Richard Rogers's 1986 headquarters for the insurers Lloyd's of London has just been listed Grade I. This makes it, along with the Royal Festival Hall, one of the few 20th-century structures to be placed at the same level as, say, St Paul's. But, like the gothic cathedrals it so closely resembles, Lloyd's was not meant to be an entirely finished product. Look up to the top of its facade, and you'll find cranes are still there... — guardian.co.uk

Three students and a professor from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago are packed into a car, raring to go.

They joke they're the "Cicero crew." Their mission? To locate and survey every piece of religious, educational and commercial architecture from the 1930s to the 1970s. — wbez.org

The Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster could lose their status as world architectural wonders because of the damage being done by surrounding skyscrapers.

World heritage cultural organisation Unesco has warned that the Tower of London could be downgraded because of the negative impact of the [Renzo Piano-designed] Shard of Glass on its panorama. — thisislondon.co.uk

There was a very good architect who's very le Corbusier-ish. A lot of people don't like his work at all. He did a building in the downtown. The building that he was replacing was a very nondescript building from the '30s. It had been something like a sheet metal sales shop, and the facade was sheet metal. Planning wanted him to keep the sheet metal, and he didn't want to, so he hired his own preservationists to argue that the sheet metal wasn't significant. — theatlanticcities.com

While the drawbacks of the Brutalist building, dedicated in 1975, have been known for years, two options mentioned in the GAO report, beyond modernizing the existing structure, could spell big changes for the building and downtown. The first: "[D]emolish the Hoover Building and construct a new headquarters on the existing site." And the second: "[A]cquire a new headquarters on a new site." — huffingtonpost.com

Recent claims that the Taj Mahal is in danger of collapsing sparked panic among historians and archeologists worldwide. Following the reports, a twin bench of Supreme Court justices D.K. Jain and A.R. Dave issued notices to the Uttar Pradesh government, the Archaeological Survey of India and the Ministry of Environment, ordering probes. The results of the probes are slated to be examined by the Supreme Court on Nov. 15. — blogs.wsj.com

"The Martin House was an extraordinary achievement, and a reason this elaborate and I think very thoughtful restoration is a good thing," Goldberger said. "It's always seemed to me, in a way, that Buffalo is making a kind of public apology for the real disaster of having torn down the Larkin Building.

"This is a very good act of public repentance." — The Buffalo News

The architects recognize that the armory as an exhibition space is a far cry from conventional “white cube” galleries, or what Mr. Herzog called “egocentric, architecturally driven museums.” But he said the spaces are likely to inspire artists, not limit them. “Artists have increasingly started to like strange places to put their art,” he said. “The specific conditions are unique and interesting and every artist is challenged to put his paintings or performances in such historic conditions.” — New York Times

Given his stature, the demolition of Terminal 6 arguably ranks as the most significant loss of a transportation building in New York since Pennsylvania Station was razed in the early 1960s.

Mr. Cobb does not think of the two events as analogous, however. “This is not pure greed,” he said. “This is the myopic view of engineers. They just can’t figure out how to reuse it and they don’t put enough value on it to figure out how to reuse it.” — New York Times

Much of the debate involves modernist architecture's role in landmark settings of a traditional character. Preservation professionals often advocate modernist additions to these settings, while at the grass-roots level there is strong support for keeping the new work traditional. — online.wsj.com

Frank Lloyd Wright's only remaining hotel re-opened in Mason City, Iowa, a little more a century after the iconic, and often controversial, architect designed it. — boston.com

THEY go up, they go down — and that’s pretty much it for any New York building, maybe with one or two alterations. But the French-style Harry Winston store of 1960, at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, now shrouded in netting, is a ramble through a century of architectural history. The building has been through one-two-three-four-five major episodes, and a sixth was never realized. — nytimes.com

Fallingwater was as handmade as any of the early Modern experimental structures that, while earnestly seeking the hallowed label of prefabrication, were largely handmade, with lumpy (handcrafted!) white stucco that was smooth only if you were two miles away. Like finally seeing a real Mondrian, with all of its beautiful “imperfections,” much of building today still remains “handmade” even when it means the final connections that make a building sing. — Lamprecht archiTEXTural

The role that architecture plays in all of this is of course limited. New business eventually accrued from rebuilding destroyed buildings will have a negligible effect on the construction economy. So far the London riots have claimed two historic landmarks, the Victorian cottages at Croydon’s Reeves Corner (1867) and Tottenham’s Art Deco Union Point (1930), both of which survived the Blitz. — building.co.uk

Bowing to community pressure, the owners of Richard Neutra's Kronish House in Beverly Hills have agreed to postpone its demolition until at least Oct. 10 to give preservationists a chance to devise a plan to save the residence.
In a related and groundbreaking action, the Beverly Hills City Council early Wednesday asked the community's Planning Commission to devise a historic-preservation ordinance. — L.A. Times