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

This summer at the almost defiantly unhip South Street Seaport, there shall be pop-up boutiques housed in shipping containers. There shall be outdoor film screenings with lounge-chair seating. There shall be SmorgasBar. And, the lords of artificial weather willing, there may be glitter rain. — cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

The Heron’s architect was N. D. Austin, a 31-year-old artist known for what he calls “trespass theater.” “It’s about making the invisible visible,” he said of his philosophy.

Mr. Austin located a suitable water tower by scouring Buildings Department records for violations with egregious scaffold fines. That can indicate a neglectful landlord, he said, which meant it might be a vacant building ripe for adopting as one’s own. — nytimes.com

Sears Holdings, the 120-year old retailer (which now includes Kmart), plans to start converting its struggling and defunct department stores into data centers, Data Center Knowledge reported today. A new unit of the company, Ubiquity Critical Environments, will lead the charge.

Thanks to Walmart, specialty shops, an economic downturn and—the sweet irony—online shopping, department stores are heading toward extinction, and Sears is feeling the pain particularly hard. — motherboard.vice.com

Richard Koshalek, the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, said on Thursday that he was resigning after the board of trustees failed to reach a consensus on the future of a long-planned project to cover the museum’s interior courtyard with a temporary inflatable bubble. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

Though indebted to conventional artistic methodologies, the vibrant, playful works of Jorge Prado lack traditional notions of artistic autonomy, with multiple uses straddling sculpture, furniture and architecture. Over espresso and a cigarette in the kitchen of his Los Angeles home, Pardo shares with Oscar Tuazon his processes of transforming built environments into functionally fluid sites designed to facilitate a diversity of experience. — youtube.com

Last week, Broad Group announced it has received approval from the Chinese government and will break ground on the project next month, though according to Quartz's Lily Kuo, Broad Sustainable Building has pushed the building's schedule to a more modest seven months. — theatlanticcities.com

Jeffrey Johnson, an architect who runs the China Megacities Lab at Columbia, is among a number of scholars who study China's rapid urbanization. He says local governments are building museums to create a cultural life and competitive identity for their cities.

But China lost a lot of art because of its civil war in the 1940s, as well as the Cultural Revolution, looting and overseas sales. Johnson says many museums are going up faster than curators can fill them with works and audiences. — npr.org

Not every director studied the greats at film school. Joseph Kosinski spent more time with Wren than Welles. "I went to graduate school in New York to get a degree in architecture… but never got my licence." Instead Kosinski, 38, has applied his skills to virtual worlds such as "the Grid" -- the digital setting of Tron: Legacy. Now, in Oblivion, he gets to imagine Earth 60 years after an apocalyptic war. — wired.co.uk

Civil society has to get things done here - Kurt Dillon, architect, Urbio — New York Times

Civil society has to get things done here - Kurt Dillon, architect, Urbio — New York Times

We’re already building the metropolis of the future—green, wired, even helpful. Now critics are starting to ask whether we’ll really want to live there. — bostonglobe.com

Unconscious perception represents the automated processes the body goes through to take in the surrounding environment and its metaphysical status. While our five senses help us perceive the physical world, unconscious perception connects us to the realm of intuition.

To shed light on how we are influenced by this dimension of our minds, artist Dan Graham spoke about his practice, which challenges our perceptions of space through performance, installations, video, sculpture, and writing. — bmwguggenheimlab.org

The 2013 global leaders in technology, design, media, music, movies, marketing, television, sports, and more. — fastcompany.com