The ATF national response team, at the end of its investigation, reaches one of three conclusions – incendiary, accidental, or undetermined. Given Thursday’s conclusion that the fire was determined to be "incendiary," or deliberately set, local authorities will probably launch an arson investigation to identify those responsible for the blaze. — latimes.com

UIC officials said the site would extend like a deck over the point where the Kennedy, Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways come together, formerly known as the Circle Interchange. Officials said capping the expressways would be similar to the way Millennium Park was built over existing Illinois Central Railroad tracks. — chicagotribune.com

The Qatar World Cup Memorial project is a scalable building that raises awareness about the number of workers who died during the construction of the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It is in the form of a tower made of concrete modules, each one representing a deceased worker. The higher the number, the higher the tower...If the death rate is not reduced, the Qatar World Cup Memorial could reach a height of 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile). — 1week1project.org

Built by the Third Reich in the run-up to World War II, the Strength Through Joy resort was a Nazi vision of tourism’s future. Happy, healthy Aryans would stay and play at the 10,000-room complex on the Baltic Sea, eating, swimming and even bowling for the Führer. Think Hitler’s Cancun.

[...] a group of investors in this seaside town is now doing what the Nazis never could: realizing the site’s final stage of transformation into a vacation wonderland. — washingtonpost.com

Ash-har Quraishi reports on why some Chicagoans oppose a plan for a museum for the ‘Star Wars’ creator’s artwork — Al Jazeera

Greenland’s affordable housing venture in Brooklyn, 298 apartments in an 18-story building in Prospect Heights, is part of a larger 15-tower apartment project in Atlantic Yards, (now rebranded “Pacific Park) adjacent to the Barclays Center, which will cost an estimated $4.9 billion to build. Half of the 298 units are supposed to be for families that make as low as 40% of the median income for the area—that’s about $33,560 for a family of four. — qz.com

Sports brand giant Adidas recently selected the COBE-led consortium to design the Adidas "Meet & Eat", a new public conference center at the Adidas Group's World of Sports headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany...The 11,000 m2 building has an open, clean design that complements and embraces its natural surrounding landscape. Aside the hints of Adidas' insignia through the interior, the "striped" pattern of the roof also seems to subtly nod to the brand's triple-stripe mark. — bustler.net

It is to serve this world that Second Home has come into being, a former carpet factory off Brick Lane in east London within whose seductive interiors a fragment of Superstudio’s techno-nomadism has, possibly, come to pass. [...]

The architects are José Selgas and Lucía Cano [...] who have just been announced as the designers of next year’s Serpentine pavilion. They bring to this, their first UK project, lightness and grace as well as invention, and an awareness of when to stop. — theguardian.com

A two-year, 53.5 million euro makeover, or nearly $67 million, is underway in the vast reception area below I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid, where long lines of waiting visitors stream into a chaotic, open space that [the museum president] [Jean-Luc] Martinez likens to a noisy airport and that leaves many people disoriented and lost. He is also revamping the museum’s basic storytelling tools: almost 40,000 banners, wall text, signs and symbols... — nytimes.com

OMA appears to be rolling up their sleeves before the holidays: last Friday, we published new details on their Norra Tornen twin towers in Stockholm, and now we're kicking the week off with a recent competition win in China, the Lujiazui Exhibiton Center at the banks of the mighty Huangpu River in Shanghai.

Conceptualized as a "spatial armature," the exhibition center will rise on the grounds of the former Shanghai Shipyard and aims for completion by the end of 2015. — bustler.net

The Hebei Academy of Fine Arts in China’s Hebei Province has constructed a new campus in Xinle City that, rather than resembling local architecture, adheres more to Gothic and European styles. Specifically, it bears a striking resemblance to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. [...]

But the new building is actually called “Cinderella’s Castle,” and was modeled on structures from medieval Europe. Unfortunately, the building has little to do with Cinderella or Hogwarts. — Entertainment Weekly

The British Museum’s round Reading Room might not fully reopen until 2020. One of London’s grandest interiors, it was used by generations of scholars, including Karl Marx, when it housed the British Library. The historic reading desks are currently covered by a platform built in 2007, when the room was temporarily converted into a space for the museum’s major exhibitions. — theartnewspaper.com

The first portion she pointed out was a pale ochre wall patterned with thin, perpendicular white lines mimicking mortar between masonry blocks. Looking upward we then saw panels of blue faux marbre, high above them gilded column capitals and bosses (the ornamental knobs where vault ribs intersect), and, nearby, floor-to-ceiling piers covered in glossy yellow trompe l’oeil marbling, like some funeral parlor in Little Italy. — nybooks.com

The suit charges that Google and senior executives stole Eli Attia's invention, which is a technology that shortens and makes significantly cheaper the design and construction process, mainly for high-rise and large buildings. Google estimates that the invention has potential revenue of $120 billion annually. — globes.co.il