Retiree Walter R. Tschinkel is an entomologist and former professor of Biological Science at Florida State University. He recognizes ants as "some of nature's grand architects" and, curious to understand their self-created habitats, devised a clever (if cruel) way to do it: By pouring molten aluminum down into the hole.

... after the aluminum cools... he unearths these wondrous, chandelier-esque shapes revealing the alien architectures of the colony. — core77.com

Stonehenge was designed to light up carvings as though they were on display in a modern museum, a groundbreaking 3D scan of the iconic stones has found.

The latest 3D laser technology revealed new evidence of the importance of the midwinter sunset to the ancient creators of Stonehenge, along with 71 new images invisible to the naked eye due to weathering of the stone. — dailymail.co.uk

Dawn breaks. The hens descend from their bespoke Versailles-inspired Le Petit Trianon house to their playground below for a morning wing stretch. Slipping on your wellies, you start for the coop and are greeted by the pleasant clucking of your specially chosen flock and the site of the poshest hen house ever imagined. — neimanmarcus.com

Art.sy’s mission is to make all the world’s art freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. We believe that by bringing together art and science, Art.sy will foster new generations of art lovers, scholars, collectors, and patrons. Thank you for joining us in this ambitious mission. — art.sy

A quiet, meditative biography of Dr Dre incorporating thoughts on utopian architecture, Le Corbusier and the evolution of rap. Kind of amazing. — thedocumentarian.tumblr.com

Major League Soccer has asked SHoP Architects, the firm that designed the new Nets stadium in downtown Brooklyn, to prepare initial designs for a Major League Soccer stadium in Queens.

SHoP's name is on a July Major League Soccer proposal given to city officials, and obtained by Capital. Last night, MLS confirmed that SHoP is indeed working on the initial schematic designs for a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. — capitalnewyork.com

Perkins+Will has partnered with Infinite Family, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that helps children and teenagers from African communities virtually connect with mentors around the world and designed LaunchPad, a prototype computer lab where young people in Africa can communicate with mentors via face-to-face interaction thanks to high-speed and high-tech capabilities. — media.designerpages.com

In a few weeks, construction begins on New York’s largest development ever. Hudson Yards is handsome, ambitious, and potentially full of life. Should we care that it’s also a giant slab of private property? — nymag.com

A team of faithful farmers have built a scale model of Lichfield Cathedral - out of straw.

The monument, which stands 50ft tall, 74ft long and 14ft wide, took three weeks to complete before it was unveiled yesterday.

Farmer Rob Gray, 50, decided to build the replica of 12th century Lichfield Cathedral which is near his 250-acre sheep farm in Whittington, Staffordshire. — dailymail.co.uk

Originally a low income neighborhood of informal, mud brick housing, Sher-Pur was subject to government land grabs around 2004 and is now Kabul's wealthiest neighborhood. Built up using mashup of imported architectural designs from Dubai, the neighborhood is full of massive poppy palaces and narco palaces... as the international community pulls out ahead of the 2014 NATO withdrawal deadline, many of these elaborate mansions are sitting empty. Sher-Pur is becoming a ghost town of opulence. — sustainablecitiescollective.com

Conditions of scarcity demand new ways of thinking, an expansion of the role of the architect and designer outwards in order to function more broadly and imaginatively as spatial agents. In contrast to the regimes of austerity ... the territory of processes and networks opened up by scarcity is far more conducive to creative intervention. It is here that scarcity — which can seem at first a bleak prospect — can become the inspiration and context for constructive and transformative action. — Places Journal

a Starbucks coffee shop opened its doors inside a renovated space-age concrete gas station at Grand and Forest Park boulevards, the subject to an intense demolition threat just one year prior. By the end of the day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke the news that another chain, drug store CVS, was backing off its plans to demolish the elliptical mid-century modern AAA Building in Midtown. Within a few hours, months of protest ended in celebration. — americancity.org

"I was very fortunate because the first building in Germany was the Museum for Applied Art, which was a competition that I won. After that I was invited to do other competitions. There's an appreciation for architecture in Germany that doesn't exist in many other places." — Deutsche Welle

The volunteers from LostNMissing Inc., a nationwide non-profit organization based in Londonderry, N.H., are scheduled to begin circulating posters about Jonathan Dailey, a second-year student at Boston Architectural College, around Allston early Sunday afternoon. — boston.com

"I am a naturally peaceful person, but I wouldn't be that upset if 'Vladimir' accidentally met with a baseball bat," - an art lover @twitter — The Guardian