Brazil's World Cup preparations suffered a deadly setback on Wednesday when a roof collapsed killing at least two building workers at the São Paulo stadium that is due to host the opening match.

Coming a week before the draw for next year's tournament, the fatalities revive concerns about unsafe infrastructure and the slow pace of construction, which have dogged the hosts for more than a year. — theguardian.com

Upon receiving approval, construction of MVRDV's The Couch is set to begin this month. The Couch is a club house that the Dutch firm designed together with co-architect Studio Bouwkunde for IJburg, a growing tennis club established in 2010 on an artificial island in Amsterdam. — bustler.net

“Fans are much more sophisticated now,” said James Renne, a principal at the architectural firm Rossetti and the chief architect of the renovation. “You’ve already got N.F.L. stadiums that these fans go to, N.B.A., N.H.L. arenas that they go to" — NYT

The design proposal by Populous and Ateliers 2/3/4/ for the new Grand Stade Rugby Stadium in Paris has emerged victoriously over two competing entries. The announcement was made by the Steering Committee of the French Rugby Federation (FFR) after several months of discussions and reviews. — bustler.net

"The Falcons and the Authority have reviewed the Statements of Qualifications received in response to the RFQ, and the Authority has selected the following firms to be finalists and eligible for further consideration (listed alphabetically):" — Georgia Procurement Registry

Danish firm CEBRA has shared with us its adventurous project Skidome Denmark, a vision for the 'world’s biggest ski dome' in the city of Randers, Denmark. — bustler.net

We tend to think of architecture as solid, stable, enduring, something that at its best will outlast us and possibly say something about us to future generations. Demolition makes powerfully evident the vulnerability, the mortality, of all things standing. — Places Journal

The building’s exact design is not final, but Craig Dykers of Snøhetta said it would be a lozenge-shaped building constructed with a façade primarily consisting of semi-opaque glass with a whitish frit, or dotted, pattern. The exterior is meant to make the building translucent and light-colored but also environmentally friendly by limiting some of the direct sunlight streaming in, he said. — sfexaminer.com

replete with two waterfalls that splash into plunge pools, Euro-style toilets inside individual private stalls and leather chairs custom-built extra wide to accommodate even the heftiest linemen...The locker room looks like a modern SoHo apartment — that is, if modern SoHo apartments had space for shoulder pads — all high ceilings and dim lights. — NYT

Major League Soccer has asked SHoP Architects, the firm that designed the new Nets stadium in downtown Brooklyn, to prepare initial designs for a Major League Soccer stadium in Queens.

SHoP's name is on a July Major League Soccer proposal given to city officials, and obtained by Capital. Last night, MLS confirmed that SHoP is indeed working on the initial schematic designs for a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. — capitalnewyork.com

Brooklynites might consider themselves lucky. In Manhattan, Madison Square Garden’s owners are renovating, spending nearly $1 billion. Judging from results so far, it won’t be enough. The Barclays Center is no Garden disaster, just an extraordinarily expensive lost opportunity. — bloomberg.com

“Snøhetta’s extensive experience with ambitious waterfront projects and its world-class architects’ familiarity with San Francisco through their work on the SFMOMA expansion was a huge factor in our decision,” said Joe Lacob, Co-Executive Chairman and CEO of the Warriors. “All you have to do is look at what they’ve done for the new National Opera House in Oslo and the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt to see what is possible at Piers 30-32.” — nba.com

At the 1928 Amsterdam games, athletes were accommodated in spare rooms in boarding houses and aboard ships. The first Olympic Village was built in 1932, in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, but it was dismantled after the games and virtually no trace survives today. Not until the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki did host cities began to plan and develop permanent structures for housing athletes. — Places Journal

Global architecture firms, LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) and Designsport, collaborated with local Ethiopian firm JDAW to win the international architecture competition for a national stadium and sports village in Ethiopia's capitol, Addis Ababa. The competition, held by the Federal Sport Commission, Ethiopia, called for a new FIFA and Olympic-standard 60,000 seat stadium to host major soccer and athletic events. — bustler.net

HENN StudioB, the design and research studio of Berlin-based Henn Architekten, has won the first prize in the invited international competition to design a new sports center in the southeast Jiangsu Province of China. The Nantong Sports Center establishes a hybrid of landscape, public space and athletic functions. — bustler.net