Things are changing enormously in almost every sense. The effects of globalization have been positive and negative. My generation of architects is the first that could work almost anywhere in the world. We had the option to repeat the same building everywhere or to push ourselves forward, to create an encounter between ourselves and the local culture. — americancity.org

The 'Stadium of Tomorrow' design competition, sponsored by global stadium architecture specialist Populous to mark the completion of the design of its first major sports stadium in Korea, attracted more than 250 teams from all over Korea. [...] The stadium had to be transformable/moveable/demountable. — bustler.net

Designed by the famed architect Le Corbusier, built under Saddam Hussein then forgotten: such was the fate of a gym in Baghdad that Iraq now wants, with the help of France, to restore to its former stature.

Located in the east of the capital, the massive concrete structure has surprisingly withstood the decades of war, internecine fighting and sanctions that have hit the country. — news.yahoo.com

The new Orange Barrel HQ will reuse existing concrete storage silos and a renovated 10,000-sqft warehouse with a new 10,000-sqft addition. OBM President Pete Scantland says they’re aiming for LEED Platinum certification with the project. Solar panels will be located on the back side of a 120-foot tall structure rising above the new offices, while the front side will provide a showpiece advertising space. — ColumbusUnderground.com

Browsing the Work Status Updates on our sister site Archinect, we recently came across an image of the intriguing structure CMYplay, a proposal of A\V Studio, originally designed for the 3Dimensional Front competition. A\V Studio is an on-going design collaboration between Adam Hostetler of New York City and Virginia Melnyk of Beijing, China. — bustler.net

North Dakota’s governor has bitten back at a Minnesota lawmaker who compared his state’s Depression-era Capitol building to an insurance office, calling the critic ignorant of classic architecture.

The Capitol in Bismarck was built during the 1930s with a plain concrete and stone exterior, ostensibly to keep costs down. — washingtonpost.com

The collaborative proposal of Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects with Dutch architects Van den Berg Groep has won first prize in an international competition for a 16,000 m2 theater building that will also comprise the entrance to the zoological park in Emmen, the Netherlands. — bustler.net

Affordability, along with a minimalist aesthetic, were the reasons she decided on a prefab house — points on which Mr. Buryk, who had years before remodeled a 100-year-old house in Portland, Ore., wholeheartedly agreed. “I, similar to Zoe, was coming from a place of not wanting to do that again,” he said.

But it wasn’t quite as affordable as they had hoped. The house cost $260,000 to build, from start to finish (the kit itself was $47,000) — nearly $100,000 more than they’d expected. — nytimes.com

Fogo Island is less than 100 square miles just east of Newfoundland and Labrador. The craggy island isn’t the most hospitable place, but the roughly 3000 inhabitants are committed to living there and even taking steps to draw tourists to their rocky shores. Across the island, six artist’s studios designed by Saunders Architecture are taking shape. The hope is that the island will draw the kind of cultural tourists that have flocked to places like Marfa or Bilboa. — thefoxisblack.com

Humility is a virtue. That’s the obvious lesson, but doing anything, even constructing a few self-effacing buildings at Ronchamp, is a big deal. Mr. Piano solved the riddle of adding to a site without appearing conspicuously to do so by burrowing into the brow of the hill, below the chapel, and inserting the convent and visitors’ center into the cuts, half buried, with zinc-and-glass facades to let in light. — NYT

Copenhagen darlings BIG have unveiled their design for the 490-foot-tall Beach and Howe tower in Vancouver, a collaboration with Westbank, Dialog, Cobalt, PFS, Buro Happold, Glotman Simpson and local architect James Cheng. The new mixed-use tower marks the entry point to downtown Vancouver, forming a welcoming gateway to the city, while adding another unique structure to the city's skyline. — bustler.net

The Trust for the National Mall exhibited the final design concepts of the National Mall Design Competition last week....Orhan Ayyüce, argued "It is really deplorable when all the renderings are depicting entertained crowds and happy go around shopping mall like experiences. The National Mall is much more meaningful when it houses 'people' voicing something in masses.

"Right now we are making deeply diffuse hovering, clouds of material that work together in very delicate ways but when we compress those all together we can see those working as roofs, walls that breathe, that filter light" says Philip Beesly a Professor of Architecture at Waterloo University — BBC News