The U.S. Department of Agriculture officially launched their U.S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition. As the first step of a new USDA and forest industry initiative, the competition...aims to showcase the architectural and commercial feasibility of advanced wood products in tall building construction in order to support employment opportunities in U.S. rural communities, maintain the health and resiliency of American forests, and advance sustainability in the built environment. — bustler.net

"Robotic Building Construction by Contour Crafting" by educator Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California was named the grand prize winner of the Create the Future Design Contest for 2014. Launched in 2002 by the NASA Tech Briefs magazine publishers, the contest was created to encourage and honor innovation from engineers, students, and entrepreneurs worldwide. — bustler.net

A Mexican federal agency has denied the environmental permit to allow the construction of the $105m International Baroque Museum in Puebla, less than a month after the groundbreaking ceremony.

The project, designed by the Japanese architect and 2013 Pritzker Prize-winner Toyo Ito, was deemed “not applicable” by Semarnat’s (the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources) General Directorate of Environmental Impact and Risk. — theartnewspaper.com

The announcements of the regional winners for the Holcim Awards 2014 have begun -- with the first set of winners coming from the Holcim Awards for Europe. During a recent ceremony in Moscow, 12 projects from throughout the continent were recognized as top examples of sustainable construction that illustrate the evolving state of sustainable construction and address challenges in the building and construction industry. — bustler.net

Work remains halted at the site of the modular residential tower next to the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn. The building is part of the 22-acre, mixed-use development formerly known as Atlantic Yards and now branded Pacific Park. [...]

The dispute ... centers on the design and construction of the pre-fabricated units that make up the modular tower. The 34-story residential high-rise was supposed to be completed in July 2014. So far only 10 of the proposed 34 stories are finished — wnyc.org

Heavy rains on Monday complicated rescue efforts in south China’s mountainous Yunnan province, where a major earthquake Sunday killed at least 398 people and injured more than 2,000 others [...] The magnitude 6.1 quake flattened or damaged more than 10,000 homes and other structures, again raising questions about China’s building standards and ability to respond to natural disasters. — Miami Herald

Istanbul is the city of transformation and contradiction. As an urbanist, I am trying to keep record and make sense of this transformation and am especially interested in its winners and losers. At the moment we live in a giant construction site, where skyscrapers, mega projects and urban renewal projects are taking place all around. There is a gold rush to real-estate development. — theguardian.com

Kite Bricks has developed "Smart Bricks" (S-Bricks) made out of high-strength concrete that can be used to make buildings rapidly, cheaply and energy efficiently.

The bricks -- which are patent pending -- are much like Lego in that they come in a variety of forms for different purposes and can easily connect together, with rows of knobs along the top of bricks that slot into voids along the bottom of other bricks. — wired.co.uk

A team of researchers from Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia are working on another solution: A swarm of tiny robots that could cover the construction site of the future, quickly and cheaply building greener buildings of any size. [...]

"The robots can work simultaneously while performing different tasks, and having a fixed size they can create objects of virtually any scale, as far as material properties permit” — fastcoexist.com

The fourth cycle of the Holcim Awards has appointed its international expert jury members, who will take on the big task of selecting this cycle's winners of the prestigious global competition, which has a total cash prize of US$2 million...More than 6,000 submissions from 152 countries were sent to this year's call for entries. Later this year, regional winners will be selected based on their team's entry addresses the competition's target issues regarding sustainable construction. — bustler.net

The flagship museum of the billionaire financier and art collector Eli Broad, still under construction, has filed a $19.8 million lawsuit against a German company for what it describes as delays in fabricating the building blocks for its unusual latticed facade. — nytimes.com

Construction spending posted modest gains in April, driven by an uptick in home building and government construction that lifted total activity to the highest level since March 2009.

Spending rose 0.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $953.5 billion [...]. — nytimes.com

Tokyo’s extreme housing production and resulting market is a product of Japan’s uniquely liberal zoning rules. Taken along with its dense network of profitable, private railways, Tokyo is the closest thing this planet has to a city that has completely surrendered itself to market forces. And its construction numbers show it. — nextcity.org