Five London-based architecture firms—including Foster + Partners—have been shortlisted in the RIBA-organized design competition to create the new central London Metropolitan Police HQ. The facility will replace the existing New Scotland Yard building. — bustler.net

Now in its 8th year, the best architects award just announced its winners. Organized annually, the program recognizes outstanding architectural design in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the South Tyrol province of Italy. — bustler.net

Photos from Detroit taken the summer of 2013. They include shots from Hamtramk, the Fisher Body Plant, the Thornapple Slaughterhouse, Michigan Central Station, the Brewster-Douglass housing projects, the Packard Auto Plant, the Lee Plaza Hotel, Saint Agnes church, Corktown, Eastern Market, and various other scenic spots throughout the downtown area. — johnszot.com

The educational nonprofit archive North Carolina Modernist Houses (NCMH, formerly Triangle Modernist Houses) has published the 2013 winners of the George Matsumoto Prize which recognizes excellence in recent single-family Modernist residential design in North Carolina. — bustler.net

Three winners were selected for the 2013 International Gastronomic Center Brussels competition hosted by Arquideas. A total of 106 teams of architecture students around the globe submitted projects to create a gathering space for professional chefs and visitors to share ideas, experience, research, and to celebrate the appreciation of food. — bustler.net

Bruce Katz, vice president of the Brookings Institution, says that many American cities show promising signs of renewal. He's written a book with Brookings Fellow Jennifer Bradley called The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy. The book argues that metro areas — or, cities and suburbs together — are powerful economic engines with considerable political influence... — npr.org

Chinese cities have recently become notorious for their sheer degree of copying and reproduction, with hundreds of replicas of famous historic buildings and even of recent ones – such as the copy of Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou Opera House, under construction almost immediately after the original was completed. But in London, the Crystal Palace replica is only the most vast – and probably the least likely – of a smaller but still significant series of proposed reconstructions. — guardian.co.uk

The [RIO DE JANEIRO] Symbolic World Cup Structure competition has announced its winners. Hosted by [AC-CA], the international ideas competition invited architects and students of architecture and engineering to design a freestanding World Cup Structure on Rio de Janeiro's lively Lapa Square during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. — bustler.net

It often happens that news events create a new context for existing photo projects, and such is the case with Philip Jarmain’s photos of Detroit in light of the city’s recent filing for bankruptcy. Jarmain’s series American Beauty documents architecture from a pre-Depression era Detroit — a time when the city was on the rise. They now stand in contrast to its current rock-bottom economic straits. — wired.com

Architectural plans for a $200m airport on North Korea’s east coast have been made available to NK News by PLT, a Hong Kong-based architectural firm bidding to design what North Korea hopes will serve as a major transportation hub for the Kumgang Tourism Zone (KTZ). — nknews.org

The public is invited to vote for their favorite entry from a field of six finalists in the Flinders Street Station Design Competition, an international, high-profile architectural competition to rejuvenate and restore the historic Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Australia. The shortlist sports some big names, including Pritzker Prize winners Zaha Hadid and the team of Jaques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. — bustler.net

Yesterday, led by Speaker Christine Quinn, the New York City Council voted to limit Madison Square Garden’s permit to operate on top of Penn Station to just 10 more years.

Building a new Penn Station and the next Madison Square Garden will not only improve the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who use the station every day – it will revitalize the surrounding area and bring tremendous long-term economic value to the region. — mas.org