The two were commissioned, along with other artists including Chris Burden and Cindy Sherman, to create site-specific works dealing with Charleston’s history...The pair ended up painting the outside of an old house in colors approved by the city’s Board of Architectural Review — but in a camouflage pattern, which was hardly what the preservationists had in mind. — NYT

California’s Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the principal architects for a condominium project may be sued directly by a condominium homeowners association for design defects. [...]

The decision held that even though, on most projects, the developer has the final say on design choices, the architect can’t escape liability to the end user. This decision is likely to give homeowners associations another target in defect cases. — bdcnetwork.com

The Turkish Council of State has ordered three luxury apartment blocks to be bulldozed amid widespread outrage. But will it have any impact on the country’s unstoppable, and often unlawful, construction boom? — theguardian.com

This week the first six oversize Lego bricks were laid for the foundation of the Lego House in Billund, Denmark, the Lego Group’s hometown. Designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, the architecture of the Lego House is based on—what else but?—the iconic shape of the Lego brick. — slate.com

One of the great things about medieval art and architecture is that people just went in and did things. They didn’t build models and scale them up, building great cathedrals and abbeys was a learning process as much as anything else. This means many of these apparently perfect aspirations to the Heavenly Jerusalem have some often quite comical mistakes, corrections and bodge-jobs that once you see, you can’t unnotice. — Stained Glass Attitudes

The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) claims its annual Liveability Survey could be used to "assign a hardship allowance as part of expatriate relocation packages," among other things.

But that needn't apply to those in Melbourne, which for the fourth year running has been declared the best city in the world to live.

The Australian culture hub was buoyed by superlative healthcare, infrastructure and education as well as a murder rate of 3.1 per 100,000 people, half the global average of 6.2. — cnn.com

Built in 28BC as a suitably glorious tomb for Augustus and his relatives, with pink granite obelisks, golden urns and a bronze statue of the emperor on top, it has suffered innumerable indignities ever since the sack of Rome.

Now, fenced off and often used as a dumping site for litter, and even as an unofficial public lavatory, it goes almost unnoticed by the diners who crowd into the restaurants of the square around it. — theguardian.com

Moscow City Hall has formally prohibited the moving or reassembly of a Soviet architectural landmark that has been under threat of demolition blamed by conservationists on real estate developers. [...]

The radio tower's materials, architectural composition, structural elements and location all fall under the conservation order by City Hall's heritage department, published by Consultant.ru judicial database.

This puts an end to earlier proposals to move or dismantle and rebuild the tower. — themoscowtimes.com

As the state has withdrawn, Santiago Cirugeda has stepped in to turn abandoned sites in Seville and other Spanish cities into dramatic art spaces that are inspiring a new breed of architect — theguardian.com

The director of the Museo Reina Sofía, Manuel Borja-Villel, has just announced that Madrid’s main Modern and contemporary art museum will expand its permanent exhibition space by a total of 3,000 sq. m by the end of 2015. In an interview with EFE news agency, Borja-Villel said the project will “finally” join the Francisco Sabatini-designed building, which fully opened as an art museum in 1992, with the extension by Jean Nouvel, completed in 2005. — theartnewspaper.com

When Thomas Paino, an architect, decided to remodel a rowhouse he had bought in Long Island City, Queens, his ambitions were nothing short of trying to save the world — at least so far as a two-family home could contribute to the cause. [...]

And he came up with a daring design in the hopes that neighbors, passers-by, perhaps even the world would take notice.

He succeeded beyond all expectations. — nytimes.com

Minimalism does smell a little foul these days, ever more commercial, devoted to luxury rather than simplicity, a fantasy of the globalized everywhere. It is the design ethos of a world in which you bounce around a grid of generic places, which all feel familiar because they all have the same stores, the same brands and the same basic design. If you want to look at how this fantasy manifests itself architecturally, visit CityCenterDC [...]. — washingtonpost.com

Despite its echoes of Paris’s architectural past, Frank Gehry’s latest museum project—the Fondation Louis Vuitton, opening this fall in the Bois de Boulogne—is like nothing the city has seen before: muscular and delicate, utilitarian and fantastic, a marriage of cultural ambition and private enterprise. Paul Goldberger looks at the genesis of LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault’s partnership with Gehry, and the triumphant result. — vanityfair.com