“I believe it would be appropriate for the UIA [International Union of Architects] to send a clear message of support for justice in Palestine and Israel by suspending the Israeli Architects’ Association from the world body,” Tutu said in a speech prepared for delivery at the UIA’s 25th world congress in Durban.

Tutu appealed to architects from Israel to disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of any infrastructure that could be related to injustice. — citizen.co.za

Israeli military lawyers argue that if residents are warned, and do not evacuate, then they can be considered legitimate collateral damage. Under this interpretation of the law, the civilian victims become human shields. This is a gross misuse of international law. — AlJazeera

Several thousand Palestinians, defying the urging of Hamas to remain in their homes, fled areas in northern Gaza early Sunday after Israel warned them through fliers and phone calls of major attacks to come. — New York Times

Riots caused tens of millions of shekels in damage and destroyed the Shoafat and Es-Sahl station [...] Residents of Jerusalem’s Shoafat neighborhood are unlikely to enjoy service on the city’s light rail network for several months as CityPass, the company that operates the system, works first to repair the rails and signaling mechanisms destroyed during last week’s rioting, and only later the stations serving the area. — Haaretz

The city of Jericho sits in the hot, flat Jordan Valley down the hill from Jerusalem. Jericho has bragging rights as one of the oldest towns on Earth. But one of its newest homes looks like it might have arrived from outer space.

Ahmad Daoud hired a firm of young Palestinian architects to build this house. Like Jericho's original homes, it is built of dirt. This one has a contemporary twist, though: It's constructed with earth compacted in bags that are then stacked and plastered over. — npr.org

Officials in Tel Aviv, Israel, announced this week that the long-anticipated skyTran system should be up and running by the end of 2015. Tel Aviv — globally famous for its terminally congested traffic — will serve as the pilot program for planned systems in Europe, India and the United States. [...]

Call up a sky car on your smart phone and the pod-shaped vehicle will pick you up at a designated station and whisk you off to any other station on the system. — news.discovery.com

NOT only in 2013 did the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the core of a would-be Palestinian state, grow at twice the rate of 2012; its uniform architecture is increasingly attracting Palestinians. In place of their distinctive rough-hewn stone houses, Palestinian builders now tend to prefer the uniform style of red-roofed houses that mark out Israeli settlements. “People always look up to the colonial power, even if they resent it [...]” — economist.com

The Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has demanded the suspension of the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) from the international body, saying it is complicit in the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and other violations of international law. — theguardian.com

"Sharon's architecture involved not only destruction but also construction. The other major projects he undertook, besides the destruction of the camps, was an attempt to "pacify" the refugees by constructing and forcefully relocating a few thousand of them into Israeli-style social housing blocks next to major Palestinian cities". — Al Jazeera English

“We’re trying to fill the gap between the broad stroke of policymaking and the reality of life on the ground,” says Bar-Sinai, who recently returned to Israel after a yearlong fellowship at Harvard University. “Only thinking about these questions from the 30,000 foot high perspective isn’t enough.” — smithsonianmag.com

As John Kerry was trying to renew negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority late last week, the "Architactics" exhibition opened at the ZeZeZe Architecture Gallery in Tel Aviv Port. This coincidence provides an injection of realism into what, a week earlier, seemed like a series of interesting mental exercises, but far from the present reality. The aim of the exhibition... is to mobilize tools from the world of design and architecture to help to promote the peace talks. — haaretz.com

Richard Meier is the last of the New York Five architects to keep working in minimalist white. Now that theme will be towering over Tel Aviv - the American's luxury high-rise is almost finished. — Haaretz