“The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley,” an exhibition at the Center for Architecture, shows how modern landscapes often make a better case for modernism than the architecture itself.

Over a span of 60 years, Kiley (1912-2004), a founding father of modern landscape design, worked for the best architects around, among them Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He was fully versed in architecture’s modernist strategies and overriding focus on form and abstraction. — wsj.com

Terry, 77, is Prince Charles’ favourite architect, a purveyor of classical confections from his drawing board in the quaint Essex village of Dedham. Scruton, 71, a philosopher of aesthetics, is a vocal enemy of modern architecture and author of The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism (as well as I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine). — The Guardian

Until the advent of cable television and then the Internet, Latin Americans, creators and consumers alike, were often more aware of trends in Europe and the United States than in nations neighboring theirs: Whatever similarities in style that emerged regionally were largely the result of discrete, parallel responses to the challenges of urbanization, poverty and the need to somehow integrate modernity and tradition. — The New York Times

Prolific Los Angeles Modernist Rudolph Schindler designed dozens of timeless duplexes, apartments, houses, and office buildings, but he only ever designed one church. Bethlehem Baptist Church in Central-Alameda was built in 1944 for a small, black church congregation. Now, just after a much-needed restoration to what was for many years a pretty rough-looking building, the architecturally significant church—an official Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Landmark—is up for sale. — la.curbed.com

“There was an intense flowering of experimental and futuristic architecture in the 1960s and 70s, which the young African countries used to express their national identities,” says [Swiss architect Manuel] Herz, who has curated an exhibition of more than 80 buildings from sub-Saharan Africa, showing at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, until May. “But we simply don’t know about it... we wanted to show this incredible cultural wealth that also exists.” — The Guardian

Long accustomed to basing its reputation on the grandeur of its old buildings, the city now finds it almost impossible to agree on how to build new ones.

In recent months, traditionalists have blocked efforts to introduce contemporary architecture in the historic core [...]. Modernists are rolling their eyes at new buildings that copy traditional styles, arguing that they pervert a record of architectural progress long documented in mortar and stone. — nytimes.com

The restoration of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin will cost an estimated €101m [...]. This masterpiece by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, which opened in 1968, was closed in early January.

David Chipperfield Architects has been entrusted with the refurbishment project, having found international acclaim for its work on rebuilding the Neues Museum on Museum Island in Berlin. The British architect pledged to “keep as much Mies as possible” at a symposium in late November. — theartnewspaper.com

Sérgio Bernardes was a star of 60s Brazil, a brilliant architect and a mesmerising man. And then almost forgotten. His grandson has made a film to discover what happened — theguardian.com

In a warren of rooms inside a 400-year-old townhouse on the Essex-Suffolk border, a counter-revolution against the most dramatic rebuilding of the London skyline in decades is gathering strength.

Eschewing computer power for sharp pencils and tracing paper, father and son architect team Quinlan and Francis Terry are drafting classically inspired designs for some of the capital’s most prominent sites in a fightback against plans for hundreds of new skyscrapers. — theguardian.com

Two nights before New Year’s Eve, more than a thousand Macedonians gathered in the snow to hold hands and form a ring around a large shopping mall in the capital city of Skopje. That may sound like the beginning to some strange joke, but the crowd was assembled in earnest, to express its love of the modernist building known as GTC, and to protest a government plan to give it a new, baroque façade. — hyperallergic.com

The undoing of the master narratives of modernism should not be taken as an opportunity for an architecture of spectacle and fantasy, but instead one that, utilizing the lessons of the past, speaks to the complexities of the present and the forces that shape us. It is crucial to deconstruct the idea that design can be universal and instead, to think in terms of an architecture that derives inspiration from the specificity of geography, culture and place. — huffingtonpost.com

The architect, who implicitly exempted himself from that 98%, might have been arrogant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.

[...] many if not most buildings are the work of contractors, not architects, and that this has been and will likely always be the case. Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary. — forbes.com

A hundred and some years ago, an aesthetic force called the City Beautiful movement professed the theory that grand public buildings, lovely civic palaces, could inspire Americans to become good citizens. [...]

Since the 1960s, though, it seems as if great civic architecture has become an embarrassment. Politicians who love to cut ribbons find it hard to justify paying for beautiful on top of functional. The result is a style I call Sunbelt Stalinism [...]. — latimes.com

Hundreds flocked to downtown Palm Springs Sunday for the grand opening of the Palm Springs Art Museum's Architecture and Design Center, an ode to the city's unique — and timeless — mid-century modern designs.

The center opened with "An Eloquent Modernist," an intimate depiction of the work of E. Stewart Williams, the acclaimed architect whose designs defined desert modern style in Palm Springs throughout the 1950s, '60s and '70s. — desertsun.com