The international jury choosing an architect to design a new National Gallery, which will also provide a new home for the Ludwig Museu in the Hungarian capital, has invited seven leading practices to take part in a new competition after a first competition did not produce a winning design. The seven architects invited to compete for the high-profile commission are: Jean Nouvel, David Chipperfield, Mecanoo, Nieto Sobejano, Renzo Piano, Sanaa and Snøhetta. — theartnewspaper.com

architecture designed to create an emotional reaction — City Paper

Diller Scofidio + Renfro was announced as part of the winning team who will design and build the new U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum and Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado...the $60 million project will display artifacts, media, technology, tell the stories of American Olympic and Paralympic athletes, and share the historical significance and national pride spurred by the Olympic Games. — bustler.net

The Finnish Committee for the Restoration of the Viipuri Library with the Central City Alvar Aalto Library in Vyborg recently won the 2014 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize for restoring Alvar Aalto's historic Viipuri Library in Vyborg, Russia. Established in 2008, the prize is awarded biennially for an innovative architectural or design solution that has preserved or enhanced a modern landmark or group of landmarks. — bustler.net

Yesterday, during a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria, Chinese architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects unveiled his design concept for the future Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts and told reporters that his concept — a seven-story, dome-like structure that gently slopes towards a halo-like observation deck — represents a "new type of architecture." That may be an understatement. — chicago.curbed.com

The whitewashing and subsequent demolition of Long Island City graffiti mecca 5Pointz was painful enough for the arts community, but now G&M Realty, the developer responsible for the loss, wants to trademark the 5Pointz name and use it for their new residential towers at the site. And artists are not happy, saying the developer is trying to bank off their name. — 6sqft

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled a new presidential palace on the outskirts of Ankara. The immense project has been built at a reported cost of $350m. The building has been denounced by ecologists as an environmental blight and by the opposition as evidence of Erdogan’s autocratic tendencies. Supporters say the palace is a symbol of what the president touts as his drive towards a ‘new Turkey’ — The Guardian

“Condé Nast’s arrival puts a stiletto in the heart of the outdated notion that Lower Manhattan is stuffy and gray,” said Jessica Lappin, president of the Downtown Alliance, a local business organization. “They will accelerate the transformation that’s well underway and create additional demand-side pressure for more cool restaurants, art galleries and bars.” — nytimes.com

His favored collaborator was the British architect George Leopold (Tug) Wilson, whose travels had exposed him to Parisian Art Deco and the latest American skyscrapers...His clean designs, though not the first time modernism came to Shanghai, brought a touch of Gotham to a city whose architectural face had hitherto had a stodgy, neo-Classical cast. — NYT

Some of the damage could be repaired, he said. Still, “it won’t be the same,” he said. “Once you have blown down a building, it is blown down.” — NYT

By the end of next year one-in-three of the world’s 100m+ skyscrapers will be in China, as its state-orchestrated urbanisation drive prompts a megacity building bonanza [...]

China now has over 140 cities of more than one million people; America has nine — theguardian.com

Los Angeles' vast freeway system is incomplete — at least by the standards of its architects. In the 1940s, freeways were sketched through Santa Monica Boulevard, along Melrose, Highland and La Brea avenues, and near the Griffith Observatory. Many of L.A.'s freeways were built during the 1960s, but a combination of a freeway revolt, skyrocketing costs and a failure to increase the gas tax doomed the expansion of the freeway system during the 1970s. — LA Times

This would be the first U.S. tower for Snøhetta, founded in Norway but on the rise in the United States since being selected in 2004 to design the pavilion for the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.

Snøhetta will replace an even better-known architect for the corner: Richard Meier, the Pritzker Prize-winning designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, whose firm has been working on a tower in the same location since 2008. —