The villas are naked concrete, baked in the sun like unpainted pottery. The swimming pool is a trough with light fixtures poking from the sides. There are no guests, many stray dogs, and one-full time member of staff—a watchman who spends much of his time tending a fruit orchard where mangoes, oranges and lemons grow.

If this were an isolated case, it would be mere misfortune. But the Seagull is just one ruin among dozens that line some 200 km of road on the southeastern Sinai coast. — Quartz

By living above 800 feet, Estis and Enkin are two members of an unexpectedly exclusive group in Manhattan. In my estimation, no more than 40 people currently live above that line, scattered among just three buildings...

As my elevator descended and my ears popped, it occurred to me that I would almost certainly never take in such a view again. And in fact, maybe nobody will, if these apartments wind up becoming empty investments. — The New York Times

Early Land Art practices emerged as a protest against the commercialization of art at the end of the 1960’s and as a subsequent refusal of the museum or the gallery as a setting for artistic activity. (Oppenheim). — SOCKS

When a couple sets out to build their dream house, they enlist the services of a visionary modernist architect, whose soaring ideas are matched by only his ego. The woman is swept away by the uncompromising creative artist whose personality provides a stark contrast to her practical husband's. She is so taken she hardly notices the Architect is building HIS dream house. — the Architect

A teetering stack of fibreglass blocks has landed in Kensington Gardens, rising above the Serpentine Gallery in a stepped wall, before billowing out to form a cave-like space within...

From one side, it looks like a wall that has enjoyed a good lunch. The blocks stretch outwards in a swollen bulge, like a snake devouring its gallery-going prey. From the other, it looks caught in a stiff breeze, a pixelated curtain rippling in the wind. — the Guardian

By and large, elite architects have disengaged from efforts to make the most fundamental unit of architecture available to all. [...]

Contra Hadid and others, a truly revolutionary architecture would concern itself with how to provide permanent, quality housing for the nearly one billion people currently living in slums, how to create accessible housing for the millions more adversely affected by a global affordability crisis in urban areas. — jacobinmag.com

With the new mayor focusing our attention on smart development and social equality, 2016 will be a banner year for the London Festival of Architecture. Election watchers will be familiar with many of this year’s hot topics: community spaces, social housing, docklands renewal. But considering the theme this year is ‘community’, there will be something for every tribe of Londoner. Out of 300 events, we’ve picked the 10 must-sees. — thespaces.com

Liverpool's Riba North will have conference facilities and a gallery "at its heart", a spokeswoman said.

It will open in August with an exhibition of designs for Liverpool that were never built.
The centre, which will be housed in the Broadway Malyan-designed Mann Island on the city's waterfront, "will offer a magnificent opportunity to display Riba's historic collections, telling hundreds of years of the UK's extraordinary architectural history", Duncan said. — bbc.com

In any city, space is a commodity. In South African cities space is historical and emotional. A new photo series by an American living in Cape Town captures the dramatic inequality of South Africa’s most beloved city. From an aerial view, Cape Town’s scenic beauty gives way to a stark reminder of the country’s past and the continued racial segregation. [...]

“Looking straight down from a height of several hundred meters, incredible scenes of inequality emerge,” he writes on his website. — qz.com

[Airbnb] says it will spend the next several months reviewing how hosts and guests interact on the site and what it could do to ensure users are treated more fairly. [...]

"The bottom line is that the design of platforms dictates the decisions that people make on them. Even if there’s implicit bias, [Airbnb has] an enormous amount of ability to change the extent of discrimination on the platform." — washingtonpost.com

THE Palestinians’ new national museum is a striking monument to the state they don’t yet have. Designed by a firm in Dublin, the museum itself is angular and modern, with glass curtain walls topped by smooth white limestone. From afar it looks almost like a low-slung bunker perched on a hill north of Ramallah; inside, though, it is light and airy. A terraced garden stretches out below, filled with dozens of local species...

Only one thing is missing—the exhibits. — the Economist

[Garth England's] extraordinary drawings, made in Hengrove Lodge care home between 2006 and 2013 and published in a beautiful book called Murdered with Straight Lines, capture the changing city through the eyes of this post-war everyman. Born in Bristol general hospital in 1935, England spent most of his 79 years in the city’s suburban south: in Knowle West, Hengrove, Bedminster and Totterdown... — The Guardian

In the early 1960s, [Penn State's] international studies were confined mainly to books and photos — until George Ehringer and his classmates organized a semester in London, the department’s first official study abroad trip. Ehringer, who earned his bachelor of science in architecture from Penn State in 1964, recently made a $25,000 gift to create the George D. Ehringer, Class of 1964, Award for Study Abroad in the Department Architecture... — Penn State News

It is a simple sculpture: 64 concrete pyramids that stand in a perfect circle around two-and-a-half acres of rippling, black volcanic rock.

Known as “Espacio Escultórico” (“Sculptural Space”), the sculpture was inaugurated in 1979 here on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. It is considered one of the most important pieces of land art in Mexico, a tranquil oasis in a chaotic city. — the New York Times