The city was initially prepared to contribute €77 million to the project – but this figure has since gone up by nearly five times to more than €323 million – more than half the expected €600 million total cost. And the original completion date of 2010 has been pushed back to 2014.

The building’s designers had underestimated certain costs – such as an acoustic panelling for the main concert hall which cost five times as much as expected, adding more than €10 million to the bill. — thelocal.de

To create a smarter space, Kennedy constructed a 160-square-foot test home (the smallest legal-sized apartment for California) inside a Berkeley wherehouse. SmartSpace 1.0 is filled with innovations like the SmartBench, an adjustable banquette that converts from a dining table to a guest bed. — youtube.com

A bond forged in storm-ravaged New Orleans between actor Brad Pitt and a local architecture firm is bearing fruit in Kansas City — and may show the path forward to reusing dozens of empty schools.

The long-closed Bancroft School at 4300 Tracy Ave. will be renovated into affordable apartments and a community center with the aid of the Make It Right Foundation founded by Pitt... — kansascity.com

Openarch is a real prototype of a smart home. The first home designed from scratch to incorporate a digital layer connecting the house and its elements to the Internet. Its inhabitants lead a new digital and connected life. It is flexible and thanks to its ability to transform, it can adapt to any condition that the user requires. — openarch.cc

At the urging of billionaire Paul Allen, planners are considering raising the height limit for new buildings in certain areas of the city — bendbulletin.com

The Glass House and The National Trust for Historic Preservation have announced Urbach's appointment as Director of the historic site.

"I can hardly imagine a place more full of potential than the Glass House," said Urbach. "It has long contributed to culture by bringing together art, architecture, landscape and people in significant and inventive ways. That is exactly what I hope to foster." — thestamfordtimes.com

Reacting to the Beach & Howe Tower proposal in Vancouver by Bjarke Ingels Group holz.box argued "still beats 90% of what's out there. i'd love to see this built."

ARTIST Damien Hirst has unveiled plans to build more than 500 landmark eco-homes in Ilfracombe, which he hopes will regenerate the town and provide a national blueprint for environmental housing.

Architects working for Hirst, said to be the richest living artist in the world, hope to submit a planning application for the development at Winsham Farm in six months. — thisisnorthdevon.co.uk

Monticello is home renovation run amok. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States; he designed Monticello to the fraction of an inch and never stopped changing it. Yet Monticello was also a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson’s own children. Today his white and black descendants still battle over who can be buried at Monticello. It was trashed by college students, saved by a Jewish family, and celebrated by FDR. — Studio 360

... one the most gifted architects of my time has been reduced to wrapping such conventional programs of use in merely expressionistic forms, without letting a single ray of her genius illuminate the human condition. Am I being pretentious and overly demanding? Of course. But that’s the way disappointed lovers behave. Exaggerated emotions. Absurd demands. Anger that transgresses all reason. She has let me down, and what makes it worse is that she apparently couldn’t care less. — Lebbeus Woods

We are happy to also present the second prize winner of the 2012 Design to Zero competition: Project Zero, a collaborative effort by graduate students Daniel Kim and Caitlin Ranson from Clemson University School of Architecture [...]. Project Zero seeks to redefine the "unit," focusing on the tight relationship between material unit, family unit, and living unit. The site chosen for the proposal is in a historic residential district not far from downtown Grennville, South Carolina. — bustler.net

President Obama will speak at the official groundbreaking next week for the Smithsonian's new African American history museum in Washington, museum officials announced.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture will be situated on the National Mall and is expected to be completed by 2015 at an estimated price cost of $500 million, half of which is expected to be paid by the government. — latimesblogs.latimes.com

Marina Abramovic signed a deal with architect Rem Koolhaus earlier this week to design and construct her Center for the Preservation of Performance Art in Hudson, New York. The Serbian art superstar will seek to raise $8 million to pay for the project, she revealed Tuesday night to a group of art collectors at a panel at Manhattan's tony Core Club, and the museum will be devoted to performance art pieces of "six hours minimum." Some of them will go on for days. — vulture.com

An aesthetic traditionalist who sponsors an annual architecture award that bears his name, Driehaus is no fan of Frank Gehry's proposed modernist design for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. And he's doing what he can to fight it.

Earlier this week, a public relations operative who works for Driehaus called me and offered the following essay, by the influential neo-traditionalist architect Leon Krier, who offers a tough critique of Gehry's plan and ideology. — BLAIR KAMIN, chicagotribune.com

Just a few days ago, we published the winning entry of the 2011 DOW Design to Zero competition. Here is now also the third prize winner, the entry Oil Silo Home, by architects Leon Lai and Eric Tan of pinkcloud.dk. The proposal recycles existing oil silos by transforming them into affordable housing for families worldwide. — bustler.net