What made Michael Asher extremely relevant to architecture has to do with his work’s spatial concerns and their contextual narratives, particularly site specific and situationist manipulations of space often in a dialog with the viewer via the sculptural platforms. As Duchamp did with his readymades, Michael Asher also sought to connect art with people. Except in Asher's case they were decidedly engaged more direct interdependencies between art and architecture — Architect's Newspaper

"They felt some of those things were too flashy and not in keeping with the kind of the culture of Facebook, so they asked us to make it more anonymous. Frank (Gehry) was quite willing to tone down some of the expression of architecture in the building." — gawker.com

At least 15 Syrian students were killed on Thursday when rebel mortar bombs landed on the canteen of Damascus University's College of Architecture, state-run media reported. — Al Arabiya

The wizards at Electronic Arts seem to understand cities as market-driven algorithms. Input people, rules, and resources, and the results are stability, growth, and wealth...SimCity’s engineers have repeated the same mistake made by countless potentates, forgetting that cities are forged both by master builders and the people who hack their grand plans. — NY Magazine

This means that the architect, a leader in sustainable development, has started filming all of his meetings and recording all of his phone conversations. He will send them in something close to real time to Stanford, which will be making much of the material immediately accessible on the Internet. Even presidents are not observed so closely and so continuously. — bits.blogs.nytimes.com

As the commercial art world in America rides a boom unlike any it has ever experienced, another kind of art world growing rapidly in its shadows is beginning to assert itself. And art institutions around the country are grappling with how to bring it within museum walls and make the case that it can be appreciated along with paintings, sculpture and other more tangible works. — nytimes.com

In a speech prepared for the AJ Women in Architecture lunch, Scott Brown called on her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 win to be acknowledged retrospectively. Describing it as a ‘very sad’ situation, she said: ‘They owe me not a Pritzker Prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony. Let’s salute the notion of joint creativity.’ — architectsjournal.co.uk

A previously historic government building has now become the centre of the Parliament of Navarra, Spain.

Designed by Otxotorena Arquitectos, the redevelopment project was part of plans to restore the 19th century Audiencia Building of Pamplona. Covering 11,062 square metres, the €9 million redevelopment project has drawn attention for its architectural aesthetics which incorporate a new glass skin into the parliament building. — DesignBuild Source

Today, the Freelancers Union is one of the nation’s fastest-growing labor organizations, with more than 200,000 members, over half of them in New York State. Ms. Horowitz, who has never lacked audacity, says she expects to expand the organization to one million members within three years. For some perspective, the United Automobile Workers union currently has 380,000 members. — New York Times

Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's mayor since 2001, has watched his city become one of world's coolest artistic meccas. But under his guidance, the city has devolved into a backward-looking architectural wasteland in which urban planning only favors the rich. — Der Spiegel

Hotello is a portable space, packed into a trunk. Hotello contains all the necessary elements needed to work and rest. It consists of a metal structure that supports a translucent and sound absorbant curtain. Hotello can be combined and aggregated in different configurations. — conceptualdevices.com

The Skyhouse, which occupies four stories of an early skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, shows architect David Hotson manipulating the available space to include features such as a climbing column and tubular metal slide with which inhabitants can move between levels. The living space rises through all four stories and can be accessed with the climbing pole — safety ropes included — while the huge German-constructed slide takes you down from the attic right to the entrance. — theverge.com

“Photography’s co-option by empirical systems is definitely of interest to me,” says Ryder. “I’m trying to use photography to recontextualize the built environment. The ability to reframe and give new meaning to things is photography’s best attribute as a medium.” — wired.com