The proposal would replace a parking lot and a low building near the northwest corner of Market and Van Ness with a 34-story, 400-foot residential tower designed by New York's Richard Meier & Partners. — San Francisco Chronicle

Mitchell Joachim, founder of Terreform ONE, was featured in the May issue of Dwell Magazine for the Now 99- Today's Design Landscape: Ideas, People, Products & Plans. An interview with Diana Budds explores Joachim's designs for biologically based architecture as the future of housing. The published interview follows. — Dwell magazine/ GSD

The Italian government has 20 days in which to decide the fate of the country's national contemporary art museum, the Maxxi, which opened in Rome just two years ago and was designed by the Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. — The Guardian

“In looking at these designs, I think back and remember that some people predicted the terrorist attacks of 2001 would end our lust for travel,” notes Albrecht, who teaches in the decorative arts masters program at Cooper-Hewitt and is currently working on an exhibition of airports—another architectural hotspot. “But today, some ten years later, one of the ur-building types of tourism and globalization—the hotel—is alive and well and remains on the cutting-edge of architectural trends.” — Forbes Magazine

All human artifacts and activities — not just our objects and architecture, but also our organizations and operations, policies and procedures, systems and infrastructures — have been designed, and too many of the most critical have been badly done by professionals and politicians who didn’t know the first thing about design. While we cannot blame them for what they didn’t know or couldn’t see, the stakes have gotten too high for us to continue in this way. — Places Journal

Hillman Curtis, a former rock musician who became a prominent first-generation Web designer and a visionary figure in the Internet’s evolution from a predominantly text-based medium to the multimedia platform it is today, died on Wednesday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 51. — nytimes.com

“One of the things that may come out of the study is that the design of those cones [the north-facing oculi] may have inadvertently or in some other way, you know, turned out to actually have reflections coming in when Renzo sold you a bill of goods that said it wouldn’t.”

That’s how Criswell remembers the exchange weeks later.... He is clearly proud that he stood up to Strick, a man who, he says, isn’t accustomed to having people talk back. And he’s proud that he insulted Renzo Piano." — D magazine

The new Orange Barrel HQ will reuse existing concrete storage silos and a renovated 10,000-sqft warehouse with a new 10,000-sqft addition. OBM President Pete Scantland says they’re aiming for LEED Platinum certification with the project. Solar panels will be located on the back side of a 120-foot tall structure rising above the new offices, while the front side will provide a showpiece advertising space. — ColumbusUnderground.com

Fogo Island is less than 100 square miles just east of Newfoundland and Labrador. The craggy island isn’t the most hospitable place, but the roughly 3000 inhabitants are committed to living there and even taking steps to draw tourists to their rocky shores. Across the island, six artist’s studios designed by Saunders Architecture are taking shape. The hope is that the island will draw the kind of cultural tourists that have flocked to places like Marfa or Bilboa. — thefoxisblack.com

Ms. Lin conceived "What Is Missing?" as the fifth, and last, of her memorial projects, which began with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1982. — post-gazette.com

Creating anything new, particularly a creative collaboration, is an act of pathological hope. It has been said the difference between construction and creation is this: a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. It was with this sense of hope that this project began—an idea borne not only of the notion that we had something to say, but that we could express it in an engaging, thought provoking, and intellectually rigorous way. — Lantern