Almost 10 years and £12bn in the making, the full extent of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will finally open to the public on Saturday, revealing "the biggest new park in Europe for 150 years", magicked from the mud at the bottom of the Lea Valley.

Stretching for 230 hectares (568 acres) around a knotted tangle of waterways and rail lines, it is, says its maker, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), the size of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens combined [...]. — theguardian.com

A Shanghai building company has erected a small village of pitched-roof, 3-D printed structures—in about a day. WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co is behind the series of humble buildings, which each cost less than $5,000 each. The homes were created through the use of a 490- by 33- by 20-foot 3-D printer that fabricates the basic components required for assembly. — blog.archpaper.com

When the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens next month at the World Trade Center, visitors will find a stark wall separating them from a repository containing about 8,000 unidentified human remains from the 2001 terrorist attack.

On the wall is a 60-foot-long inscription, in 15-inch letters [...]: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time. Virgil.” [...]

I asked a half-dozen classicists about the use of this inscription at the memorial museum. All but one questioned the choice. — nytimes.com

Baan, who began shooting buildings in earnest less than a decade ago, balances politeness with relentlessness—qualities that help explain his rapid rise in the architecture world. So compelling is his work, which depicts the world's buildings being used, misused or even abused, that top-tier architects like Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid dispatch him to photograph all of their new projects, requiring him to fly hundreds of thousands of miles a year. — online.wsj.com

Mitchell Joachim; New York has, over the last few centuries, become one of the world’s most densely packed cities. But what if you could redraw the city’s map – and build it from scratch? — BBC

... when it comes to buildings that have cultural significance – like museums and arts centers, those buildings have also been dominated by foreign architects like Zaha Hadid or Norman Foster, who designed the Beijing Airport for example. But I think with the Pritzker Prize winner being a Chinese, Wang Shu, in 2012, you ‘ll find that when a building is important culturally and needs to relate to more to the Chinese culture, more and more that work will be done by Chinese architects. — forbes.com

Zero waste, lower transport costs and recyclable materials – is 3D-printing the future of housebuilding? Dutch architects are putting the process to the test for the first time in Amsterdam — theguardian.com

A spoof Guggenheim website, globalguggenheim.org, went live this morning with a satirical “Sustainable Design Competition” for the global museum’s embattled Abu Dhabi branch. The website, a slightly modified replica of the official Guggenheim version, features images of Saadiyat Island, where the museum is to be built, overlayed with the hashtag #futureguggenheim, as well as references to Gulf Labor’s ongoing 52 Weeks campaign. — hyperallergic.com

Caissons are a technology borrowed from bridge building, and they are what makes this project possible. The engineers will drill them anywhere from 40 to 80 feet into the Manhattan schist (the dense, metamorphic bedrock that supports the city’s soaring skyline). The caissons are meticulously arranged in the narrow spaces between the tracks. Above, the they will connect to deep-girdle trusses – some up to 8 stories tall – that control and redirect the towering weight overhead. Finally, the slab. — wired.com

“We've never been this vulgar,” says the practice's founding partner Rem Koolhaas, sitting in the building's boardroom, flanked either side by neat men in military denim jackets, like officers from some future fashion police. [...] brazenly conflating G-Star's brand values with their own, aligning their manifestos, house styles, ways of working and even presenting a shared aesthetic of raw industrial chic – with concrete and steel fragments of OMA buildings overlaid on to G-Star models. — theguardian.com

Since the Civil War, the majestic dome of the U.S. Capitol has symbolized the unity of the United States, despite the discord in the government it overlooks. [...]

But the dome has lately grown as fractured as the federal government, and Tuesday the Architect of the Capitol announced that a $59 million project to save it would begin next month. [...]

There are now hundreds of cracks and deficiencies, and water already has stained parts of the Capitol’s interior. — The Washington Post

The wait is finally over. After a unanimous decision from the jury, Rem Koolhaas of OMA has the winning design for the new Berlin Media Campus of German publishing house Axel Springer. OMA's concept won against those of two notable finalists, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Buro Ole Scheeren. A contract will be issued once it has been decided if and when the construction project can be implemented. — bustler.net

In collaboration with the Preservation League of New York State and New York Landmarks Conservancy, along with $39 million of private, state, and federal funds, Common Ground and Beyer Blinder Belle (the architects behind the Grand Central Station renovations) were able to successfully convert the decrepit building back into a livable residence with 416 single occupancy apartments. — untappedcities.com