic Sylvia Lavin, is a wry study of the ways Los Angeles artists and architects worked with, leaned on, stole from and influenced one another in the 1970s.

In a larger sense, it charts the way Southern California architects threw off the influence of establishmen Modernism and helped remake the profession in that decade. — latimes.com

Though indebted to conventional artistic methodologies, the vibrant, playful works of Jorge Prado lack traditional notions of artistic autonomy, with multiple uses straddling sculpture, furniture and architecture. Over espresso and a cigarette in the kitchen of his Los Angeles home, Pardo shares with Oscar Tuazon his processes of transforming built environments into functionally fluid sites designed to facilitate a diversity of experience. — youtube.com

She has become a global brand so desirable that her buildings in China are now being pirated – before they are even finished. So what territory is left to conquer?

The answer might be found by peering through the windows of an innocuous looking building on Clerkenwell Road in east London, which opened this week as the Zaha Hadid Design Gallery, part of Clerkenwell Design Week. — guardian.co.uk

Architecture for Humanity is working with local and regional construction professionals to begin assessments and support rebuilding work after an F-4 tornado ripped through the heart of Moore, OK and surrounding communities. — architectureforhumanity.org

The jury in the United States District Court in Houston found that Frontier committed copyright infringement by constructing and marketing nineteen houses that infringed Hewlett’s copyrighted designs. Frontier’s owner, Ronald Wayne Bopp, was also held personally liable for Frontier’s activities.

The amount of the judgment was based on the amount of profits Frontier earned from the sales of houses that infringed Hewlett’s copyrights. — yourhoustonnews.com

The French architect behind the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Fondation Cartier and the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris has designed the breathtakingly bold new National Art Museum of China (Namoc) for Beijing, a vast structure which combines internal complexity with apparent external simplicity. — ft.com