Twenty-one architects and landscape architects made concept sketches for a theoretical summer house — an open-air structure sometimes known as a “folly.” It would have occupied a central spot on a grassy knoll on the southern slope that fronts the main house. — NYT

The project identified nine key trends; More globally than city wide connected communities, Neighbourhoods become more important, Collaborative production as well as consumption, Active aging population, Flexible working, Fragile energy supply and environment, Inequality causing skills and housing divides, Increasing collection and use of personal data and Socially divisive access to communication technologies — Future Londoners

"We are some distance from understanding the jet stream well enough to manage the natural risks associated with structural integrity," adds Prof Keith Hjelmstad. — BBC News

"We hoped the canals would simply make it easier to move around the city, for civilians and police but the reality is Water Level is one giant port of entry for whoever has the cash."
- Yoko Aramaki, City Planner — Flickr

*This screed is awesomely entertaining and full of cool links, even though it’s almost entirely implausible..There’s also the occasional built-from-scratch Brasilia. So, some people might build a city like this in some central-planned, high-tech rush, before realizing that urban drones, bacteria, and 3DPrinters are fated to become as old-fashioned and pokey as swoopy, Space Age Brasilia is right now. - Bruce Sterling — Co.Exist. - Fast Company

In the terms of the story, we wanted to distill experience to a shape, a volume, instead of a literal space-type (“castle” or “gingerbread house,” etc.) We chose this path in part because the structure of the story wasn’t accessible, the events were scattered, random and untethered to a place. So we had to find the rope, make the place, invent a story-space outside the tale itself. — Places Journal

Adding on top of the old Prentice is intended as a thought exercise in what might be called a third way that may not always get its due in preservation battles...And this is where Ms. Gang comes in, compellingly. After our conversation she rapidly crafted a concept for a 31-story skyscraper atop the cloverleaf. — NYT

We were able to meet the Grimms’ strict design requirements by employing a slender tower design of vertical cylindrical stems that are joined by intermittent outrigger beams with a reinforced space at the very top for Rapunzel’s long captivity. — Places Journal

Admittedly, commercial real estate signs are not a particularly literary sort of fiction, but this sub-genre does have its own traditions and mores. Its practitioners exercise what we might consider a tentative form of realism: After all, their stories should be plausible enough to, ideally, attract capital. Thus certain rules and strictures — relating to commercial potential, practical materials and the laws of physics — must be observed. — Places

We like to think of our architectural treasures as milestones of human progress. The Egyptian pyramids, say, or the Eiffel Tower. Perhaps we imagine a Planet of the Apes-like scenario where our ruined monuments will stand as testament to our civilisation long after we're gone. But what will most probably outlive anything else we have ever built will be our nuclear legacy. — Guardian