A few minutes after sitting down to talk with Renzo Piano in his large, airy Paris studio Tuesday, I asked the architect about the progress of the film museum he is designing for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wilshire Boulevard.

"The academy?" he asked. "Ha. The academy is a good story.

"Look, I know you don't like that scheme," referring to my recent coverage of the design.

"I don't think it will be that bad. Actually, I'm struggling to do something good." — latimes.com

When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur. Among his last creations was the plan for Apple’s new signature headquarters, a circle with rings of open workspaces surrounding a central courtyard. — Walter Isaacson, Linkedin.com

The top five floors abruptly cantilever. Some neighbors say it looks like a prison. An “arty fortress,” was New York Magazine’s phrase.

I like the building’s exterior. Most people I’ve quizzed on the street during a half-dozen visits to the area turn out to like it, too. — New York Times

Joyce Wang Studio's MOTT32, an underground bank vault-turned-restaurant in Hong Kong, scooped up the World Interior of the Year 2014 award today at the Marina Bay Sands. The "super jury" of the INSIDE: World Festival of Interiors competition nominated 60 interior design projects worldwide, which were then narrowed down to nine category winners. When deciding upon the World Interior of the Year out of the category winners, the jury unanimously decided on MOTT32. — bustler.net

Of course, the Aspen Art Museum is far more inviting than most edifices when it comes to climbing. The museum exterior is built from Prodema, a composite made of wood and paper pulp, bound by resin, and coated in a wood veneer. The long woven strips that encase the building are placed at regular intervals, creating a ladder-like structure that almost calls out to be scaled. — news.artnet.com

Wanting to stretch one's fascia, the wood wanting to expand, and the people inside being very minute in comparison with the wood's needs. It's almost as if the house itself is turning and emptying out all the residue of the people, wanting just to be free, free of the people, free of... the spoilage is the word that I'm getting, I just want to keep pushing out further and further and further, and as I do my own body just feels much much more relaxed. — Asher Hartman

Coinciding with the World Architecture Festival 2014 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, the just-as-popular INSIDE: World Festival of Interiors honors the very best in the international interior design scene with its annual awards competition. Starting out with 60 shortlisted nominees across nine categories earlier this summer, the first five winners were revealed today. — bustler.net

Wim Wenders and a team of directors attempt to show ‘the soul of buildings’, from the Pompidou Centre to the most humane prison in the world, in 3D. But their sickly-sweet results feel more like a series of vapid promo videos — theguardian.com

The Guggenheim plans to research “productive and hospitable office space designs”, staff will be glad to hear, and it is also considering whether to hold a competition to find an architect.

The expansion plan comes just over 60 years after the Guggenheim commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design its original space and more than a decade after it abandoned a scheme for a second, Frank Gehry-designed museum downtown. — theartnewspaper.com

Every night in Tokyo, the few remaining residents of the Nakagin Capsule Tower bed down to sleep in the once-futuristic white pods they call home.

Unlike the tiny, coffin-like cabins of Japan's numerous capsule hotels, where office workers who have missed the last train can catch a few hours' sleep, the 140 units at Nakagin represent a special part of the history of architecture, and one that is worth protecting against plans to tear it down, say campaigners. — globalpost.com

The dominant architectural site in [Mecca] is not the Sacred Mosque, where the Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is. It is the obnoxious Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel, which, at 1,972 feet, is among the world’s tallest buildings. It is part of a mammoth development of skyscrapers that includes luxury shopping malls and hotels [...] The city is now surrounded by the brutalism of rectangular steel and concrete structures — an amalgam of Disneyland and Las Vegas. — NY Times

When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he did so, for the most part, using the light of the sun that streamed through the windows of the building. And for the past 500 years since then, viewers have admired the results of that work, for the most part, with the help of that same light source. Starting next month...the famous ceiling will be getting a new look in the form of new lights. Some 7,000 LEDs, to be precise [...] — The Atlantic