There was no handbook on starting an architecture school, let alone one in a far-flung locale, in a country much different from our own. We knew we needed to offer classes in basic design, as well as those in strength of materials and in math. We made humanities a requirement, too. We had brisk discussions about developing a curriculum around Islamic architecture; instead we settled on design studios that encouraged students to be inspired, broadly, by the culture of East Pakistan. (In one studio, I assigned students to design a village school made of materials transportable to the site by a simple boat.)

Early-1932, after seeing a photograph in the New York Times of the great Helen Keller at the top of the newly-opened Empire State Building, Dr. John Finley wrote to her and asked what she really "saw" from that height. Keller — famously both deaf and blind from a very early age — responded with the incredible letter seen below, within which lies one of the greatest, most evocative descriptions of the skyscraper and its surroundings ever to have been written.

A truly beautiful letter.

Chinese architect Wang Shu, whose buildings have been praised for their commanding presence and careful attention to the environment, has won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the prize's jury announced Feb. 27.

In the last half-century, the clear result of “architectural myopia” is buildings whose makers have been so concerned with the drama of their appearance that they fail on the most fundamental human criteria. They isolate people; they do not provide enough light; or provide a poor quality of light; they provide a hostile pedestrian environment at their edges; they cause excessive shade; or create winds in what is known as a “canyon effect”; or they trap pollutants in the “sick building syndrome”; they use resources wastefully; etc. Moreover, the buildings themselves are a wasteful use of resources, because they are not likely to be well-loved, cared for, repaired, modified, and re-used over many years. In short, it is not just that people find them ugly, but they represent a fundamentally unsustainable way of building human environments.

A Wright house isn’t a build­ing, it’s a philo­soph­i­cal text about fam­ily, nature and land­scape. An inglenook is impor­tant — it draws fam­ily and friends into con­ver­sa­tions. Views into the sur­round­ing land­scape are impor­tant — they con­nect us to nature An Apple prod­uct isn’t about but­tons and screens, it’s about elim­i­nat­ing bar­ri­ers between the user and what the user chooses to care about when using the device.

The proof that Frank Lloyd Wright cared is that he sold houses in every decade from the 1890s to 1960s. The proof that Steve Jobs cared is not found in the fact that Apples sells mil­lions of prod­ucts, but that Apple sells mil­lions of its prod­ucts to peo­ple who already own Apple prod­ucts.

But the culture of Foster and Partners (as it was then called) was different from firms in Silicon Valley with one notable exception - Apple, the place that combined geek business inventiveness without its reputation for poor aesthetic sensibility. Perfecting the model of selling design that is compatible with big business, Foster simultaneously grew one of the largest architecture practices in the world while still winning awards for design excellence. The secret was to design buildings like the limited edition, invite only Porsches that Foster drove and fellow Porsche drivers would commission them.

A proposition for a different approach to designing space to succeed the single-author model includes tools from disparate sources to create new paradigms for thinking and building

Richard Neutra’s Maxwell House was chopped up and moved to a new location this week (photos from the L.A. Times documenting the mid-century classic being towed along Sunset Boulevard, below).

An admirable save, to be sure — though we wonder whether treating such a building like a status object that can be moved around according to the will of the owner somehow detracts from the dignity of the original architectural intent.

There’s Brutalism and just plain brutal. The University of Toronto’s Robarts Library is both.

El Economista reports (English)that renowned British architect Norman Foster is hard at work designing Apple’s new campus in Cupertino.  The 100 acre campus was picked up from HP last month for a measly $300M

Seeing Around is a 36-page essay about optical and analytical experiences in the 3D spaceland of landscape sculptures.

At the base of the towers, Yamasaki used implied pointed arches—derived from the characteristically pointed arches of Islam—as a transition between the wide column spacing below and the dense structural mesh above. (Europe imported pointed arches from Islam during the Middle Ages, and so non-Muslims have come to think of them as innovations of the Gothic period.) Above soared the pure geometry of the towers, swathed in a shimmering skin, which doubled as a structural web—a giant truss. Here Yamasaki was following the Islamic tradition of wrapping a powerful geometric form in a dense filigree, as in the inlaid marble pattern work of the Taj Mahal or the ornate carvings of the courtyard and domes of the Alhambra.

Piece by piece, brick by brick, this LEGO Certified Professional (one of 11 worldwide) creates large-scale artistic models of some of the world's most famous structures including the Empire State Building, St. Louis' Gateway Arch, and Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece Fallingwater. The simplicity and nostalgic quality of LEGO affords viewers a new, detailed look at familiar buildings. Visitors can lean in close to see the complexity of a building's intricate design and engineering or take a step back to appreciate its stunning sculptural form in full.