At a hard-hat tour of the Whitney’s Renzo Piano-designed building in downtown Manhattan earlier this month, it was announced that the institution plans to extend a year of museum membership to the project’s construction workers. — hyperallergic.com

Lewis Mumford wrote that, in a city, “time becomes visible.” Not, it would appear, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a city board has just decided that a rather discreet and understated modern house might need to be torn down because it damages the ambience of a historic district, which is to say it destroys the illusion that the neighborhood is a place in which time has stopped. — Vanity Fair

Mark your calendars! Some popular architects will be speaking in the upcoming "Innovators" talk series at the Museum of the City of New York, starting tomorrow May 6 at 6:30 p.m...

Accompanying the current "Palaces for the People" exhibition, each talk will explore the influence of the Guastavino Company, led by a Catalan father-son team whose architecture, construction, and design practices helped shape NYC's built landscape. — bustler.net

Inside a warehouse at the Brooklyn Navy Yard steel beams and flat metal sheeting rest atop a workbench. A diagram–which looks an awful lot like IKEA furniture assembly instructions–spells out where each beam and metal screw belongs. [...]

The metal may not look like much yet, but it’s on its way to becoming part of the world’s tallest modular residential high-rise. [...]

“This is bringing the best of manufacturing and construction together.” — forbes.com

Some pretty lackluster news from the housing market today.

Construction spending rose a measly .1% in February. Part of that was because of the wild weather we saw this winter, but economists say that only accounts for part of the lacklusterness. It seems we’re not building or buying homes like we used to. Pending home sales fell in February to their lowest level in more than 2 years. The housing market made big gains last year, but so far 2014 isn’t looking so hot. — marketplace.org

If liberal cultural and educational institutions are to operate with any integrity in that environment, they must insist on a change of the rules: abolish the recruitment debt system, pay a living wage, allow workers to change employers at will and legalize the right to collective bargaining. Otherwise, their gulf paymasters will go on cherry-picking from the globalization menu [...] while spurning the social contract that protects basic human rights. — nytimes.com

Caissons are a technology borrowed from bridge building, and they are what makes this project possible. The engineers will drill them anywhere from 40 to 80 feet into the Manhattan schist (the dense, metamorphic bedrock that supports the city’s soaring skyline). The caissons are meticulously arranged in the narrow spaces between the tracks. Above, the they will connect to deep-girdle trusses – some up to 8 stories tall – that control and redirect the towering weight overhead. Finally, the slab. — wired.com

Great cities don’t rest on the laurels of their great public spaces. They make them greater. That’s what Chicago is doing here, despite the objections of naysayers who argued during the recession that the project was an unnecessary and unaffordable extravagance.

But recessions come and go. We only cheat ourselves if we use downturns as an excuse to lower our sights and not build a better future. Now the future and better times are here. — chicagotribune.com

Cranes that have helped to build the Shanghai Tower, China's tallest building and the world's second tallest, are seen being dismantled. — telegraph.co.uk

Hudson Yards, the $20 billion Related Cos. development on Manhattan’s far west side, is taking a key step forward as work begins on a platform over the area’s rail depot designed to support three skyscrapers. [...]

Building the 37,000-ton platform enables the start of almost 6 million square feet (560,000 square meters) of construction on the eastern half of the 26-acre (11-hectare) yards, said Stephen Ross, the New York-based developer’s chairman and founder. — bloomberg.com

"Ai Weiwei, who helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, stayed away from the opening ceremonies because he said he wanted his building to represent freedom, not be a trophy for an autocratic regime uninterested in change." — hyperallergic.com

"I have nothing to do with the workers," said Hadid. "I think that's an issue the government – if there's a problem – should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved."

Asked if she was concerned, Hadid added: "Yes, but I'm more concerned about the deaths in Iraq as well, so what do I do about that? I'm not taking it lightly but I think it's for the government to look to take care of. It's not my duty as an architect to look at it. — theguardian.com

David Boyle did not build his house out of shipping containers to be hip, though he does live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He left the water pipes exposed not in pursuit of an industrial chic aesthetic, but to make them easier to fix. [...]

Their goal, he said, was not style, but a place immune to the neighborhood’s rising rents, built out of materials cheap enough that it could inspire other urban homesteaders to do the same. — nytimes.com