The remains of a nearly 1,600-year-old basilica that was discovered at the beginning of last year under Lake İznik in the northwestern province of Bursa is now set to become an underwater museum. 

The underwater museum project, approved by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, will be carried out by the Bursa Metropolitan Municipality, the sponsor of the project. [...]

The discovery of the basilica was named as one of top 10 discoveries of 2014 by the Ar-chaeological Institute of America. — hurriyetdailynews.com

For fans of the park, the gift from the Diller-von Furstenberg foundation represented more than the revival of Pier 54. It was a statement that Hudson River Park deserved to be in the same league as the city’s other signature, showy spaces. — The New York Times

Justin McGuirk’s Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture should be required reading for anyone looking for ways out of the bleak social inequality we’re stuck in. There were 40 million more slum dwellers worldwide in 2012 than there were in 2010, according to the UN. Private markets clearly can’t provide universal housing in any way approaching efficiency, and governments are often hostile to the poor. — Metropolis Magazine

“What is it that you can do in a pavilion that you can’t do in a building? Buildings – you don’t want them to move. How can we get this structure to respond in a very subtle way to the weather and perhaps amplify the sound of the wind moving through it?” — theguardian.com

To promote its Nightstop program, in which volunteers offer homeless people ages 16 to 25 spare beds, homelessness charity Depaul UK launched a poster campaign Thursday that uses the architecture of buildings to help win the hearts and minds of passersby.

Publicis art director Dan Kennard and copywriter Ben Smith told me in an email that the idea for the design came from “that quite true observation that in life, there are two sides to pretty much every story.” — Slate.com

...after a year-long delay, Canada has committed $243.5 million to build a giant telescope observatory in Hawaii. The Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, will cost an estimated $1.5 billion USD to build...When completed, the TMT will be one of the largest telescopes in existence...Its 30 meter-wide mirror lens...will allow scientists to search the skies for planets outside of our own solar system, as well as other phenomena like supermassive black holes. — Vice

When Loft Living was first published, artists’ laments about real estate in New York City mirrored the concerns that have plagued residents for much of the last century. Namely, it’s tough to find a suitable and affordable place to live. Since the late ’80s, the tenor of that complaint has shifted from one of anxiety to one of fear... — Guernica

It’s hard to find a landmark building in Washington more polarizing than the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Designed by legendary German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the city’s central library was never much loved by Washingtonians. If anything, its popularity has gone downhill since its 1972 opening. [...]

But now, as a four-year process wends its way toward a final design, it’s clear Washingtonians shouldn’t expect a major overhaul of Mies’s flawed design. — washingtonian.com

Earlier this week, venerable miscellany repository Kottke stumbled across a curious item in a section of the National Archives Catalog pertaining to the U.S. Forest Service: a precisely rendered and impressively illustrated 1974 document, titled Cocktail Construction Chart that meticulously detailed how to serve up various mixed drinks. [...] Esquire phoned up the agency to find out how this cool, but bizarre, part of our nation's history came to be. — esquire.com

Dressed in reflective yellow construction gear while working under the cover of darkness early Monday, a small group of artists installed a tribute to NSA-leaker Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn park.

But it was gone by midday.

The Snowden bust stood atop a column at the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, a site built to honor more than 11,000 American prisoners of war who died aboard British ships during the American Revolutionary War. — mashable.com

Welcome, Player 1! You can now play the classic arcade game PAC-MAN in Google Maps with streets as your maze. Avoid Blinky, Pinky, Inky, (and Clyde!) as you swerve the streets of some famous places around the world. But eat the pac-dots fast, because this game will only be around for a little while. — googlemaps.com

Dash fits squarely into the current age of smart-home technology... It is not simply a matter of practical efficiency but of a proactive, preëmptive way of living, in which inefficiency is the worst kind of waste. The way we manage our chores is a measure of our worthiness. No one wants to live in a stupid home... And only a chump would ever run out of toilet paper.

But what if there is actual value in running out of things? — the New Yorker

Even on a dry day, tens of millions of gallons of dirty water dumps into the ocean through the region’s vast storm drain system. The 3,500-mile network was designed and built to empty streets of rainwater, but tons of litter also flow into the ocean through the intricate system of curbside drainages, underground channels, pumps and creeks. Stormwater pollution puts beach swimmers at risk, particularly after it rains. Marine animals and plants can also get sick or die — LA Times

222 Bowery is an Italian-inspired palazzo for the beggars. — Times