Canada’s biggest city is getting even bigger, with a pace-setting number of skyscrapers set to join the city skyline.

According to a Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) report dubbed “Canada Rising,” Toronto is leading the western world in terms of new buildings 150 metres or taller currently under construction. — DesignBuild Source Canada

Designers for The Wave, Muscat, were tasked with the challenge of engineering a luxury, mixed-use development stretching along six kilometres of natural beach coastline between Al-Athaiba and Al-Mawelah while ensuring it was protected as much as possible from the Sea of Oman. — DesignBuild Source

America’s Top Twelve ArtPlaces is a new annual ArtPlace initiative recognizing neighborhoods in the largest 44 metropolitan areas in the country where the arts are central to creating places where people—residents and visitors—want to be. — artplaceamerica.org

A growing number of small urban spaces are creating landscaped gardens that stretch beyond floor pots, with greenery growing upwards along walls and fences.

This new trend toward ‘vertical gardens’ is renewing apartments, offices and restaurants inviting greenery to flourish in small spaces. — DesignBuild Source

The Colombian city of Medellín was once the murder capital of the world and ground zero for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine cartel. But Medellín has lately emerged as a hotspot for urban planning and innovative mass transit. The projects are part of a long-term plan to fight poverty and remake the fortunes of the city. — theworld.org

In celebrating the 50th anniversary of the iconic building blocks being introduced into Japan, LEGO’s Japanese subsidiary sponsored a cross-country workshop in which over 5000 people in 6 different regions collaborated to create a gigantic map of Japan.The pieces that were assembled at each site then traveled to Tokyo, where they were put on display for one massive LEGO map. — spoon-tamago.com

Eighteen feet below one of Rome’s most-trafficked junctions is a 900-seat arts center dating back to the second-century reign of Emperor Hadrian, Italian archaeologists have announced.

The discovery, widely seen as the most important in Rome in 80 years, came as a result of digging for the city’s third subway line. Archeologists spent the last five years excavating two halls of the structure under the Piazza Venezia, which is believed to be an arts center, or auditorium, built by Hadrian. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

'[R]emember that a place like Dubai really emerged in the last 50 years. It was a sleepy, you know, Bedouin town half a century ago. And what you do is when you bring in the world’s, you know, most sophisticated architects and engineers, you can literally build anything, including a building of 140 or 150 stories. But designing a municipal network of sewage treatment is in some ways more complex. - KATE ASCHER — Boing Boing

“Our approval will facilitate development of a significant new building with a distinctive pyramid-like shaped design and thoughtful site plan that integrates the full block site into the evolving residential, institutional, and commercial neighborhood surrounding it,” Ms. Burden said before voting in favor of the project. — observer.com

The building, known as 1 Angel Square, has been designed to deliver a 50 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to The Co-operative’s current Manchester complex and an 80 per cent reduction in carbon. This will lead to operating costs being lowered by up to 30 per cent. — DesignBuild Source

“Pruitt-Igoe has lived on symbolically as an icon of failure. Liberals perceive it as exemplifying the government's appalling treatment of the poor. Architectural critics cite it as proof of the failure of high-rise public housing for families with children. One critic even asserted that its destruction signaled the end of the modern style of architecture.” — Alexander von Hoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard Univ.

"... If history has taught us that the realization of a utopia is necessarily its destruction, Can we regard this process as a continuously failing attempt of architectural hallucinations? Or is it a way to promote escapism from an inevitable dystopic reality? ..." — www.zawia.co