A new phone isn’t the only Facebook news making headlines, as the social media giant has received the green light from the Menlo Park City Council to move forward with their headquarter’s expansion on the outskirts of San Francisco Bay, California. The approved plans are a slightly toned down version of architect Frank Gehry’s original proposal, as the flamboyant butterfly-like wings which flared from each end of the 433,555-square-foot building have been removed.

“They felt some of those things were too flashy and not in keeping with the kind of the culture of Facebook, so they asked us to make it more anonymous,” stated Craig Webb, Gehry’s creative partner. "Frank (Gehry) was quite willing to tone down some of the expression of architecture in the building."

After a 4-0 vote secured approval, Mayor Peter Ohtaki asked: “Where’s the ‘Like’ button?”

More after the break...

Inspired by a childhood spent filming planes at LAX with an 8-millimeter videocamera, New York photographer and former Berkeley architecture student Jeffrey Milstein has turned his fascination for aviation into a career. Typically known for photographing the underbellies of aircrafts, Milstein's latest series captures the artistic composition and elaborate array of patterns formed by airports and only seen from above. He describes this series as revealing "the patterns, layering and complexity of cities, and the circulation patterns for travel, such as waterways, roads, and airports that grow organically over time much like a living organism."

It’s time for a new Flickr Round Up! Remember you can submit your own photo here, and don’t forget to follow us through Twitter and our Facebook Fan Page to find many more features.

The main photo is the great VM Houses by BIG + JDS = PLOT and was taken by Ximo Michavila.

What do the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Kremlin, and the Burj Khalifa have in common? 

Elevators from the Otis Elevator Company. The company, which is celebrating its 160th anniversary today, has an interesting history: it was founded in 1853, the year Elisha Otis invented the elevator safety brake. Before Otis' invention, buildings rarely reached seven stories (elevators were considered just too dangerous to implement).

But it was Otis' elevator that would allow for the creation, and proliferation of, the skyscraper - an explosion that would for ever alter the 20th and 21st century skylines. 

Read more about the Otis Elevators influence on skyscraper design (and how Otis performed a death-defying feat to increase the invention's popularity), after the break...

There's no denying that London's airport capacity is insufficient (to put it mildly) - not just for its current needs, but, most worryingly, for the future. Nor are architects ignorant to the situation; in the last few years we've published proposals from the likes of Foster+Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, Beckett Ravine, and Grimshaw Architects, offering their own unique perspectives on what could be done.

However, for all the proposals (some emphasizing new off-shore airports, others on bulking up infrastructure or existing facilities), it's hard to untangle what's actually being done towards making these ideas reality. To clarify the situation, and lay our doubts at rest, we spoke with Ricky Burdett, one of the commissioners of the newly created Independent Airports Commission.

In the video above, Burdett, a renowned architect and professor of Urban Studies at the LSE (who has previously served as architecural advisor for both the 2012 London Olympics and the Mayor of London, 2001-2006), explains the political situation in the UK that has been preventing action, and describes how the Independent Airports Commission has been assembled in order to help the government through this process.

More info on this controversial commission, after the break... 

In an effort to generate innovative ideas for the re-use of one of the most important building sites in Detroit’s redeveloping downtown, Rock Ventures LLC has collaborated with Opportunity Detroit to launch the open ideas competition Redesigning Detroit: A New Vision for an Iconic Site. Entrants are challenged to create compelling visions for a new urban development on the famous 92,421 square foot Hudson's site that would play a significant role in the regeneration of downtown Detroit.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Growing Power, a Chicago-based urban agriculture organization, announced recently the formation of Farmers for Chicago, a program that will transform vacant south-side Chicago lots into productive urban farms. The program will make available up to five acres of city-owned vacant lots for urban farming activity and "help expand the supply chain for local neighborhood-level food production and wholesale," "improve community access to healthy food, help participants to supplement their incomes, and to foster workforce training."

