The King is dead, Long Live the King
Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82... + full entry...

The Architecture Faculty of the Technical University of Delft is fully destroyed by fire.
The fire started about 9.30 this morning on the 6th floor due to a short circuit in a coffee machine.

The Faculty is now considered as destroyed.

A loss for the staff and the students including myself.

Nu.nl + full entry...

London basks in sunshine but don't bother to try and sunbathe in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. You won't get in. David Barrie reviews Terry Farrell's proposals to open up the Palace and its gardens to the public.

Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock is a harbinger of emerging urban informatics. The project is important to journalists, urban theorists and "wired" citizens. Serial Consign recently weighed in on the project with commentary and a list of links to related discussions and projects.

Dean Robert Storr, explores the consequences of when patrons wrestle power from museum curators and directors. What does such a move mean for the public?
In the end Storr thinks Eli Broad should have just gone traditional. However, the public not LACMA is the real looser.
Frieze Magazine

Edwin Heathcote, the FT’s archictecture critic, visited Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar to take a look at the schemes underway. FT>

Shipping moves more than 80% of the world's commodities and transfers up to five billion tonnes of ballast water internationally each year. Vessels, especially large container ships, need ballast tanks to provide stability in the water and correct any shift in the ships’ mass. The UN lists "invasive species" dispersed by ballast water discharges as one of the four main threats to the world's marine ecosystems. bbc

"Our national search for a new School of Architecture dean has ended in resounding success. Kenneth Schwartz, a professor of architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA), will become the new dean of Tulane's School of Architecture effective July 1...

entire letter after the jump... + full entry...

As some of you may know, I recently started a magazine. Well, maybe it's more of a zine. Anyway, one of the participating designers seems to have divided up his/her submission space into discreet units and is selling them off on craigslist. Obviously I love this turn of events and encourage any and all of you to skip the foot-long at Subway and get while the gettin's good.

Archinect has special agent Emily Kemper at the GRAVITY FREE interdisciplinary design conference in Chicago. She will be reporting live from the conference for the next three days. For fresh reports + photos + discussion, click here.

the city council of kent is planning on suing snohetta to recoup design fees spent after the project nearly doubled from £30 million to £50 million.

kcc spent nearly £6 million for the original proposal, which was scrapped due to skyrocketing prices and brought in david chipperfield to save face.

full story + full entry...

The Braunschweig palace in central Germany is an imposing building dating back to the 18th century. It's got columns and statues of royalty on horseback, but walk inside and instead of suits of armor or priceless tapestries, there's a Starbucks. Everything about the palace is fake. The original building was bombed out during the war. The ruins were demolished in 1960. Palace 2.0 is just a facade. It was finished last year and serves as a fancy entrance to a $300 million shopping center called the Palace Arcades. The locals like the mix of history and consumerism.
NPR Marketplace + Related

It is suggested Berliners nickname the building by California architects Moore Ruble Yudell the "Pancake," in reference to the main-road side that tourists will pass on their way to the Holocaust Memorial. deutsche welle