With views of the downtown skyline, the $1.1 billion new Indianapolis airport has been celebrated for its sense of place, and for treating its passengers as "guests," much the way the hotel industry does. It has its own civic plaza, a light-filled central space with 35-foot ceilings that functions as the nexus of activity—every passenger, whether arriving or departing, passes through—where half of all the airport's shops and restaurants reside. [...]

What is Indy doing right? — citylab.com

From the horizon, the new Botín contemporary art center hovers over Santander’s agate-colored bay like a fleet of spaceships poised for a close encounter. [...]

The $106 million center — designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect, to jut over the bay — is the latest private museum emerging in Europe that matches star architects and dramatic designs with billionaires who have huge ambitions and brands to promote. — nytimes.com

They would lead me and two friends through a collection of new and old galleries, museums, neighborhoods, institutions and restaurants, as well as buildings of their own designs, to give me a sense of what stands out to Mexico City architects when they turn their gaze toward home. — NYT

City Hall on Thursday rejected the designs of the Kimball Art Center's expansion proposal, determining they do not meet the municipal government's strict Old Town guidelines.

It was a significant setback as the not-for-profit organization attempts to press ahead with an ambitious redo of the high-profile intersection of Main Street and Heber Avenue. [...]

The Kimball Art Center selected a renowned Danish architectural firm, Bjarke Ingels Group, to draft the designs. — parkrecord.com

Safety regulations are weird. All the exits are viewed with cameras; each door is equipped with an alarm (or even two), which notifies the police and building security in case of an alert. However, usually you don’t need any permission to get to the business center, and all the doors are open during working hours Monday to Friday, all the alarms are switched off. So, if you are interested in city views from the height without having any problems with the police, just buy a ticket to Hong Kong. — ontheroofs.com

It is not rare for a civilisation to abruptly falter, give way and fold into a new one. This insight seems obvious in the territories of the former Soviet Union — a universe transformed into a memory overnight. [...] that a city turned ruin continues to be inhabited, that the collapsing buildings and boulevards stained by a thousand footsteps, after the apocalypse, host new forms of human life, new memories. Harbin, in the far north-east of China, used to be a very Russian metropolis. — calvertjournal.com

Today the Pruitt-Igoe site is once again in the spotlight, but this time because of a new bid to “get the economic flywheel going in the right direction again,” in the words of private developer Paul McKee, the force behind the proposed NorthSide Regeneration project. [...] The lynchpin of it all would be to get the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency—the high-tech eyes and ears of the Defense Department—to relocate to where the towers of Pruitt-Igoe once stood. — citylab.com

Someone has told the bouncers to be nice. It is now standard for architectural anoraks like myself to find ourselves challenged by smile-less security as we go about our blameless business – no loitering, no photography, no looking, as if al-Qaida scouts would do their dastardly work in this way or as if, years after the invention of the camera phone, photography can be controlled as it could in the age of the tripod. But not at the base of the Cheesegrater. — theguardian.com

A judge has called for retail giant Target Corp. to stop work on a partly built shopping center in Hollywood, handing a stinging setback to a project championed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Superior Court Judge Richard L. Fruin Jr. sided with two community groups who said in separate lawsuits that the City Council should not have allowed Target to build a 74-foot-tall structure in a location where such projects cannot exceed 35 feet. — LA Times

5 Pointz, New York City’s “graffiti mecca,” is being demolished right now. This morning, a backhoe began tearing into the building that has served as a legal spot for aerosol artists for over two decades. In 2011, the property owner announced that he will be developing the site and transforming it into a massive residential condo complex. — animalnewyork.com