At nearly 350 square miles, [Berlin is] a difficult city to tour without some guidance. Its vastness is doubly inconvenient for architecture buffs...The [Modern Berlin Map] documents 50 buildings, selected by Berlin-based journalist Matthew Tempest. Unfolded, the front of the guide displays the landmarks on a map of Berlin, while the reverse catalogues the buildings in chronological order. This provides a unique lens through which to track the city’s political shifts. — Wired

With its colorful facade, arched windows, spires and rotunda, the A&I (as it's often called) is a festive relief...But despite the perky building's popularity, its reopening was hardly grand. Why so little fanfare? Lack of funding seems to be one explanation

...the building's "unfinished character is one of its charms...It hasn't always been as gently used as we would like. But that's an important part of our history — Smithsonian history and American history." — NPR

It may be a part of the Olympics the world forgot, but from 1912 to 1948, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) handed out medals across five creative arts categories including architecture...Following the 1948 games, the IOC abandoned the Olympic art competition due to the significantly high number of professionals entering, which went against the spirit of the games being an amateur competition. — architectureau.com

Saarinen’s work for the spy agency mostly involved designing models of buildings and weapons that had yet to be built. He even worked on designs for the original war room in the White House. And the people at OSS claimed that he was so good at his job that he could not be replaced. — Gizmodo

As an architectural historian, Ms. Clark, 30, has studied buildings throughout New York City in pursuit of her doctorate. [...]

Working for JDS, Ms. Clark felt she could have more than a theoretical effect on architectural history. “I think real estate in many ways is the story of New York, how the city grows and changes,” she said. [...]

As soon as JDS considers acquiring a property, Ms. Clark heads to the archives ... to start developing a case for or against the project. — nytimes.com

The ruins of a 16th century church have emerged from the waters of a reservoir in Mexico.

The water level in the Nezahualcóyotl reservoir in Chiapas state has dropped by 25m (82ft) because of a drought in the area. The church, known as the Temple of Santiago or the Temple of Quechula, has been under nearly 100ft of water since 1966.

The church, which is believed to have been built by Spanish colonists, is 183ft long and 42ft wide, with a bell tower that rises 48ft above the ground. — the Guardian

Elizabeth II is the first major British monarch who will not have an architectural style named after her [...]

The present Elizabethan era includes as many as a dozen architectural highlights and at least two broad architectural styles. “I cannot imagine a term or an argument that would tie all of this together,” says Stanford Anderson, a professor emeritus of history and architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “'New Elizabethan architecture’ just ducks the question.” — economist.com

In the 1920s urban "futurists" believed that Americans would be living and thriving in high-density vertical cities. Architect Harvey W. Corbett’s “May Live to See, May Solve Congestion Problems” is one such proposal that sees everything from homes, offices, schools, green space and even aircraft landing fields stacked on top of each other for the ultimate metropolis. — 6sqft.com

The mortar resists microcracking through in situ crystallization of platy strätlingite, a durable calcium-alumino-silicate mineral that reinforces interfacial zones and the cementitious matrix. The dense intergrowths of the platy crystals obstruct crack propagation and preserve cohesion at the micron scale, which in turn enables the concrete to maintain its chemical resilience and structural integrity in a seismically active environment at the millennial scale. — Berkeley Lab

The first portion she pointed out was a pale ochre wall patterned with thin, perpendicular white lines mimicking mortar between masonry blocks. Looking upward we then saw panels of blue faux marbre, high above them gilded column capitals and bosses (the ornamental knobs where vault ribs intersect), and, nearby, floor-to-ceiling piers covered in glossy yellow trompe l’oeil marbling, like some funeral parlor in Little Italy. — nybooks.com

Between 1893 and 1919— 3-decade run referred to as the Golden Age of the American public library system—Carnegie paid to build 1,689 libraries in the U.S. These seeded the DNA for nearly every American library built before the end of World War II. That may explain in part why there is no central accounting for Carnegie's libraries, which were built without any oversight from a formal program or foundation: Even libraries that aren't historical Carnegie libraries share their aesthetic philosophy. — citylab.com