The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers team smashed its own world record for largest Rube Goldberg machine with a 300-step behemoth that flawlessly accomplished the simple task of blowing up and popping a balloon - setting the new world record for the Largest functional Rube Goldberg machine, according to World Records Academy — youtube.com

It is still far and away the greatest memorial of modern times—the most beautiful, the most heart-wrenching, the most subtle, and the most powerful. It’s also the most abstract, which makes it even more miraculous that it was built in a nation that generally prefers symbols more along the lines of the Lincoln Memorial. — Vanity Fair

The new owner will get a gas station and convenience store, a schoolhouse from 1905, a cabin, a garage, 10 acres, and a three-bedroom home at 8,000 feet altitude — overlooking the trucks and cars on the nearby interstate on one side and the distant snowcapped mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado on the other. — washingtonpost.com

In an ambitious project, the states of North Carolina and South Carolina are trying to set the record straight. After years of historical research and old-fashioned survey work mixed with global positioning technology, they are moving the boundary back to where it belongs. — nytimes.com

Since the iPhone is by far the most popular mobile device that Archinect readers own, according to our web analytics, we developed this app for you iPhone (and iPod/iPad!) users as a simple, mobile version of Archinect...Lian Chikako Chang loves the new app because it is "so readable. I can archinect on my way to the cafeteria".

Arctic Architecture: Svalbard is the first book in a series that will explore the inevitability of northward human migration, its impact on the landscape, and the possibility that sustainable architecture can accommodate human expansion while minimizing environmental damage. Additional volumes focusing on other Arctic locations are also planned. But your support for this first volume is critical. — Kickstarter

As Modernist buildings reach middle age, many of the stark structures that once represented the architectural vanguard are showing signs of wear, setting off debates around the country between preservationists, who see them as historic landmarks, and the many people who just see them as eyesores. — nytimes.com

Insiders call it the Mothership. It’s Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, and to Apple fans, it’s a place thought of with romance and wonder. Only the privileged elect have ever been deep within its most secretive recesses, but after an extensive search, I turned up more than 30 inside pictures that Apple probably doesn’t want you to see. — applegazette.com

Apartment 17-B, right, set decorator Claudette Didul said, is "in a high-rise that feels like it was built in 1960 with a white-carpeted sunken living room and a fascinating fireplace and a Case Study-style kitchen with two pass through windows."

It also sports walnut cabinetry with a built-in television set and one of those new-fangled-for-the-time push-button phones. — latimesblogs.latimes.com

In 2009 and 2010, we visited residents of Lafayette Park with photographer Corine Vermeulen while researching our forthcoming book Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies. Vermeulen’s portraits of townhouse owners in their homes appeared in the New York Times. Here we present the corollary to that series: tenants of the Pavilion and the Lafayette Towers in their apartments. Vermeulen’s portraits are accompanied by Lana Cavar’s photos of the views from each apartment window and by excerpts from interviews — places.designobserver.com

In 1958, Baghdad was featured in Time magazine—not as a hotbed of revolutionary, civil or sectarian strife, but for its ambitious plans for the world's most famous architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, to recapture through their modern buildings the city's former glory. — online.wsj.com

Only four people in the United States carry the official designation of Lego Master Model Builder. And 23-year-old Andrew Johnson of Illinois is the newest — and youngest — to earn the title. — npr.org