Though it pervades the landscape of many of our cities, we rarely appreciate how window units continue to shape our homes and street walls. The basic design of a window unit has remained mostly the same since it appeared on the market in 1935 – that is to say, functional and bland. But instead of designing a more elegant object, we have allowed AC units to become visual background noise. — urbanomnibus.net

For the First Time in Four Decades Japan will shut down its last working nuclear power station this weekend, culminating — at least for now — a national shift away from nuclear energy in the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima disaster. The shutdown of the No. 3 Tomari reactor in Hokkaido will leave the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970. — e360.yale.edu

Elected officials in Goshen, N.Y., voted Thursday against a resolution to demolish and replace the Orange County Government Center, a late-1960s building in the small Hudson Valley town that sparked debate on the value of modern architecture.

"I am deeply disappointed by the outcome of today's vote," Mr. Diana said in a written statement. — online.wsj.com

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York will celebrate outstanding achievement in design this fall with its 13th annual National Design Awards program. Today, CooperHewitt Director Bill Moggridge announced the winners of the 2012 National Design Awards, which recognize excellence across a variety of disciplines. The award recipients will be honored at a gala dinner in mid-October in New York. — bustler.net

Designed primarily by Roland Genick, chief architect for rail and transit systems at Parsons, the huge Pasadena-based construction conglomerate, the new stations are topped by undulating light-blue canopies of perforated metal panels that are not only dated — bringing a public-art project from the early 1990s to mind — but provide almost no shade or rain protection. Or solar power, for that matter, though from certain angles the stations look a bit like they're covered with photovoltaic panels. — latimes.com

... instead of drawing his inspiration from buildings in his portfolio, Gehry designed the various pieces of this chess set based on their role in the game. So the soft curves of the queen contrast the sharp angles of the king, while the pawns have all been equipped with cannons atop them. Unfortunately the set, which is made from fine bone-china, is only available from Tiffany & Co. as a special order for a staggering $25,000. A check-mate to the bank account for most of us. — gizmodo.com

The House of Tomorrow, a modernist,12-sided exhibition home built for Chicago's 1933 World's Fair is among Indiana's 10 most endangered buildings, according to the state's leading preservation group.

Designed by Chicago architects George and William Keck, the house wowed fairgoers with then unheard of features such as glass exterior walls, air conditioning, a dishwasher and automatically opening kitchen and garage doors. The home even had an airplane bay on its ground floor. — wbez.org

You've heard of popup stores, right? Companies setting up storefronts that might only be around for a week or a day or even just a couple of hours. [...]

In Oakland, Calif., they've taken it to the next level. A handful of stores have popped up all at the same time -- with no plans to close. It's called a popup hood. And Andrew Stelzer reports, it may be coming soon to a hood near you. — marketplace.org

New psychological research shows that mild intoxication can actually boost creative problem solving. — inc.com

Skywalking basically involves a photographer making his way up to a death-defying height, and snapping a photo that’s meant to give you both a perspective you’ve never seen before, and that feeling like your stomach just made its way into your throat. — petapixel.com

Ayyüce also says that with governments such as Los Angeles now less financially able to maintain parks and other such amenities, big business set about increasingly co-opting -- or, picking up the slack for -- the creation and safeguarding of a bastardized brand of community commons.

"You go to The Americana, you go to The Grove, you got to the Santa Monica [Third Street Promenade], these are places that thousands of people visit," Ayyüce says. "But this is not really public space." — kcet.org

When the hotel workers released a short film a few months later that vividly made the connection between poverty and the uprising, there was a memorable freak-out in the Convention Bureau and City Hall. Instead of a comprehensive investigation that documented events, took public testimony and probed underlying causes, the Christopher Commission was coaxed to finish its superficial report on reforming the LAPD. No one wanted to hear the voices from our own intifada. — Los Angeles Review of Books

A public forum today at Union Station provided the public with their first look at conceptual visions for Union Station and the surrounding area by six architectural firms bidding to prepare a master plan for the facility.

Metro Executive Planning Director Martha Welborne told the several hundred people in attendance that the point of the vision boards was to energize the teams submitting bids to prepare the master plan, and energize the public that uses — or will someday use Union Station. — thesource.metro.net

The Italian government has 20 days in which to decide the fate of the country's national contemporary art museum, the Maxxi, which opened in Rome just two years ago and was designed by the Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. — The Guardian