Shivihah Smith’s East Baltimore neighborhood, where he lives with his mother and grandmother, is disappearing. The block one over is gone. A dozen rowhouses on an adjacent block were removed one afternoon last year. [...]

For the Smiths, the bulldozing of city blocks is a source of anguish. But for Baltimore, as for a number of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest that have lost big chunks of their population, it is increasingly regarded as a path to salvation. — nytimes.com

"designed by famed architect Zaha Hadid whose signature style appears to be making some of the world's most f**kable buildings...like Georgia O'Keeffe of things you can walk inside...i guess maybe it is time things evened out a bit" - Jon Stewart — Daily Show

The creaky staircase was covered in plastic, as was the living room furniture, but the bones were still there: pressed paper wainscoting in the hall, thickly painted moldings. We often got in trouble for walking too loudly in our clompy shoes up to the top floor at night. — Alexandra Lange

Last week Alex Calderwood, cofounder and creative force behind the Ace Hotel, was found dead. He was 47. The first Ace Hotel opened in Seattle in 1999, under Calderwood's direction... When Calderwood and his team took the company east, to New York, Calderwood brought his friends, design duo Roman & Williams, on board to design the space. Here, Robin Standefer of Roman & Williams remembers Calderwood's design legacy. — fastcodesign.com

The City of Taipei successfully landed the bid — after being the only city to do so — in becoming the next designated city for World Design Capital 2016. The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) made the official announcement during its 28th General Assembly on Monday, Nov. 18.

Previous cities who received the appointment include Torino (2008), Seoul (2010), Helsinki (2012) and the upcoming WDC in Cape Town (2014). — bustler.net

The latest market opportunity for entrepreneurs in China? Polluted air. For nearly as long as pollution has been a salient, public issue in the country, foreigners and locals have been devising ways to help residents avoid the worst of smog—and in some cases make a little money in the process. Here are some of the most notable ones. — qz.com

A year after gathering ideas on how a eurozone country could leave the single-currency bloc, the organisers of the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize are plunging into Britain’s highly politicised housing debate and challenging people to design a garden city.

Offering £250,000 in prize money, entrants are required to answer: “How would you deliver a new garden city which is visionary, economically viable and popular?” — FT.com

A new book, “The Houses of Louis Kahn” (Yale University Press, $65), provides an architectural bridge between the personal and the professional stories, focusing on the nine houses Kahn completed, and designs for two dozen more. The story told by the authors, George H. Marcus and William Whitaker, is one of warm client relations, attention to the smallest domestic detail and a philosophical search for the best arrangement of rooms to call home. — nytimes.com

New tumblr blog that looks at "outrageously gender-imbalanced lecture series, etc." send observed inequalities to feministwall at gmail dot com. — feministwall.tumblr.com

Kate Orff wants to grow oysters in New York’s Jamaica Bay. Not for you to eat, but to save the shore from mighty storms. Great piles of mollusks will diffuse the energy of 10-to-15-foot waves, like those from Sandy that shattered boardwalks and beach homes and shot like missiles up city streets. — bloomberg.com

Lina Bo Bardi was loyal more to an emancipating concept of modernity than to the abstract, formal language of modern architecture. Her thinking and practice were situated at the intersection of different worldviews: north and south, city and hinterland, privilege and deprivation, modernism and tradition, past and present, abstraction and social realism. As she declared in 1989, “I didn’t make myself alone. I am curious and this quality broadens my horizons. ... I am somehow special.” — Places Journal

The artists behind New York’s graffiti haven 5 Pointz have learned that their last-ditch legal effort to save the outdoor gallery will likely fail.

“The building, unfortunately, is going to have to come down,” federal judge Frederic Block said in New York’s eastern district court on Friday. [...]

“I’m getting the sense that the traditional academic way of looking at things needs to be updated,” Block said. — The Guardian