vado retro is moved to wonder "with the rash of notable building demolition that has and continues to occur, is there a checklist of what makes a building valuable enough not to demolish?...is it because buildings are more about image and visuals than spatial experience that we are willing to rid ourselves of award winning pieces of architecture/art?...maybe buildings don't really matter that much"

Under his tutelage, designers learn to privilege approach over style. Rather than work with drawings, like most traditional architecture firms, OMA employees first "Diagram" a building—identify the structure's basic components and how they fit together—and then proceed to build it. It's an analytical method that results in buildings that are sometimes ungainly but never unexciting and reject the signature styles associated with many other renowned architects. — online.wsj.com

eric chavkin penned a review of "Glen Small: Recovery Room" an exhibit at Assembly in Los Angeles, organized and curated by Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce. MightyMike (aka Michael Locke) commented "For local (Los Angeles) fans of Archinect, there's a wonderful example of Small's work in the Franklin Hills...the Leiberman House". For his part davidd felt "This review and Small's work seems to come from an ingroup/niche point of view".

"The differences in unemployment rates, participation rates, and average earnings between whites, blacks, and Hispanics aren't just stark. They're also sturdy, rarely yielding over the last 40 years.

Whites account for about 81 percent of the workforce. But there are 33 occupations counted by the BLS (particularly those on farms, around heavy machines, in doctor's offices, and in C-suites) where whites officially account for nine in ten of all workers, or more. Here they are." — The Atlantic Online

Many top designers whom the general public may believe to be architects are, in technical terms, not allowed to use the terminology. And this isn’t raising ire just in America. A British architecture publication was instructed last year to stop calling Renzo Piano and Daniel Libeskind architects since they aren't officially registered as such in that country. — fastcodesign.com

What exactly are [UNStudio] going to share? Will it be more than just some sketches they have laying around? Could it be a big database of materials and tools? Or maybe a bucketload of failed competition entries? Unfortunately, the platform features none of this. At his very moment there are only 27 articles available (they’ve been online for 6 months now), 26 of which were written by UNStudio, and most of them are as vague and imprecise as their view on open source. — failedarchitecture.com

The principals of the respected New York firm Rogers Marvel Architects have decided to form two independent practices, to be known as Marvel Architects and Rogers Partners. Jonathan Marvel and Robert Rogers came to a “mutual agreement to formally dissolve their current practice,” according to a statement. — archpaper.com

In June this year UNStudio will launch the new organisation of its practice as an open-source knowledge-based practice operating projects around four specialised Knowledge Platforms.

As part of the reorganisation of the studio a new interactive online knowledge platform will be launched, aimed at facilitating the open exchange of knowledge, with the ultimate goal of introducing and encouraging the expansion from a collaborative to a co-creative working model for architecture. — unstudio.com

In a cross-disciplinary research collaboration between The Technical University of Denmark (DTU), among others, Henning Larsen Architects has developed a knowledge-based design approach. The research has continuously been tested on real projects. By means of a number of articles and cases, the book presents the results, analyses and methods which make it possible to work with sustainability as a design parameter. — issuu.com

Since the husband-and-wife team of Mr. Alesch and Ms. Standefer founded the architectural and interior design concern Roman & Williams in 2002, their aesthetic of a rugged Americana lifted from a make-believe past has gained dominion over swaths of New York, especially downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. — nytimes.com

From Friday evening to Saturday afternoon, 180 alumnae and current female students alike will gather at the school to discuss issues such as evolving design practices and the intersection of architecture and activism, School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern said. But the symposium’s larger goal is to allow graduates to share their experiences as women architects, he explained. — yaledailynews.com

The recession decimated the architecture profession, with firms closing or laying off large numbers of employees, architects left jobless for months or years, and many leaving the profession entirely. But a survey recently conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction (Record’s parent company) came to the counterintuitive conclusion that some U.S. firms expect a shortage of qualified designers to meet their workloads by 2014. — archrecord.construction.com

Chipperfield lamented how architects have resorted to designing bars, cafes, restaurants, and interiors and criticized the propagation of the discipline as fodder for the “lifestyle pages” in popular media. To him, the role of architecture and design is diminishing into nothing more than an “anesthetic” and a “palliative” in a larger economic crisis, rather than stepping up as a means to address serious socioeconomic problems: “I feel more and more impotent in really doing things..." — blogs.artinfo.com

Less than a fifth know architects prepare construction drawings, and only nine per cent understand that they control site budgets; 15 per cent don’t even know that architects design buildings. — architectsjournal.co.uk