Inside 516 Sampsonia Way, a 19th-century row house in the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, there no longer appear to be any 90-degree angles. Any corners have become cavernous and rounded from the innumerable lines of yarn of Chiharu Shiota’s Trace of Memory, creating acute and obtuse angles.

And while some people try to cleanse spaces or their superstitious gateways by sageing doorways, this installation does the opposite, appealing to some kind of liminal god to crack open time — hyperallergic.com

beneath the surface of the city, a new sound has begun to emerge, one which refuses to airbrush poverty, illiteracy and police brutality. Driven by a similar sense of disenfranchisement that characterised the development of hip-hop in 1970s New York, a new generation of musicians is creating India’s own homegrown rap scene – labelled by some as “gully rap”, slang for gutter or from the streets. — the guardian

His installation invites comparison to other kinds of architectural fakery, including malls, entertainment centers, theme parks and casinos. Many of these businesses serve themselves up as sanitized versions of real cities. — L.A Times

Thanks to in situ artist Daniel Buren, the white glassy curved sails of the Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris have received a generous splash of vibrant color — or 13 colors, to be exact...Developed in collaboration with Frank Gehry, Buren's temporary piece, titled “The Observatory of Light“, made its official debut this past Wednesday. It took 29 nights over a period of five weeks to apply the dyed filters and white 8.7 cm-wide strips throughout the building's 3,528 glass panes. — Bustler

Is planning still important in a city that's been razed to the ground by civil war? Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni thinks so. She describes life in the city of Homs, which has sustained massive destruction during the Syrian war, and reveals what she'd like it to look like in the future. — abc.net.au

Anthea Hamilton, Michael Dean, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde have been selected to compete for the £25,000 prize.

Hamilton has been included for her work that focuses on fetishism, while sculptor Dean was chosen for pieces made from salvaged materials.

The winner will be announced on 6 December after an exhibition of works. — bbc.co.uk

School buildings in the UK are of such poor quality that children are underperforming and teachers are quitting the classroom, experts have warned.

A new study by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) found that one in five teachers have considered leaving their school as a result of stressful, overcrowded working environments caused by the poorly designed buildings they have to teach in. — independent.co.uk

Construction of the 2016 Serpentine Pavilion and Summer Houses has started. For the first time, the Serpentine Galleries has expanded its annual architecture programme to include four Summer Houses, located a short walk from the Gallery in Kensington Gardens, in addition to the 16th Pavilion on the Gallery lawn.

For the fourth year running AECOM, in collaboration with David Glover, is delivering technical advisory services for the project... — the Serpentine Galleries

For years now, people have been talking about the insulated world of the top 1 percent of Americans, but the top 20 percent of the income distribution is also steadily separating itself — by geography and by education as well as by income.

This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into. — the New York Times

“2 wires + weights + tape + thin foam rubber” - one of Eva Hesse's shopping lists — the art newspaper

That an apple can travel over 11,500 miles from where it was grown (spending over a year in shipment and in toxic, low-oxygen storage to suspend its maturation) is the perfect object lesson of our global agricultural system’s failures. [...]

And with the advent of natural-resource scarcity, flattening yields, loss of biodiversity, changing climates, environmental degradation, and booming urban populations, we’re hurtling toward its natural limit. — Near Future