His office is in the mythical 80 Wooster Street basement studio of George Maciunas – a location long abandoned after its original incarnation as a hive for Fluxus gatherings with artists like Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. For his first full-realized New York building, Sondersen is designing the offices of crowd-sourced fundraising website Kickstarter. — ignant.de

One of the real challenges, since we’re working in so many places—Mexico, Japan, Brazil—is understanding variations, both in terms of culture and context. It’s important to understand differences in scale and environment. — Architectural Digest

Come to think of it, however, here’s another idea for the folk-art-museum building: maybe it should be used to display a small selection of MoMA’s extraordinary collection, so that people can experience some of its great works in a small-scaled space and have a tiny hint of the intimate, enticing museum that MoMA once was. — vanityfair.com

Can it be saved? A grassroots crusade to persuade MoMA not to tear down the architecturally significant 12-year-old American Folk Art Museum at 45 W. 53rd St. has erupted, igniting the passion of architects, designers, preservationists and ordinary citizens. — amny.com

Architects and designers, responding to the news that the Museum of Modern Art intends to demolish a former museum, have some ideas for MoMA.Their concepts, some earnest and others tongue-in-cheek, are being compiled on a tumblr called #FolkMoMA, created to challenge MoMA’s assertion that the former American Folk Art Museum building is not compatible with its expansion plans. — blogs.wsj.com

Almost as soon as the news broke last week that the Museum of Modern Art planned to demolish the former American Folk Art Museum, a movement emerged to save it. Members of the design community—including the architects who designed the building—are registering their discontent with the decision. More than one petition is now circulating to rescue the Folk Art building as a result. — architectmagazine.com

When news broke this week that the Museum of Modern Art in New York intends on demolishing the former American Folk Art Museum building next door, a cry went up in the architectural and preservationist community. Now, a group of advocates is not only collecting protests to save the building, but also crowdsourcing design ideas for integrating the two adjacent museum structures. — nextcity.org

Do we save the American Folk Art Museum? As an architecturally significant monument, I believe MoMA should rethink its decision to raze the structure completely. If museums aren’t interested in saving the aesthetic heritage of our city, then we should be concerned about their role in our culture. — hyperallergic.com

To be sure, I do not believe that design practices do not involve research, or that these practices do not produce new knowledge. Nothing could be further from the idea. All design draws upon knowledge, either produced by existing research or new research. But critically, design is not synonymous with research. Design cannot base its conclusions on design itself. — Plat Journal

...even for a big gun like Koolhaas, the global depression has had an impact. Thus his new furniture line for Knoll called “Tools for Life.” It’s a pretty standard track for any architect when the commissions start to dry up; have some interns fart out designs for a furniture line, ship it off to China for production, then slap a price tag on it with no less that 4 zeros and BOOM! you’re back makin’ Bentley payments and wearing Prada suits in no time. — The World's Best Ever

In June this year UNStudio will launch the new organisation of its practice as an open-source knowledge-based practice operating projects around four specialised Knowledge Platforms.

As part of the reorganisation of the studio a new interactive online knowledge platform will be launched, aimed at facilitating the open exchange of knowledge, with the ultimate goal of introducing and encouraging the expansion from a collaborative to a co-creative working model for architecture. — unstudio.com

Sources close to the project said Foster + Partners... is helping Apple on the retail store design brief. — marketingmagazine.co.uk

The City of Melbourne has been certified carbon neutral, an important step toward its goal of becoming one of the world’s most sustainable cities.

In a carbon constrained economy, councillor Arron Wood said the certification by Low Carbon Australia against the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) “was a solid demonstration of the City of Melbourne’s commitment to a more sustainable Melbourne.” — DesignBuild Source

Unlike Rietveld’s complex interplay of layered planes, the Eameses, looking towards more commercial approaches to middle-class housing, created something more like the box that Rietveld was trying to escape. — ft.com