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Today's News - Friday, June 20, 2008

-- Simon Jenkins is brutal when it comes to Robin Hood Gardens: "Never have the rich been robbed to dump so much concrete ugliness on the heads of the poor."
-- Richard Rogers begs to differ.
-- Meanwhile, he will join a small panel of "up and coming" architects to advise London mayor.
-- Heathcote has high hopes for Battersea, calling Viñoly's grand vision "among the most extraordinary proposals I have ever seen for the city" (with lotsa "chutzpah," too) + details and images.
-- Saffron finds Philadelphia mayor's speech "a pitch-perfect vision" and "a vindication for those who believe that planners should lead" development discussions.
-- But she's totally taken aback by lack of green plans for convention center expansion that will leave the city with "a sprawling 18-acre urban desert" roof.
-- Russell and Lacayo almost swoon over Ando's Clark Art Institute project in Massachusetts: it's his best work in the U.S.; elegant, superb, "and, from most angles, pretty splendid."
-- Kamin reports on Wright house that might be lost to Iowa floods.
-- Weekend diversions (o.k., so we wish we were in London): Dyckhoff on London Festival of Architecture: "Buildings don't do festive very well" and there's "little curatorial gravitas," but there are still highlights and good times to be had.
-- As "Sust-Dane-able" opens at the Danish Embassy, Spring offers an eyeful of socially sustainable developments that make København cool.
-- "Upshot: Photographs by Alan Williams" offers a rare glimpse of some of London's hidden spaces.
-- Further afield, Searle finds the inaugural Folkestone Triennial "witty, thoughtful and definitely worth a day at the seaside" + AJ's eyeful of what you'll see.
-- "Madagascar!" at the Bronx Zoo "is not an assertion of mastery or power; it is an assertion of care and conservation."
-- "Museums in the 21st century" at Denmark's Louisiana Museum offers an "anticlimactic vision of the future," revealing that "museums need more humanity, more ideas, and fewer white cubes."
-- Coming up next week: Bucky takes on NYC: Dymaxion Study Center, "Fly's Eye Dome," and lots of programs at the Center for Architecture, and "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe" at the Whitney.
-- Page turners: Nobel says ""Spaced Out" offers "surprisingly fresh lessons for today's designers." -- "A+D Wejchert and Partners" shows why the team is still a winner after 44 years. -- "Washington Burning" is a "marvelous new history" on L'Enfant and his troubled life.