Most of these units have never sold, and though they were finished just three years ago, they are already falling into disrepair, the concrete chipping off the sides of the buildings. Vandals have stolen piping, radiators, doors — anything they could get their hands on. — nytimes.com

Junaid Younis, Modern Associates principal told Mr. Buncombe that his father, Mohammad, made the drawing,
“Lots of people come to us,” Younis said. “We are more interested in making money rather than the individual.” — International Business Times

Architecture rarely goes viral on the Internet, but a video of Toyo Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai taken at the height of the Japanese earthquake has had an extraordinary run as an eyewitness and vertigo-inducing account of what it was like to be inside a building during the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11. — Ada Louise Huxtable, WSJ.com

In a move that could be viewed by some as a regression to the late 1800s when convicts were shipped from England to Van Diemens Land (Australia), a local prison will next week begin a trial housing inmates within shipping containers converted into maximum security cells. Political proponents calim they are safe, secure and cheap; civil libetarians say they are inhumane and not secure.   — Inhabitat

Could one of the world's most ubiquitous staples hold the key to saving tropical hardwood trees? — BBC News

Hangzhou urban planning bureau has announced Dutch firm MVRDV winner of the international design competition for the China Comic and Animation Museum (CCAM) in Hangzhou, China. MVRDV's winning design refers to the speech balloon: a series of eight balloon shaped volumes create an internally complex museum experience of in total 30,000m2. Part of the project is also a series of parks on islands, a public plaza and a 13,000m2 expo center. — bustler.net

The stately Georgian home where actor Macaulay Culkin outwitted a pair of bumbling thieves in the 1990 hit film "Home Alone" is for sale for $2.4 million. John and Cynthia Abendshien, the owners of the four-bedroom, red brick home north of Chicago, said they are ready to downsize, now that their daughter -- who became Culkin's playmate -- during the six-month long shoot is grown up. — msnbc.msn.com

Even in the most turbulent eras, intelligence and clarity sometimes win out over chaos, a fact evident in the work of the Engineers and Architects Association of Liberec (SIAL), a small but vitally important architecture studio that opened under communism. — The Prague Post

"that is just fantastic ..." — A reader's reaction, MailOnline

BIG, Martha Schwartz Landscape, Buro Happold, Speirs & Major, Lutzenberger & Lutzenberger, and Global Cultural Asset Management were today announced as the winning team of the international design competition for a new 27,000 m2 cultural complex in Albania, consisting of a Mosque, an Islamic Center, and a Museum of Religious Harmony. — bustler.net

In our weekly review, we’ve begun discussing the means by which the home’s undoing can transition into the pages of a book. In a project that must somehow translate itself to a far-removed audience, starting early in this process will be critical to ensure we don’t miss any essential moments. — University of Manitoba (Shannon)