When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, and Apple will pat itself on the back for yet another example of "innovation." ...But few are aware that Apple’s monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant suburban corporate campuses that isolated themselves—by design—from the communities their products were supposed to impact. — Fast Company Design

HALF A CENTURY AGO, a group of 20-something architecture students from Florence decided to assume the small task of conceiving an alternative model for life on earth. Contemptuous of the long reign of Modernism, which they felt had sold itself as a cure to society’s ills and never delivered, they were jazzed by American science-fiction novels and the political foment of the 1960s. They gave themselves the colorfully assured name Superstudio... — the New York Times

After Ms. Hadid died on March 31 at 65, The New York Times, in an informal online questionnaire, asked female architects among its readers to talk candidly about their experiences in the profession: the progress they’ve made and the obstacles they still face on construction sites and in client meetings. Below are edited excerpts from a few of some 200 responses we received. — The New York Times

All of us, including myself have been engaged in catering to the 0.1 per cent through our work. Our training has always been in material and designing architecture for that one per cent.
The kind of world we live in today, we need to democratise architecture. I know that it may give an impression that I am saying this only because I am retired now, but I have become deeply involved in how architecture can provide social justice and (grounds) for an equitable society. — TheNews on Sunday

The fellowship ... makes it possible for junior faculty to spend a year developing a body of design research based on an area of interest while teaching [...]

Maya Alam will explore new possibilities of identity and iconicity in architecture by reconsidering alternative connections between object, observer, and context.

“I hope to explore with my students new categories of form and new architectural possibilities in engagement that fall outside the disciplinary conversation” — soa.syr.edu

Plans for London’s first timber skyscraper were presented to the Mayor of London Boris Johnson this week with researchers saying natural materials were “vastly underused”.

The design is for an 80-storey, 300m-high wooden building integrated into the Barbican complex. The tower would create 1,000 new residences. Architects’ Journal described the concept scheme as “toothpick-like”. — independent.co.uk

He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?” — telegraph.co.uk

The suspicion is that the Pritzker judges haven’t changed all that much, and are backing an iconic-humanitarian architect, a flipside to the starchitects they previously promoted rather than a radical alternative [...]

Some scepticism is in order, as to whether the Pritzker committee have suddenly become experts in the vastly complicated business of humanitarian architecture and whether there might be a large dose of gesture and symbolism in their actions. — theguardian.com

you can spend a lot of money, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to come to an outcome that is going to be good over the long run. I think that, you know, it really comes to the design of the building, how the material transitions are treated, color is a huge issue that often doesn't get I think enough attention and can hugely influence the outcome in a building — Colorado Public Radio

the firm founded by Harvard-trained David Mizan Hashim has made a name over three decades as a stalwart of the Malaysian architecture scene [...]

It is now the country’s second-largest architecture firm, with 330 staffers led by 14 architect principals; 5 of them head Veritas offices overseas. [...]

“I purposely don’t want all decisions to come from me,” [Hashim] says ... “My strategy is planned obsolescence.” — forbes.com