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Big names chase Simon Rattle concert hall: ...[six teams] shortlisted to draw up a concept design for the planned new home of the London Symphony Orchestra...The Centre for Music project, led by partners the Barbican, London Symphony Orchestra...and Guildhall School of Music & Drama... -- AL_A/Diamond Schmitt Architects; Diller Scofidio & Renfro/Sheppard Robson; Foster & Partners; Gehry Partners/Arup Associates; Renzo Piano Building Workshop; Snohetta- BD/Building Design (UK)

Paul Finch: Why ‘starchitects’ stand apart from modern-day celebrity culture: Amid back-biting, bickering and knee-jerk soundbites, he is thankful that some people are still behaving like grownups: The difference between major international architects and most of the people who make the gossip columns is the architects actually do stuff.- The Architects' Journal (UK)

Chipperfield: Architects are being emasculated: We have destroyed the notion of planning just when we need it most: Strategic thinking about cities has been replaced by masterplans..."showing where the traffic will come in and go out. A masterplan is urban planning without a vision...We have completely destroyed the notion of planning."- BD/Building Design (UK)

The great debate: Is 'female architect' an offensive title? Dorte Mandrup objects to being called a female architect. Angela Brady...who advocates for the very women-celebrating schemes that provoke Mandrup, believes awards celebrating women only are still needed. The two award-winning architects...debate. -- Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter; Brady Mallalieu Architects- CNN Style

Karen Burns: Who wants to be a ‘woman architect’?: Does the term “woman architect” render women in architecture as second-class citizens in the business? ...“woman architect” and women-only prizes offer opportunities to discuss the tensions, complexities and contradictions around...gender identity...The meaning and political power of the term “woman architect” changes according to context and intent. We should ask who is choosing the phrase and are the subjects who’ve been labelled with the term happy to accept this label?- ArchitectureNow (Architecture New Zealand)

EU identifies the ultimate European city: Diversity rules and small is beautiful when it comes to the best European cities: A new index by the EU Joint Research Centre...measures 168 cities in 30 European countries and ranks how they perform in 29 areas of culture and creativity...Size isn’t everything...while capital cities fly high, smaller cities often do better.- Politico

Q&A: ASU's Design School director on putting the 'art' in smart city: "There's no such thing as a silver bullet for cities. You need silver buckshot"...Creative placemaking...how cities everywhere can leverage art to enhance communities. -- Jason Schupbach/Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts- Smart Cities Dive

Oliver Wainwright: ‘Final warning’: Liverpool's Unesco status at risk over docks scheme: City could be scrubbed from world heritage list unless regeneration plans for its historic waterfront are reconsidered: ...“crass planning decision”...£5.5bn regeneration scheme to transform...redundant docklands into a “world-class destination”...there will be no affordable housing...There is scant reason for optimism...to a visitor walking through the city, the blunders are beginning to outweigh the gems. -- Broadway Malyan- Guardian (UK)

Christopher Hume: A case for Waterfront Toronto's Port Lands: ...$1.25 billion in new funding...to flood-proof the Port Lands...will basically add a second downtown-sized neighbourhood...remaking the landscape to allow water from the Don River to flow directly into the lake...Sometimes, what matters most isn’t what you see but what you don’t. -- Ken Greenberg; Michael Van Valkenburgh- Toronto Star

Alex Bozikovic: Urban design in the time of climate change: making a friend of floods: How do you address the threat of flooding in urban areas? ...you let the water come: ...cityscapes that are designed to absorb water; and riverfronts and lakefronts that are meant to get wet....Port Lands Flood Protection Project...reflects a big bet on this model. -- Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates; Ken Greenberg- Globe and Mail (Canada)

Rowan Moore: The end of parklife as we know it? The battle for Britain’s green spaces: Britain’s parks are in crisis. With councils such as Bristol cutting spending to zero, and land being lost to developers, what’s happening to our public gardens? Once gone, they won’t come back...If national government had the decency even to notice that they are under threat from their policies, it would be a start.- Observer (UK)

Fred A. Bernstein: How green are Apple’s carbon-sequestering trees really? Apple is planting a forest in Cupertino, California...8,000 trees, whatever its other benefits, won’t have a significant effect on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The campus, even with a very green building at its heart, will emit more than 100 times as much carbon as its trees absorb. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep planting trees. -- Foster + Partners- The Architect's Newspaper

David Wallace-Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak - sooner than you think: ...many sober-minded scientists...have quietly reached an apocalyptic conclusion...No plausible program of emissions reductions alone can prevent climate disaster...climate scientists have a strange kind of faith: We will find a way to forestall radical warming...because we must.- New York Magazine

Carmody Groarke's 'park above a quarry' near Heathrow is set for approval: A 44-hectare public park built over a gravel extraction pit...part of an ambitious masterplan to regenerate disused farmland: A ’deep subterranean space’ created by mineral quarrying below the park surface will later be converted to house around 175,000m² of underground warehouse and storage space. -- Arup; Vogt [images]- The Architects' Journal (UK)

Facebook and OMA team up for Menlo Park master plan: ...Willow Campus, a mixed-use neighborhood that will be located next to the company’s headquarters...Housing and regional transportation will both figure prominently...1,500 units of housing...with 15% listed at below market rates. -- Shohei Shigematsu [images]- The Architect's Newspaper

S.D. Sykes: Reconsidering Venice, Crumbling City: Her present is most often portrayed with misty romance or shadowy menace, complete with a generous helping of dilapidation and decay...its time to cut Venice some slack, and look at her in a different light...she also has a different past. A serious, powerful, confident past - one that deserves to be remembered and celebrated.- Literary Hub

ANN feature: Norman Weinstein: Book Review: Reading the Grain: "Wood" by William Hall: Designer Hall's photographic essay of wood architecture spanning a 1,000 years broadens thinking about a trendy material so it appears as an ever-changing, perennial, and crucial one.- ArchNewsNow.com

TALLER | Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo: Criminal Courts for Oral Trials, Patzcuaro, Mexico: Mexico's judicial system has long been in crisis...In 2008, a series of constitutional reforms were passed...The main challenge was to represent the ideals of the new system - 'transparency, equality, democracy, justice and dignity', while complying with the strict security requirements... [images]