Preparations are still running for various events around Daniel Libeskind's 70th birthday, among them the concert project "One Day in Life." Libeskind has designed the project for Frankfurt's Old Opera. A total of 75 concerts are to be given on May 21 and 22 at 18 different locations spread over the city of Frankfurt.

Libeskind's idea was to bring music to places where hitherto no music had been played, for example hospitals, public baths or hidden bunkers. — dw.com

Called the Grand Entrance Hall, the underground space – opening today – will be run by The Brunel Museum and is set to host plays, operas, concerts and even weddings.

Architects Tate Harmer breathed new life into the 1843 Grade II*-listed shaft – originally designed by civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his father Marc – adding a cantilevered staircase to make the 75ft-deep hall accessible. — thespaces.com

Frank Gehry will be the stage designer of a new production of the Christoph Gluck opera "Orfeo ed Euridice" for Berlin's Staatsoper, the company announced on Monday in unveiling its 2015-2016 season. [...]

Gehry, one of the world's foremost architects, has engaged in arts projects in the past [...] designed a set for a concert staging of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" in Los Angeles in 2003. — reuters.com

It was an artistic collaboration delayed by some 25 years: The London architect Zaha Hadid responded as much to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as she did to “Così Fan Tutte” when she designed her undulating all-white set for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of Mozart’s opera this week (it closes on Saturday). “We were responding to the context, to Frank’s design,” Ms. Hadid said in a telephone interview from London. — nytimes.com

It's the urban planning equivalent of Rinaldo. Except instead of the siege of Jerusalem, it's the battle for Greenwich Village.

The legendary 1960s struggle pitted planning czar Robert Moses against neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs. Moses wanted to make the city easily navigable by car [...]

But the powerful planner met his match when he proposed an expressway through Lower Manhattan. Though she had little institutional support, Jacobs built a citizen coalition that ultimately defeated Moses. — theatlanticcities.com

A design competition opened in December 1860 with a month's deadline; it drew 171 submissions. The winning architect, Garnier, was a blacksmith's son who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, taking its Grand Prix de Rome for architecture in 1848. — online.wsj.com

Last week the architect Rafael Viñoly was speaking—not kindly—about colleagues of his who think they can do things besides make buildings. “This is a profession,” he said dryly, “that generates an enormous amount of arrogance.” — observer.com