This summer, the Design Museum in London will be offering a glimpse into the future of fabrication and manufacturing with The Future Is Here: A New Industrial Revolution, a major new exhibition about the sweeping changes in manufacturing that are transforming our world. — bustler.net

Trade organizations and builders of all stripes joined in the call for a tamping down of public expectations — especially those that might get cut out of the new modern style of construction. You see, plastic and glass and steel were the future. And since wood wasn't exactly presented as the building material of tomorrow, organizations like the Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau were happy to contribute by advising the industry to tone it down... — paleofuture.gizmodo.com

We’re already building the metropolis of the future—green, wired, even helpful. Now critics are starting to ask whether we’ll really want to live there. — bostonglobe.com

The international ideas competition series POST+CAPITALIST CITY has announced the winners of its last quarter, 4#Move. Previous installments focused on the issues of 1#Shop, 2#Work, and 3#Live. — bustler.net

For the first time since Henri Labrouste (1801-1875), currently the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, formulated the conception of the new, democratic library, the central library is fighting for survival. The relevance of these gloriously inflated book boxes is being questioned in an age that looks to the Internet for its intellectual resources. — online.wsj.com

*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

This exhibition charts L.A.’s rapid transformation into one of the globe’s most influential industrial, economic and creative capitals. From its ambitious freeway network and sleek coffee shops, to its dynamic cultural destinations and experimental residences, the vast metropolis’s rich yet often underappreciated built environment is reexamined, promising new insight into the region’s development and impact as a vibrant laboratory for cutting-edge design. — pacificstandardtimepresents.org

The April 3, 1988, magazine's cover illustration showed bubble-shaped cars traveling in "electro lanes" on a double-decked, high-rise-lined 1st Street in downtown's Civic Center area. The cover's headline was "L.A. 2013: Techno-Comforts and Urban Stresses — Fast Forward to One Day in the Life of a Future Family." — latimes.com

A few days ago, we published one of the finalist entries of the international design ideas competition, Transiting Cities - Low Carbon Futures. The competition was open [...] to develop innovative visions for Latrobe City, in eastern Victoria, Australia to make the transition from a singular economy dominated by the power industry (coal mining and electricity generation) into a diversified economy and prosperous low carbon regional city. — bustler.net

Last fall, the international research project and design ideas competition, "Transiting Cities - Low Carbon Futures," had invited designers and academic institutions from various fields to envision new, innovative and alternative cities of the near future by defining opportunities for transition into low carbon, prosperous, and vibrant communities.

One of the finalist entries [...] is the concept "Networked Ecologies: Rethinking Remediation" by Arizona-based team Studio One. — bustler.net

Researchers at the Stanford School of Engineering have succeeded in developing the world’s first peel-and-stick thin-film solar cells.

The idea will allow the cells to be applied to almost any surface, with successful tests having been conducted on paper, plastic and window glass. This opens up significant opportunities for alternative applications for solar technology, previously limited by traditional solar cells, which must be mounted on stiff, often heavy, fixed panels. — DesignBuild Source

... we asked a few forward-thinking professionals in the business of buildings. The question went something like this: If we were going to remake a famous building or bridge using the materials we have today or will have in the future, what would we do differently? That's just vague enough to make things interesting. Here's what we got back. — popsci.com

Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon of Boston firm Höweler + Yoon Architecture are the winners of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012. The team won with the project "Shareway," a proposal calling for the reinvention of the Boston-Washington, D.C., metropolitan region called Boswash. The Audi Urban Future Award 2012 is an international architecture competition that focuses on specific mobility scenarios in five metropolitan, regions Boston/Washington, Istanbul, Mumbai, Pearl River Delta, and São Paulo. — bustler.net