“The combination of the course offerings on a regular basis in subject-area courses, housing studios, design-build, as well as programs for both students and the primary faculty involved—that we feel is unique,” says UO architecture professor Michael Fifield. — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, American Institute of Architecture

Deborah Berke’s appointment last year as the first female dean of the Yale School of Architecture might have brought her into the limelight, but the architect and interior designer had already been getting attention for her work on 21c Museum Hotels, a small chain of boutique properties doubling as art galleries. [...]

In old buildings, you’re taking what you find and complementing that with the architecture and design of today. — nytimes.com

Ambition or talent: which matters more to success?
I think it’s probably ambition, because if you have talent without ambition, the talent goes to waste. But if you have talent and want to do something with it, you follow your intuition. — Financial Times

As a designer, Uesugi created serene landscapes that adapted the elements of a Japanese garden — rock, plants and water — to the climate and lifestyle of Southern California. Among his most significant projects are the restoration of the Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Pine Wind Garden at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center and the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Diego's Balboa Park. — The Los Angeles Times

“technology is at last starting to enable something that was the dream of [Apple] from the very beginning—to make technology personal. So personal that you can wear it.” [...]

“Both the hand and the machine can produce things with exquisite care or with no care at all. But it’s important to remember that what was seen at one time as the most sophisticated technology eventually becomes tradition. There was a time when even the metal needle would have been seen as shocking and profoundly new." — vogue.com

Adorned with gold and marble, [the Trump Tower] looks like Saddam Hussein went on a shopping spree with Liberace.

To make way for its construction, Mr Trump demolished the handsome Art Deco Bonwit Teller department store. He promised to donate its bas-relief carvings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but it turned out they were too expensive to remove so they were smashed to pieces on site instead. — Financial Times

'Every day people follow the sun to our city in pursuit of their dreams,' bid committee chairman Casey Wasserman said in a statement, adding: 'We're inviting the world to follow the sun to California in 2024.'

The Olympic movement takes such things seriously. In the past, millions of dollars have been spent on the design of emblems and the often-ridiculed mascots. — Los Angeles Times

The "Mom" chair is a kid-sized acrylic seat with an opening on top where kids can drop their toys. It makes the dreaded toy clean-up exceedingly simple—and looks damn good to boot—but the true genius is in its transparency. Unlike opaque storage systems, toys can be easily spotted and dug out from within its clear walls. — Fast Co Design

I want the house to be an educational tool for young architects, and I want to inspire good architecture for Los Angeles - James Goldstein — LATimes

work has finally started on an ambitious £335m redevelopment of Merseyside’s largest hospital. And the ambition is not simply to tackle a building that has outstayed its usefulness; it is to make the whole city healthier and wealthier too. [...]

In place of the current “American suburban” model of a huge building and surrounding parking, it will return to a “European” model of a cluster of buildings with public spaces in between them [...]

“The centre will feel like a public square. — theguardian.com

dying online is open to anyone willing to share his or her end with the blogosphere. [...]

This dissolving of the barriers between the public and the intimate is death’s vital new upgrade... death has acquired a “neurotic separation” from daily life, and this separation has been identified as part of the “malaise of the late twentieth century.”

But thanks to the internet, death might be losing some of its pariah status. — designobserver.com