[Jon] Sojkowski worries that these building types, made with materials that are abundant in Africa and sustainable, will soon be lost to history because of a misconception that they are inefficient, outdated and only used by the poor. At one point during his research, he met a man who told him he wanted a Western-style metal roof. 'I asked him why, and he said, ‘Because then I would be somebody,' Sojkowski recalls. — CityLab

Swedish furniture designer and architect, Bruno Mathsson, built two summer houses between 1960 and 1965, that have slowly decayed into disrepair. Mikael Olsson has photographed both houses over the past decade [for his] book, Sodrakull Frosakull. — lushpad.com

A report proposing major changes to copyright laws in the EU has been adopted by the European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee (JURI) [...]

[An] amendment was adopted that stated "commercial use of recordings of works in public spaces should require express permission from the rightsholders." [German Pirate Party rapporteur Julia] Reda said this "could threaten the work of documentary filmmakers and the legality of commercial photo-sharing platforms." — arstechnica.co.uk

When most people think of the Arabian peninsula, they think of the opulent man-made islands of Dubai and that city’s sparking, futuristic towers... But with his series Crossings, Arko Datto shifts the attention to the millions of migrant workers from throughout Asia who are building these structures.

Datto used Google Maps and Google Earth to capture the vast highways, sprawling landscapes, and grand projects that laborers have built under conditions that border on slavery. — Wired

You might be unsure of exactly what you’re looking at when you first see the images in Roland Fischer’s series “Facades.” [...]

“I noticed all these new buildings mushrooming everywhere, giving the impression that they could as well be from any other major town in the world,” Fischer wrote via email. “I thought that this was a new urban visual experience, a consequence naturally of the then still new process of globalization.” — slate.com

Walking in New York can at times feel a little too smooth: the rationality of the grid and subtle grade changes conspire to hide the natural terrain beneath all that asphalt and concrete. That’s not the case in the Bronx, the city’s mainland toehold, where topography is at play like nowhere else in this archipelago metropolis. [...]

It was with this conspicuous role of the Bronx’s topography in mind that we approached Kris Graves, a New York-based photographer [...]. — urbanomnibus.net

Instagram may very well have enabled a whole generation of false artisans—and even encouraged cliché street imagery by promoting hashtags like #middleoftheroad and #strideby through its Weekend Hashtag Project—but the effect may not be so terrible. Quoted in The Telegraph in 2011, Teru Kuwayama, a photojournalist who is now photo community manager at Facebook, compared the rise of Instagram to the advent of electronic music, both of which stimulated “amateur expression.” — americanphotomag.com

The work of Lebanese photographer Serge Najjar shows a striking mix of vibrant colors and stark architectural geometry. His pictures generally feature a small, lone figure in the midst of an overpowering backdrop, giving an impression of man’s smallness as he moves through the world he’s created — an inverted power relationship in which the man-made dominates the maker. — Hyperallergic

Artist/photographer Andi Schmied chose one of these Chinese new towns as the subject for a project that goes beyond merely capturing a desolate townscape. Jing Jin City, 100 miles from Beijing, is a luxury resort town consisting of some 4000 villas, a Hyatt Regency resort spa and amenities such as a golf course and a horse racing track. It is not really a ghost town, however, since it is partially populated, but many of the villas remain in various states of completion. — failedarchitecture.com

In 2010, a sanctuary in Santiago was completed in [Hurtado's] honor — at the very site where he founded the Hogar de Cristo back in the 1940s. The building was designed by Chilean architect Cristián Undurraga, of Undurraga Devés Arquitectos, and it is elegant and serene — a true space of contemplation. It also makes the most of simple materials: rough Béton brut concrete, glass blocks and blond wood ceilings that don't overwhelm the artifacts on display... — Los Angeles Times

German-based graphic designer Matthias Jung creates imaginative houses, that we'd like to encounter in real life. He calls his creations 'architectural short poems', that aim to visualize another perspective on how we could see the world and live in it. The homes are put together from photo material that he collects and re-arranges in unexpected ways. — ignant.de

Russia’s northern cities are a triumph of will; grand settlements in the middle of snow and darkness where people are dwarfed by the outsized factories they’ve built and helpless next to the industrial waste those factories create. Photographer Alexander Gronsky’s images of Norilsk seem both close to reality and something out of a dream. [...] But at the same time it is a place of heart-wrenching almost Arcadian beauty. A place of pale skies and metallic rivers. — calvertjournal.com