“The form was reinvented to an extent,” says Yanni Loukissas, a postdoc in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS). And while the question of exactly which design changes should be credited to Utzon or Arup’s firm has been a matter of some dispute, the building, Louskissas says, stands as “an example where the engineer was instrumental in reshaping the project.” — web.mit.edu

Norman Foster told the Sunday Times: “Carlos is a great dancer who is inspiring the regeneration of an iconic ruin of early modernism outside Havana.” — Building Design

Álvaro Siza Vieira has been selected as laureate of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of this year’s International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, Italy. The board of la Biennale di Venezia, currently chaired by Paolo Baratta, under Director David Chipperfield, announced the decision this week, which also happens to be Siza's birthday week. — bustler.net

"I think that [austerity] is used as a cliche because people don't have ideas, they want to crib [old ones] to do bad stuff," she said, in a Q and A session with Guardian deputy editor Kath Viner. "Schools, housing, hospitals – I think the government should invest in good housing." — guardian.co.uk

Gerhard Kallmann, the architect who, with Michael McKinnell, designed Boston City Hall, a hulking, asymmetrical, Modernist building that has been widely acclaimed by architects for half a century though disparaged by many Bostonians, died on Tuesday in Boston. He was 97. — nytimes.com

In the previous Bustler post, we just published the 2012 RIBA Award Winners, announced recently by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Here are now also the twelve buildings which have received RIBA International Awards for architectural excellence. — bustler.net

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the winners of the 2012 RIBA Awards. Honored for architectural excellence are 50 buildings in the UK and 9 buildings elsewhere in the EU. The shortlist for the RIBA Stirling Prize for the building of the year will be drawn from the 59 RIBA Award winners. — bustler.net

Foreclosed is controversial because it suggests that the state, or the public sector — conceived along with civil society in terms of multiple, overlapping, virtual and actual publics — might play a more active, direct and enlightened role in the provision of housing and, by extension, of education, health care and other infrastructures of daily life in the United States.... Simply put, can we no longer imagine architecture without developers? — Places Journal

Günther Domenig passed away on June 15, 2012. Wolf D Prix, design principal at Coop Himmelb(l)au, released the following statement "I insist that Günther Domenig was one of the most important Austrian architects. Important in terms of being weighty. Meanwhile our own tammuz felt "his steinhous is an beautiful and seminal poem of architecture"

Leading the way in green initiatives is Villahermosa, capital of Tabasco state and a hub of the oil and natural gas industry....After Musevi and Villahermosa’s improved parks opened last year, the number of robberies and sexual assaults, two of the city’s largest problems, dropped significantly. — NYT

Well, if it’s too traditional or uninspiring to them, there are others who find it traditional in an inspiring way — that one can go back to go forward and restate things that are there. I think that the obsession with the new-new thing is O.K. for computer apps. Architecture is about place and time in the long sense of the word. — nytimes.com

There is, however, a problem: the good intentions McEwan's column irradiates with almost blinding intensity conceal a series of assumptions that struggle to stand up under closer scrutiny. — domus

“He was an extremely talented architect who deserved to be better known but he wasn’t on the circuit and only spoke German,” said former chair of architecture at the Bartlett, Peter Cook. “In a way he was the architectural equivalent of Walter Pichler - he was an exponent of that kind of Austrian art. His bank was an extraordinary piece both formalistically and surface-wise.” — bdonline.co.uk