We were participating in a little experiment trying to answer the question, “How does the brain respond to the city?” The headsets were recording second-by-second readings of our brain waves via Bluetooth to an app on the iPod. The resulting gigabyte of data, gathered from about 50 participants, will be aggregated into a visualization to be presented May 13 at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. It’s part of the Van Alen Institute’s multiyear “Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape” project. — theatlanticcities.com

To show you all some Valentine's Day love, we have more photos to share of Young Projects' recently unveiled "Match Maker" sculpture from the 2014 Times Square Heart Design competition.

Currently on display at New York's Times Square until March 11, 2014, the interactive heart-shaped sculpture pairs up individuals based on their zodiac sign compatibility. — bustler.net

The Van Alen Institute announced on Oct. 17 the upcoming launch of "Elsewhere", a multi-year initiative that will explore escapism in the contemporary urban environment. The community-centric initiative will consist of design competitions, various public programs, and research focusing on the multiplex aspects of escape — and how the findings from these investigations can create room for innovation and improvement in planning, design, and policy. — bustler.net

Earlier this morning, Ground/Work, the design competition for Van Alen Institute’s new street-level space in NYC, announced Collective–LOK as the overall competition winner. The victorious design team was formed as a collaboration of Jon Lott (PARA-Project), William O’Brien Jr. (WOJR), and Michael Kubo (over,under).

Collective–LOK's winning proposal, titled Screen Play, was selected from a group of three finalist projects. — bustler.net

If you've been following the Van Alen Institute's Ground/Work competition along with us for the past few months, then you were probably hoping to find out who the winner is by the end of this past week. However, we received word from the organizers that we'll have to wait for the big announcement until Monday.

So while we sit tight for a little longer, we're excited to share an in-depth look into another finalist entry, this time from EFGH. — bustler.net

For the past few months, we've been following the progression of the Van Alen Institute's Ground/Work competition for their new street-level space—from its launch to the announcement of the finalists [...].

While we wait for the winner of the competition to be announced this Thursday, we are happy to give a more thorough look into the proposal from the Of Possible Architectures team, one of the three Ground/Work finalists. More specifically, we're going to take a look at the Van Alen Table. — bustler.net

Back in July, we published the selected finalist teams for Ground/Work, the design competition for Van Alen Institute's new street-level space in New York City. The three competition finalists—Collective-LOK, EFGH, and Of Possible Architectures—spent the last few weeks developing their design ideas which were presented to the public today. — bustler.net

Finalists have been announced today for Ground/Work: A Design Competition for Van Alen Institute’s New Street-Level Space. The challenge invited emerging designers, up to ten years out of school, to design Van Alen’s new street-level work space and public venue at 30 West 22nd Street in Manhattan. Three finalist teams were selected from a pool of over 120 teams answering the recent Call for Portfolios. — bustler.net

Looking for a nice design competition to participate in this month? Our friends at New York's Van Alen Institute just announced the launch of Ground/Work, an international architecture competition seeking innovative designs for a new street-level venue to house the Institute’s work space and public programs. The competition started accepting entries earlier this week, submission deadline is June 13, 2013. — bustler.net

For those of us who have long fought for greater diversity in architecture, the slow pace of change is less alarming than the emergence of cynical voices that dismiss the viability of architecture as a profession. At the final Van Alen roundtable, Dagmar Richter relayed the opinion, expressed by some in the field, that the declining status of the discipline is reflected in the growing presence of women in architecture schools — in other words, women are making headway because men are bailing. — Places Journal