Last night, a star-studded crowd trickled into the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its annual gala beneath a gargantuan chandelier made of what appeared to be plastic water bottles. After the event took place, several members of the art community noticed what appeared to be suspicious similarities between the chandelier and the plastic works of American artist Willie Cole. — ARTnews

A government statement says "plagiarising, imitating, and copycatting" designs is prohibited in new public facilities.

The statement says buildings "reveal a city's culture" - and that "large, foreign, and weird" designs should be limited.

The guidelines also clamp down on new skyscrapers - limiting them, in general, to a maximum of 500 metres. — BBC

Duangrit Bunnag, the renowned local architect who won the bid to design Suvarnabhumi airport's second terminal, has denied plagiarising the work of a Japanese architect.

"I didn't copy anyone else's work. Those who follow my work will know that I created a similar image in my previous designs, such as for a hotel in Sri Lanka," Mr Duangrit told The Standard, a local online news portal. — bangkokpost.com

Explaining his move, he said that, while it was ‘unorthodox in an academic setting’, the citations were removed to give the publication more relevance to the general public and less of an academic tone. [...]

In a letter to Princeton University, Koolhaas defended Zaera-Polo, saying that the publication was intended as a ‘polemic, not an academic document’. — architectsjournal.co.uk

“I think it’s definitely derivative of the Gardens by the Bay concept,” Chris Wilkinson, one of the British architects responsible for the “super-trees” in Singapore’s Marina Bay, told The Daily Telegraph.

“You’d have expected them to have come up with something a bit more original.” — telegraph.co.uk

In July, Anasagasti hired a lawyer and filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit, accusing American Eagle of stealing his work and seeking monetary damages. If it sounds novel to apply copyright to graffiti art, that’s because it is: Lawyers who work in this area say it’s not clear anyone has ever tried this in court. Copyright law, as its name suggests, lays out the rules for when it’s okay to copy something. But does it extend to art that's on public walls? — theatlantic.com

[...] colleges in China are copying America’s copycat approach. There’s a university in Shanghai where faux English manor houses sit side-by-side with dorms modeled on Britain’s half-timbered homes. To the north, Hebei province boasts a university inspired by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts—itself fashioned on the traditional collegiate Gothic. Even specific colleges have been cloned. — theatlantic.com

That’s a nice photo of Paris, isn’t it? Nope! That’s not Paris and no, it’s not Disney World or even the Las Vegas Strip; it’s a replica Paris in China. What makes this clone of Paris even more weird is that it’s a ghost town. Only about 2,000 people live there, which means that those giant skyscrapers, with 700+ units tend to only have around 30 people living in each of them. This city has become a place to take wedding photos for Chinese citizens who can’t afford to travel to the real Paris... — mydesignstories.com

Chinese cities have recently become notorious for their sheer degree of copying and reproduction, with hundreds of replicas of famous historic buildings and even of recent ones – such as the copy of Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou Opera House, under construction almost immediately after the original was completed. But in London, the Crystal Palace replica is only the most vast – and probably the least likely – of a smaller but still significant series of proposed reconstructions. — guardian.co.uk

A lot of Chinese people look up to the West as an ideal, so the construction of these towns could be seen as a way of accelerating their progress; a quick way of achieving through emulation. — psmag.com

China is also the land of the knock-off: knock-off designer handbags, knock-off blockbuster movies on DVDs, etc. But now, it seems the knock-off has gone off the charts in terms of proportion: entire buildings. — theworld.org

Star architect Zaha Hadid is currently building several projects across China. One of them, however, is being constructed twice. Pirates are the process of copying one of her provocative designs, and the race is on to see who can finish first. — spiegel online

The original is a centuries-old village of 900 and a UNESCO heritage site that survives on tourism. The copycat is a housing estate that thrives on China's new rich. In a China famous for pirated products, the replica Hallstatt sets a new standard. — news24.com