With the firm Front, in which he is a Partner, Marc Simmons has collaborated on projects with OMA, Asymptote Architecture, ARO, Beyer Blinder Belle, Gehry Partners, Herzog & De Meuron, Kengo Kuma, KPF, Mack Scogin Merril Elam Architects, Renzo Piano, Sejima + Nishizawa Associates, Steven Holl Architects, Toshiko Mori, and many other architects. His lecture will explore themes in his recent work, including the speculative and experimental potential of the facade specialist. — youtube.com

A few days ago, we posted a video of the gallery installation White, the thesis book show by the 20 fifth-year architecture students of Professor Karen Lange at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College of Architecture and Environmental Design. Now we have also received plenty of exhibition photos from the students, as well as images of the construction process. — bustler.net

Back in 2009 SOM's City Design Practice took a comprehensive look at the the entire Great Lakes Lakes and the St. Lawrence, ecosystem and proposed The Great Lakes Century, a pro bono initiative - to begin a broad-based, bi-national dialogue. Reed Webster wrote that his "masters project was dealing with some of the same issues." His project waterWORKS was designed as a piece of a larger green-infrastructure plan for Traverse City, Michigan.

Released on Sunday by the Center for an Urban Future — a think tank focused on New York City — “Designing New York’s Future” cites that New York City graduates twice as many students in design and architecture as any other city in the country. While extolling the schools’ strengths, the report also advocates for more business coursework in curricula... — thirteen.org

The Panelists will explore the theoretical approaches to Digital fabrication and tooling systems, as well as the various implications and practical applications of digital fabrications and their impact on the practice and pedagogy of architecture. — bustler.net

The students of Professor Karen Lange at California's Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College of Architecture and Environmental Design have shared with us a video of their recent thesis book show installaton, White. — bustler.net

Earlier this March, d3 officially announced the winners of the international Housing Tomorrow architectural design competition, and Bustler published the top submissions. This past Monday now, the d3 Housing Tomorrow exhibition also opened at the Mississippi State University School of Architecture featuring the winning entries and selected projects from the 2012 competition. The exhibition will run through April 20 at the school's Giles Hall Gallery. — bustler.net

Alejandro Zaera-Polo has been a visiting lecturer in architecture at Princeton since 2008. His appointment as dean, which requires approval of the University's Board of Trustees, will be effective July 1. He will succeed Stan Allen, the school's dean since 2002, who will step down at the end of this academic year to return to full-time teaching and architectural design. — princeton.edu

Sometimes I think, as architects, we talk so little about buildings. That’s part of my issue with the profession — and part of why so many people leave it for other things. Architects don’t know how to define themselves. It makes us unnecessarily modest, as if we shouldn’t think of architecture as this big world-changing thing when we talk with other people. If you don’t find your niche, something that’s easy to explain, you feel engulfed in the “architect” stereotype. — Meera Deean, via architects.org

Lawrence Cheek explored the trend of open office design, amongst recent commercial/institutional architecture in Seattle. George Showman found fault "This is a weird article because one of the examples is an absolute palace (the Gates Foundation) and the others seem a little miserable...I have worked in an open office for years, but it was small enough that there were many moments of productive silence, and poor enough that I didn't expect more."

For Archinect’s latest Working out of the Box feature, Paul Petrunia interviewed Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp. Will Galloway asked "say shouldn't someone interview paul for this feature too?" to which Paul responded "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".

China, of course, is not new terrain for international architects. Many top American firms have run offices inside China for a decade or more. The new arrivals, though, come not by invitation or out of curiosity but because they need work. They are, as Michael Tunkey, head of the China office for the North American firm Cannon Design, says, “refugees from the economic crisis.” — New York Times

UPSTATE was created [as a] framework for sustained collaboration with the community and the city—in our case a post-industrial city in upstate New York that's been grappling with a shrinking population, eroding tax base, crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools, cash-strapped services. The challenges aren't new—they're the challenges of cities all across the rust belt—but they're real, and they're intensifying. — Places Journal

College towns have weathered the recession and housing collapse more than the rest of America, but the neighborhood around USC is an exception. Now USC is planning what local officials call the biggest project in South Los Angeles in a generation — 35 acres, complete with restaurants, shops, a six-screen theater, faculty office space and student housing. Will gentrification push local residents out, or is the university — often accused of ignoring its neighbors — be doing them a favor? — Which Way, L.A.?