“If this project is viable, why hasn’t it been done over the years?” asks Deborah Howlett, the president of the New Jersey Policy Perspective. “Why does it take $350 million from the people of New Jersey?” She finds it particularly galling that the financing for the almost $4 billion megamall was arranged in a year when Christie slashed 5 percent of the school system’s annual funds. — New York Magazine

MGM Resorts International on Monday said it wants to destroy its Harmon building — an unfinished condo-and-hotel tower riddled with construction engineering problems. Designed by famed architect Norman Foster, the Harmon is part of the Las Vegas Strip’s $9 billion CityCenter project... — blogs.wsj.com

Following a drop of almost a full point in June, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) fell again by more than a point in July. allSTAR believes "its time to get creative with business strategies and contracts. also not a bad time to hire risk managers"

The World Architecture Festival Awards program has announced its 2011 award shortlist with 281 entries spanning the globe from as far south as Tasmania to the Arctic Circle in Norway with new countries such as Libya, Haiti and Cambodia appearing alongside the USA, UK, Australia, China, Japan, Spain, and Scandinavia. — bustler.net

Competition entries to the tremendously popular Busan Opera House competition keep pouring into our inbox these days. Here is another one of our favorites, the proposal "Anisotropia" designed by London-based studio Orproject. The design team included Ho-Ping Hsia, Christoph Klemmt, Rolando Rodriguez-Leal, Rajat Sodhi, Natalia Wrzask, and Christine Wu. — bustler.net

Kubota & Bachmann Architects from Zurich, Switzerland have sent us their entry "Harmony" for the Korean Busan Opera House ideas competition. The design team included Toshihiro Kubota and Yves Bachmann. — bustler.net

This was the city of the 20th Century, but surely nobody, neither utopians or dystopians, imagined that it would look like this. It was nobody's dream and at least in theory, nobody's nightmare. How did we get here? — BBC

It's fun to design – even when you have to work for free ! In fact, a freebie “conceptual design” is what two Harvard-educated women produced for Barbie’s new home in a competition to build a dream home for the Mattel doll, sponsored by the American Institute of Architects. — Globe & Mail

Boston-based firm PRAUD has shared with us their entry to the Busan Opera House competition. The international ideas competition invited visions for a massive cultural center, comprising a 2,000-seat opera house and a 1,300-seat multi-purpose theater, that acts as a landmark building for this booming South Korean city and puts Busan on the map of international tourism. — bustler.net

The founder of Passivhaus and director of Passivhaus Institute PHI, Dr. Wolfgang Fiest, has just sent word that the Passive House Institute United States (PHIUS) will no longer be able to provide building certifications, and will no longer be considered a partner of the program. — Inhabitat

Peter Thiel is known for having big ideas before everyone else - he launched Paypal, funded Facebook, and is now interested in building his very own start-up countries in the far off, open ocean. The self-made billionaire is working closely with the Seasteading Institute to create sovereign nations in international waters, free from the laws of any country. — Inhabitat

Eero Lunden Studio from Helsinki, Finland and Eric Tan of Danish firm PinkCloud.DK have sent us their collaborative entry to the Serlachius Art Museum Gösta design competition in Mänttä, Finland. — bustler.net

The Futuro was designed by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the 1960s for mass production as a kit of prefabricated parts, which can be assembled, taken apart and reassembled anywhere. — NYT

I am a fighter and you're not gonna get rid of me.. — LA Times

I think most exciting thing for designers is this pure absence of design and this incredible presence of life. If you see that combination it is a very profound lesson, I would say. - Rem Koolhaas — OMAofficialchannel