The plans call for nothing less than the rebirth of the Prussian-era heart of Berlin. A new palace is currently under construction on the German capital's famous Museum Island to replace the Berlin City Palace, or Stadtschloss, the erstwhile residence of Prussian kings and German emperors that was demolished by the communists soon after the end of World War II. [...]

But completion of the exterior may be in doubt. — spiegel.de

A newly completed 125 ft high mural painted by Stik on a condemned council owned tower block in Acton, West London is the tallest street artwork in the UK.

The artwork depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their condemned council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. [...]

Charles Hocking House was built for low income families in 1967 and is earmarked to be torn down in 2016. — streetartnews.net

Renzo Piano Building Workshop will be the design architect for the new corporate headquarters of Midwest convenience retailer chain Kum & Go. The 120,000 sq.foot building will be located at the Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
After competing teams submitted written proposals, six finalists were interviewed last month before RPBW won the project. In the next few months, a local architect and general contractor will be chosen as the design process begins. — bustler.net

Clemson University has backed off its plans to build a modern architecture center at Meeting and George streets - a project applauded at first but later bitterly fought by two neighborhoods and preservation groups.

Clemson announced its decision to change course on its $10 million Spaulding Paolozzi Center in the wake of a recent lawsuit filed challenging how the city's Board of Architectural Review handled its approval. — postandcourier.com

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced today that it will open its new home in Chelsea on 1 May 2015. With double the exhibition space of its "old" Marcel Breuer-designed building, the museum will be able to show far more of its collection of Modern and contemporary American art in its Renzo Piano-designed new space in the Meatpacking District. [...]

Weinberg told us that Piano saved the institution from making one decision that it would have lived to regret. — theartnewspaper.com

We call it “destructoporn” (since 2007, according to Urban Dictionary) and it comes, unbidden, via digital media. Where did I see that Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, just thirteen years old, was down to steel and rubble? The art critic Jerry Saltz’s Instagram. [...]

The dailiness, even hourliness, of social media makes it a perfect vehicle for documenting each thump of the wrecking ball, each crunch of the backhoe. Its visual slant is ideal for activism wrapped up in pictures. — newyorker.com

[...] the bridge will be closed at night, won't allow entry to cyclists or groups of 8 or more without prior booking, and will ocassionally be closed off for fundraising events. Right. So less a public bridge than a privately-managed tourist attraction, then. [...]

The east of London, on the other hand, could actually use another crossing, with or without limits to access — citymetric.com

The great limestone slabs of Valletta's modern entrance give out on to two broad new monumental stairways leading up to the ancient fortifications....This is certainly statement architecture - and that is exactly what former prime minister, and driving force behind the project, Lawrence Gonzi intended. — BBC News

Amid politically charged scenes, Paris city council has narrowly rejected a plan to build the historic city's first skyscraper since a height restriction was imposed in the 1970s.

But Mayor Anne Hidalgo said [...] she would fight the Triangle tower vote. [...]

The architects, Herzog and de Meuron, proposed to build the 180m (590ft) tower in the south-west Porte de Versailles area of the city, after then-Mayor Bertrand Delanoe proposed an end to the 37m limit in parts of the capital. — bbc.com

Not far from the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz was a no man’s land during the Cold War. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and the German authorities made it a petting zoo for celebrity architecture. The corporate headquarters of Germany’s new global swagger.

But the ambitions for Potsdamer Platz, like the hopes and fears about a united Germany, turned out differently. The architecture was not so great. Many companies fled. — nytimes.com

How many truckloads does it take to transport a 2,800 sq. ft house, designed by one of America’s most revered Modern architects, more than 1,200 miles from New Jersey to Arkansas? [...]

Staff at the three-year-old Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art put that question to the test recently when Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1950s Bachman Wilson House was moved from its flood-prone location on a riverbank in Millstone, New Jersey, to the institution’s sprawling 120-acre campus in Bentonville, Arkansas. — theartnewspaper.com

The architect today is no ‘fountainhead.’ It is rather sad to watch today’s ‘starchitects’, designing their weird-looking signature buildings. These seem now always to be either museums or condos for billionaires. The brand-name architect just build useless luxury housing for the 1% and their trinkets. The actual design of the world is now in the hands of other people. — Public Seminar Commons