“I never heard anybody say it was ugly or weird, I had reached universal beauty and Rosario Murillo sadistically destroyed that beauty. How sad and senseless.” - Glen Small — The Nicaragua Dispatch

A special construction material keeps concrete whiter than white. — CNN

The Competition, which has its UK premiere at the Barbican tonight, follows the trials and tribulations of five stellar practices competing in a doomed bid to build a new national museum for Andorra, back in 2009. As the global financial crisis hit rock-bottom, no job was too small for architects whose dreams of dotting Middle Eastern deserts with their snazzy signatures had been revealed as a hopeless mirage. — theguardian.com

Lewis Mumford wrote that, in a city, “time becomes visible.” Not, it would appear, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a city board has just decided that a rather discreet and understated modern house might need to be torn down because it damages the ambience of a historic district, which is to say it destroys the illusion that the neighborhood is a place in which time has stopped. — Vanity Fair

At a meeting of the County Legislature on May 1, Kaufman offered to purchase the Rudolph building, which has been closed since 2011, and convert it to private use, perhaps as artists’ studios. Kaufman, who bought Gwathmey Siegel & Associates in 2011... and now calls his firm Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects, wants to design a new government building adjacent to the Rudolph masterpiece, completed in 1970 on Main Street in Goshen, New York. — archrecord.construction.com

Renowned architect Frank Gehry is the 2014 recipient of the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, as announced today by the Prince of Asturias Foundation in Oviedo, Spain.

Every year, the Foundation honors the international influence and significant cultural contribution in the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out by individuals, institutions, or groups of either one. — bustler.net

Architect Richard Meier's new residential building will feature his signature jutting planes and surfaces carved from white steel and glass. The 37 apartments, starting at about $2 million, are 73% sold even though ground won't be broken until June. The project, named Vitrvm, and the buzz surrounding it, is what you might expect from the designer of L.A.'s Getty Center except for one thing: It is in Bogotá, Colombia. — The Wall Street Journal

A key element of his success is that for much of his career, he hasn't been doing the work alone: In a field that often relegates women to the background, the Fuksas firm is a shared enterprise, run in tandem with Doriana Fuksas, his wife since 1981. "Maybe we're complementary," says Doriana (née Mandrelli). "We love the same things, the same feelings and moods—just in a different way. I'm much more pop; he's more classic." — online.wsj.com

What had been planned by the MAK in Vienna as a major retrospective of Austrian architect Hans Hollein will now also serve as a posthumous tribute. Hollein died last week, less than a month after celebrating his 80th birthday.

Curated by Wilfried Kuhn and Marlies Wirth and entitled simply "Hollein," the exhibition will run June 25 through Oct. 5. — latimes.com

London architect John Simpson, one of the world’s leading practitioners of New Classicism and New Urbanism, has been selected to design the new School of Architecture building at the University of Notre Dame. [...]

Notre Dame’s new building for the School of Architecture has been underwritten by a $27 million gift from Matthew Walsh and his wife Joyce. The 80,000 square-foot building will be located on the south end of the Notre Dame campus, east of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. — architecture.nd.edu

Zaha Hadid says it's not her job to pay attention to how many migrant workers die in the construction of her World Cup stadium. We asked four top architects--Bjarke Ingels, Liz Diller, Clive Wilkinson, and Curtis Fentress--how morality fits into the process of accepting or rejecting a commission. — fastcodesign.com

Blind architect Chris Downey says that city planners and property owners should view future construction projects through a different set of eyes. [...]

Downey, 51, of Piedmont, Calif., lost his eyesight six years ago after undergoing surgery for a non-cancerous brain tumor. Since then, he has maintained his San Francisco architectural practice.

"I have a career without sight. But as an architect, I still have vision," he said with a grin. "The creative process is a mental process." — latimes.com

Frederic Schwartz, an architect whose plan to rebuild the World Trade Center site finished second among hundreds of entries, and who went on to create memorials in New Jersey and Westchester County to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 63. — nytimes.com