When the 70th regular session of the General Assembly convenes on Sept. 15, it will do so in a complex of buildings that hasn’t looked so good or felt so secure in generations.

“We now have a very safe compound,” said Michael Adlerstein, [...] executive director of a seven-year, $2.15 billion renovation, known as the capital master plan, that is nearing completion. More visible than anything else is the robust yet crystalline new glass facade of the 39-story Secretariat building. — nytimes.com

When Barack Obama's people announced last week that they are searching worldwide for an architect for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, they won no points for transparency. [...]

Having consulted sources, I can now name 11 of the firms and observe that they are A) Of high caliber; B) Represent a broad geographic and aesthetic spectrum; and C) Include the established firms one would expect to be invited. — chicagotribune.com

While I believe there will always be a place for the book in the hearts of academics, it is far less likely there will be a place for the book, or at least for every book, on the academic campus. [...]

This is not to say that academic library construction and renovation have come to an end. But rather than being conceived of as on-campus book warehouses, academic libraries are today being reimagined as spaces in which learning, collaboration and intellectual engagement take center stage. — qz.com

The competition for the premier high-profile commission is expected to draw the interest of the leading “starchitects” across the globe.

The foundation has stated in earlier documents associated with the site selection competition that the “unified design vision” calls for the building to be a “responsible steward of the environment” and one that “embodies principles of biomimicry to create a living building.” — chicago.suntimes.com

“The library is a tool to attract people to the village,” said Mr. Li, a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

When visitors come to see the library, he said, they also spend money at the village’s few restaurants, pay parking fees and donate money for the building’s upkeep.

“The place is special,” said Li Wenli, 45, an insurance saleswoman from Beijing [...]. — nytimes.com

Construction has begun on the future Centre Européen du Judaïsme (European Centre of Judaism) in the 17th arrondissement of Paris [...].

The planned cost of the project is €10m, with €2.7m in state and regional public funding, and it is due to be completed in spring 2017. Covering 4,900 sq. m over eight floors, the Jewish centre will include a synagogue, library, theatre and classrooms. The new building has been designed by the local architects Bruno Fléchet and Stéphane Maupin [...]. — The Art Newspaper

President Obama will choose the University of Chicago as the site for his presidential library, according to several reports and sources close to the Obama family.

The proposal from the University of Chicago in Chicago’s South Side Hyde Park neighborhood, which is near where the Obamas have a home, their daughters attended grammar school and Michelle Obama worked as a vice president of the university’s medical center, is the apparent winner, reports and these sources say. — forbes.com

It’s hard to find a landmark building in Washington more polarizing than the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Designed by legendary German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the city’s central library was never much loved by Washingtonians. If anything, its popularity has gone downhill since its 1972 opening. [...]

But now, as a four-year process wends its way toward a final design, it’s clear Washingtonians shouldn’t expect a major overhaul of Mies’s flawed design. — washingtonian.com

A typical library can take years to build. But a new library kit, designed to travel to remote refugee camps or disaster zones, can come together in less than 20 minutes. The Ideas Box...fits the equivalent of a small-town library on two standard shipping pallets. It comes with books and e-readers, tablets, laptops, cameras and other creative tools... Since camps might not have internet access or power, it comes with its own. The boxes that hold all of the devices convert into tables and chairs. — FastCoExist

The British Museum’s round Reading Room might not fully reopen until 2020. One of London’s grandest interiors, it was used by generations of scholars, including Karl Marx, when it housed the British Library. The historic reading desks are currently covered by a platform built in 2007, when the room was temporarily converted into a space for the museum’s major exhibitions. — theartnewspaper.com

Between 2008 and 2013, I photographed the branch libraries of New York City’s three public library systems: 212 branches in all[1], spread across the five boroughs. Through arrangements with each of the library systems, I worked mornings before the branches opened to the public. I traveled by subway and bus and made six to twelve pictures of each branch, interiors and exteriors, using a 4×5 inch view camera. My archive, to date, holds over 2,000 negatives. — urbanomnibus.net

Architectural experts are to meet in Venice to discuss the restoration of Glasgow School of Art's (GSA) Mackintosh library, which was destroyed in a fire in May.

The art school will host two meetings to explore key questions around the rebuilding of the unique library, one in the Italian city in October and the second in Glasgow next spring. — telegraph.co.uk