... we have turned the Gherkin into the worlds tallest penis. A penis that is being gratified by our parliament with a sexual act. A 180m high erection for deregulation and global capitalism. We have created this art work for all those that are suffering cuts to their budgets, benefits, working hours, rights, freedoms and quality of life as Parliament perpetuates the age old practice of taxing the poor for the mistakes of the rich. — vimeo.com

Donald Judd bought 101 Spring Street, an 1870 cast-iron building, in 1968 for $68,000.
He stripped the dilapidated building down to its plaster walls and wood floors, illegally removing distractions like fire sprinklers.
Then Judd (1928-1994) spent decades turning the spaces into a showcase for his art and a place to rest his head on a bed made of wood planks. It’s carefully related to the colored tubes by Dan Flavin that march across the room, echoing the rhythm of a gorgeous row of windows. — bloomberg.com

After dabbling at the edges for political discourse for several years, the AIA's New York chapter has jumped in with both feet by releasing this week its first-ever mayoral platform.

"We just felt these issues were too important to stand on the sidelines anymore," said Jill Lerner, a principal KPF and the chapter's president. "Whether it's zoning and building codes or sustainability issues or climate change and Sandy, politicians set the agenda for how the city gets built." — crainsnewyork.com

The August Smart Lock is the secure, simple, and social way to manage your home’s lock. Now you can control who can enter and who can’t—without the need for keys or codes. And you can do it all from your smartphone or computer. — august.com

In Makoko, a sprawling slum on the waterfront of Lagos, Nigeria, tens of thousands of people live in rickety wood houses teetering above the fetid lagoon. It’s an old fishing village on stilts, increasingly battered by floods from heavy rains and rising seas. Because the settlement was becoming dangerous, the government forcibly cleared part of it last year. — NYT

By cannibalizing the material and spatial remains of the post-industrial city, a new idea of domesticity is born. The survivalist architecture must address utilities (water, heat), security, varying climatic conditions, food storage, and mental comfort, always adapting itself according to what it has on hand. This method of design and the restriction of material palette remove the extraneous from the work. It addresses economy and sustainability through adaptive reuse of material and space. — dwellingonwaste2.blogspot.com

Never before have we had a technology where we can so freely translate our ideas into a tangible object with little regard to the machinery or skills available. Yet just as the microwave didn’t replace all other forms of cooking as initially predicted, 3-D printing will not replace other manufacturing technologies let alone industrial-scale ones for a variety of reasons. It will complement them. — wired.com

Increasingly it's been cities that have taken the lead on critical issues, from gun control to immigration reform to economic stimulus to climate change. Given the migration of people into cities worldwide, this trend is sure to continue. We might even be in a de facto transition to a society dominated by economically and politically powerful cities — a contemporary version of the great city-states that arose in the 13th century and ruled Europe until the consolidation of modern nation-states. — Places

The modernist five-story glass and steel structure was an attempt by city leaders to shake off the city’s image as a retirement destination. Even more radical was its inverted pyramid shape, chosen by architect William B. Harvard to make the most use of the limited space at the pierhead without blocking views of the city and Tampa Bay. — tbo.com

More than decade after Abbott's imaginative drawing, Eero Saarinen submitted a design for a gleaming metal curve to a competition, and the saga of the Arch began. Campbell, a history professor and the co-director of the Wendell Ford Public Policy Research Center at the University of Kentucky, joins Scott Simon to talk about the controversy around the design, the African-American residents who were displaced to build the Arch and whether the monument really symbolizes the opening of the West. — npr.org

Frank Gehry has raised concerns that concerts at his Disney Hall in Los Angeles could be ruined by a planned subway line that would run close to the venue.

Recent simulations suggest rumbling might be audible in the concert hall.

These have provoked the architect to call for the Metro’s own noise projections, which two years ago predicted there would be no audible impact, to be reviewed. — bdonline.co.uk

How would the design of the built environment, the process and practice of architecture change if women were leading and equally represented? — indiegogo.com

The exhibition at the MAK Center in West Hollywood, curated by UCLA architectural historian and critic Sylvia Lavin, is a wry study of the ways Los Angeles artists and architects worked with, leaned on, stole from and influenced one another in the 1970s.

In a larger sense, it charts the way Southern California architects threw off the influence of establishmen Modernism and helped remake the profession in that decade. — latimes.com