The City of Taipei successfully landed the bid — after being the only city to do so — in becoming the next designated city for World Design Capital 2016. The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) made the official announcement during its 28th General Assembly on Monday, Nov. 18.

Previous cities who received the appointment include Torino (2008), Seoul (2010), Helsinki (2012) and the upcoming WDC in Cape Town (2014). — bustler.net

... instead of letting engineers design the plant, as often happens at an industrial site, Sims hired Selldorf Architects, a glamorous New York firm known for doing Chelsea art galleries and cultural institutions. — nytimes.com

The latest market opportunity for entrepreneurs in China? Polluted air. For nearly as long as pollution has been a salient, public issue in the country, foreigners and locals have been devising ways to help residents avoid the worst of smog—and in some cases make a little money in the process. Here are some of the most notable ones. — qz.com

The winners have just been revealed for the 39th annual KRob Architectural Delineation competition, the longest running architectural drawing competition in the world. Six winners, three juror citations, and 21 finalists were selected this year.

The 2013 jury was comprised of Alex Hogrefe (founder of alexhogrefe.com), sci-fi and fantasy artist Stephan Martiniere, and Perry Kulper (architect and associate professor at University of Michigan). — bustler.net

Dwell Media recently honored the finalists at the Dwell Vision Award 2013 ceremony at the historic Jane's Carousel in DUMBO in Brooklyn, New York. The DVA acknowledges the best of progressive technical and artistic innovation in modern design. — bustler.net

Lina Bo Bardi was loyal more to an emancipating concept of modernity than to the abstract, formal language of modern architecture. Her thinking and practice were situated at the intersection of different worldviews: north and south, city and hinterland, privilege and deprivation, modernism and tradition, past and present, abstraction and social realism. As she declared in 1989, “I didn’t make myself alone. I am curious and this quality broadens my horizons. ... I am somehow special.” — Places Journal

The hotel's name refers to the idea that you'd only need to spend nine hours there — a radical concept in a world of lodging that offers a host of amenities to tempt you away from the place you're actually meant to be visiting. But the people behind Nine Hours believe you're better off spending as little time as possible under their roof: just one hour to get ready for bed, seven hours to sleep, and one hour to get up in the morning. — theverge.com

The Principals, a Greenpoint-based design studio, set off to explore that intersection of interactive design and technology with an art installation for MoMA PS1's summer Warm Up series. Hit the jump to see how the Spatium Yamamoto installation grooved to the beat for an unforgettable, psychedelic experience this past summer. — Inhabitat

Eric Ho watches the boom on the Lower East Side...and sees...Detroit. Specifically...vacant storefronts — more than 200 of them in the area east of the Bowery and south of 14th Street.
How was it possible, he thought, that in a neighborhood where space was at such a premium, so much of it was sitting idle? ...an architect who once intended to design housing for disaster zones,, he thought: What could be done with them? — New York Times

When it comes to dining out, it's no question that the architecture and interior design matter just as much as the food you're eating. As a fun Friday project, we're featuring the Workshop Kitchen + Bar by SOMA in Palm Springs, CA. The project recently won Best Designed Restaurant for the Americas region in the international 2013 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards we covered back in September. — bustler.net