The John Hancock Center is getting a name change, nearly a decade after another of Chicago’s most beloved skyscrapers — the Sears Tower — switched identities and caused a civic uproar.

Owners of the 100-story John Hancock Center said the building’s namesake, the insurance company that built the tower almost five decades ago, asked that its name and logos throughout the building’s interior be removed immediately. — Chicago Tribune

Two researchers recently suggested that autism and post-traumatic stress disorder led to the minimalist stylings of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Their questions and tools are useful, but there’s danger in mistaking one piece of a puzzle for its entirety.
The places we inhabit influence the way we see the world [...] Equally and inevitably, psychology has shaped architecture. — citylab.com

“Away with universal styles,” wrote Josef Frank. “Away with the idea of equating art and industry, away with the whole system that has become popular under the name of functionalism. Modernism," he was fond of saying, "is that which gives us complete freedom." — Places Journal

The postwar passion for highway construction saw cities around the world carved up in the name of progress. But as communities fought back many schemes were abandoned – their half-built traces showing what might have been — The Guardian

As London’s Robin Hood Gardens [...] is destroyed despite a high-profile campaign to save it, we look at some cherished examples of modernist architecture from the 50s, 60s and 70s — The Guardian

Beverley "David" Thorne, the last of the Case Study architects and the designer of Dave and Iola Brubeck’s modernist California and Connecticut homes, died December 6 in Sonoma, Calif. He was 93. [...]

Bev designed Harrison House, Case Study No. 26, in San Francisco in 1963. — Enter Tint Name

China’s State Council announced that “weird architecture that is not economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing or environmentally friendly will be forbidden.” Many architects and members of the public understood the frustration and bewilderment, even if they questioned the subjective nature of the official instruction. — The Economist

“It is an absolutely dumbfounding surprise [...] I stopped following architecture years ago, so I had no idea there was this renewed interest in my work until recently. I thought my buildings were a curiosity of the past that people had largely forgotten about.”

Brown is now celebrated for his inventive housing schemes and enjoys the accolade of being the only living architect to have all of his work in the UK listed. But recognition has been a long time coming. — The Guardian

“We’re like surgeons around a body,” said David Chipperfield as he looked at Berlin’s New National Gallery. The building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the 20th century’s greatest architects, was almost as bare as it had been at its topping-out ceremony, in April 1967. The British architect and his lieutenant, Martin Reichert [...] surveyed the dirty steel frame and exposed concrete walls atop weed-strewn sand. “We’ve opened him up and now we’re looking at him.’” — The New York Times

“Whether there is or is not a Northwest regional style of architecture is debatable,” said John Yeon in 1986, “but what is certain is that lot of people want to think there is.” — Places Journal

The Miller House and Garden, now owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, is acknowledged as one of the greatest Modernist collaborations. This thirteen-acre property was developed between 1953 and 1957 as a unified design through the close teamwork of Kiley, architects Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche, interior designer Alexander Girard (who is acknowledged in the film), and clients J. Irwin and Xenia Miller. — Huffington Post

In 1966, a 24-year-old architect who had just graduated from Tehran University hesitantly entered a competition to design a monument to mark the 2,500-year celebration of the founding of the Persian empire. [...]

The architect, Hossein Amanat, had no idea that his hastily prepared design, which went on to win the competition, would one day become a focal point of the Iranian capital’s skyline, serving as a backdrop to some of the country’s most turbulent political events. — The Guardian