In his time as a passenger on what he called Spaceship Earth, Fuller realized that human progress need not separate the “natural” from the “unnatural”: “When people say something is natural,” he explains in the first lecture (embedded above as a YouTube video above), ”‘natural’ is the way they found it when they checked into the picture.” — Open Culture

Last January, Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, did something that no other city its size had done before: It made all public transit in the city free for residents. [...]

One year later, this city of 430,000 people has firmly established itself as the leader of a budding international free-transit movement. [...]

What’s less clear on the first anniversary of free transit in Tallinn is whether it has actually changed commuting behavior all that much. — Citiscope

"All great public squares have a monument with a statue, right? ... Everyone in town can agree about that. But whenever we discuss which historical figure should go up on that column, it turns into a fight. We can’t come to a consensus. So we’ve decided to leave it empty. One day, this person will come. And when they do, we will have a place waiting for their statue. This will bring great pride to Anse-à-Pitres.” — Places Journal

Can a museum collect architecture?

The answer, say the curators of Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture, is yes.

Though it won’t open its doors until 2017, M+ has already staged a number of exhibitions across the city, from 2012’s multi-site “Yau Ma Tei” to last year’s “Inflation!,” a collection of inflatable sculptures displayed on the grounds of its future home, the West Kowloon Cultural District. — blogs.wsj.com

Creating a cohesive connection between a shingle cottage and Richard Meier-designed contemporary house in Mount Kisco was the goal of the current owners, who have owned the property for 25 years — The Wall Street Journal

It is not a new development that scholarly priorities are, regrettably, shaped by policy priorities (and by the strategies of big business and worries of the mainstream media) and therefore it is no coincidence that an entire cottage industry on “resilient cities” has emerged at a time of global austerity — openDemocracy

Richard Meier is returning to his roots with two new developments in New Jersey, where he grew up. — The New York Times

Heads up to our Angeleno readers looking for weekend plans, come to the opening reception of "Materials & Applications: Building Something (Beyond) Beautiful, Projects 2002 - 2013", taking place on Jan. 25 from 6 to 8 p.m at the University Art Museum in Cal State Long Beach. — bustler.net

San Francisco is practically the reductio ad absurdum of gentrification: It’s already land limited on three sides by water, and the massive rise of the tech industry over the last few decades has dramatically increased both the population of the area and its wealth. [...]

But the blame shouldn’t go to the tech companies or their employees moving to San Francisco, however despicable some might be. Blame San Francisco for being pleasant, and its policymakers for being foolish — Quartz

Vandals have smashed an ‘irreplaceable’ stained-glass window after breaking into Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel in eastern France.

The hand-painted, coloured glass window designed by the Swiss architect in the early 1950s was destroyed, it is understood, as the intruders forced entry into the famous Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut.

Once inside the vandals lifted a concrete collection box and threw it outside. — Architect's Journal

Several readers are reporting that a snowblower has accidentally knocked into and shattered one of the large glass panels at Apple’s iconic 5th avenue Apple Store. That’s one of 15 panels, and those large slices of glass were installed a couple of years ago. — 9to5mac.com

The particular danger of TEDification to the design disciplines, I think, is its core message that the chief obstacle to our discovering grand solutions to global problems — to achieving the grand design, to "making a comprehensive entity," as that reviewer of Big History applauded — is our lack of sufficient connection. What we need, we're told, is a seamless web of ideas, capital, products and data. — Places Journal