Read more about Farmers for Chicago after the break.

Videos

Prefabrication has long been heralded as a possible way to infill New York's vacant sites, however it is only in recent years that it has become a solid practical solution rather than an experimental concept. Riding the crest of the wave of new prefabricated housing is GLUCK+ (formerly Peter Gluck & Partners), in collaboration with developers Jeffrey Brown and Kimberly Frank. Together they have began construction on one of New York's first prefabricated steel and concrete residential buildings.

Read more about this and New York's recent wave of prefabricated buildings after the break...

During a speech at the AJ Women in Architecture luncheon in London last week, postmodern icon Denise Scott Brown requested to be acknowledged retrospectively for her role in Robert Venturi’s 1991 Pritzker Prize, describing Pritzker’s inability to acknowledge her involvement as “very sad”.

Although at the time of the award Brown had co-partnered their practice Venturi Scott Brown and Associates for over 22 years and played a critical role in the evolution of architectural theory and design alongside Venturi for the over 30 years, as well as co-authored the transformative 1970’s book Learning from Las Vegas, her role as “wife” seemed to have trumped her role as an equal partner when the Pritzker jury chose to only honor her husband, Venturi.

More information and an online petition after the break...

“Assess: Chile at Columbia” is an initiative led by the Latin Lab at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation’s (GSAPP) of Columbia University that discusses, in several formats, the state of contemporary cities in the southern country by addressing the question: who cares for Chilean cities?

This project aims to raise questions and skip external, often patronizing understandings of Chilean practices. To do so, “Assess: Chile at Columbia” invites Chilean scholars who— closely in touch with both national practices and international debates in the fields of architecture, public space, and urban projects—are uniquely positioned to initiate a critical conversation.

Distinguished Chilean scholars Luis Eduardo Bresciani, Romy Hecht, and Rodrigo Pérez de Arce selected three projects to represent each of the aforementioned categories in the exhibition Answers form Architecture, Public Space and Urban Projects, to be held on the 100 Level of Avery Hall. This show will inform the Conference “Who cares for Chilean cities?,” at which renowned US-based scholars Saskia Sassen, Stan Allen, and Iñaki Ábalos will assess the topics and works presented by their Chilean peers, opening up a further discussion moderated by GSAPP faculty Clara Irazábal, Galia Solomonoff, and Enrique Walker.

The Canada Council for the Arts and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has announced "Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15" as winner of a national juried competition to represent Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture. Lateral Office of Toronto will organize and curate an exhibition designed to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Canada's largest but least populated northern territories, known for its pristine arctic wilderness and Inuit lifestyle.

Read more about Canada's contribution to the Biennale after the break.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ first built tower, the CMA CGM Headquarters in Marseille, France, is most immediately notable for its vertical form.

As the stunning images from Hufton + Crow show, the tower’s disparate volumes (generated from gradual centripetal vectors) gently converge towards each other and then bend apart to create an elegant "metallic curving arc that slowly lifts and accelerates skywards into [...a] dramatic vertical geometry.”

Read More about CMA CGM Headquarters, after the break...

+ 14

Are you an architect, architecture critic, historian of architecture or otherwise involved with architecture and design? Have you always wanted to give a TED Talk? Can you recap 30 years of architecture? 

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of TED, the 2014 conference will include several talks that look back on three decades of advances in a handful of fields. Until June 30, 2013, we are seeking proposals for an 18-minute, multimedia presentation that will take the TED audience through the most important developments in the past 30 years of architecture and suggest where the field is going - or needs to go - in the future.

More details after the break...

MVRDV’s “mountain of books” in the center of Spijkenisse’s town market square has just been announced as winner of the internationally acclaimed red dot design award for “high quality design” in the Architecture and Urban Design category. The jury selected MVRDV’s Book Mountain from 4,662 entries submitted from 54 countries, lauding the project for its “highly refined detail”.

More information on the building after the break...