Italian architect Pier Carlo Bontempi has been selected as the 12th recipient of the Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Lauded for his “lifelong contribution to the human city and classical tradition,” Bontempi has dedicated much of his work in the “search for common ground between the classical and the modern; the two most powerful architectural ideas of our century,” as jury member Demetri Porphyrios described.

Still rebuilding after the catastrophic tsunami of 2011, Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, and other notable Japanese architects, have teamed up on the "Home for All" project to provide community-focused housing to disaster-stricken communities. While the architect-driven initiative seems to be a success, Edwin Heathcote of the Financial Times asks in this exquisitely well-written article: are a set of "starchitects" the right team for the job? (Spoiler: Yes)

For Peter Aspden's first encounter with the architect of the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, Frank Gehry did not "exude sweetness." "You are not going to call me a [...] ‘star-chitect’? I hate that." In a candid interview with the Financial Times, Gehry discusses the problem of being branded for beginning the Bilbao Effect in spite of the fact that he insists that "you can’t escape your signature." Gehry talks at length about Facebook's latest headquarters and, in particular, his relationship with his client, Mark Zuckerberg. Read the full interview here.

DOCOMOMO US invites submissions for the first annual Modernism in America Awards. The awards celebrate the documentation, preservation and re-use of modern buildings, structures and landscapes built in the United States or on U.S. territory. The Awards recognize those building owners, design teams, advocacy and preservation organizations that have made significant efforts to retain, restore and advocate for the aesthetic and cultural value of such places.

This competition is a call for methods and forms that inspire hope and dreams through new technology, creative logic, and aesthetic intuition. Its purpose is to encourage the development of new design methods for better architecture and better cities (and, broadly, better design in general), and to recognize groups and individuals who have taken up this challenge.

In this article for Fast Company, Boyd Cohen counts down the top 8 smart cities in Latin America. Using publicly available data and his own comprehensive framework to evaluate how smart a city is, he has generated a list which even he admits features a couple of surprises in the top spots. To see the list and discover what each city has achieved to deserve its ranking, you can read the full article here.

DawnTown, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting architecture in Miami, is announcing an open call for portfolios to their new competition: DAWNTOWN DESIGN/BUILD 2.

The Institute without Boundaries (IwB) is seeking curriculum partners for Connecting Divided Places, a project that investigates social, economic, environmental, and cultural divisions in cities. They are calling out to municipalities, not-for-profit organizations, and companies interested in working with them to address the wicked problems dividing their cities and regions. They are looking for organizations interested in collaborating on design solutions that make for more balanced, healthier, and resilient city-regions of the future. They want to know what challenges your city is facing.

In this interesting report in the Ottawa Citizen, Maria Cook exposes the plan to renovate the Arthur Erickson-designed Bank of Canada Building in Ottawa. The existing building, which features a public atrium complete with a tropical garden, is being extensively remodeled to improve security and building performance, although arguably at great cost to the design. Cook exposes how the bank turned down a prestigious design award in 2011 as it was already at that point privately considering the changes, and explains how its privileged position - related to the government but not controlled by it - effectively means that the bank has nobody it has to answer to who might stop these plans. You can read the full article here.

The Rockefeller Foundation has named the first group of cities selected in the “100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge.” Each city has been chosen for demonstrating “a commitment to building their own capacities to prepare for, withstand, and bounce back rapidly from shocks and stresses.” More than 1,000 registrations and nearly 400 formal applications from cities around the world were submitted. After careful review of each city's challenges, these 33 where chosen:

The American Institute of Architects New York State (AIANYS) has announced a new competition celebrating design and professional excellence in publicly funded buildings in New York State. The Excelsior Awards will provide a model for future state-funded building design and professional practice and advocacy.

Building Trust International is very pleased to announce their 5th Design Competition. The challenge is to design a health facility that can easily be relocated. This could be in response to a natural disaster, or to inoculate and educate in areas with specific medical emergencies or outbreaks, it will also help aid agencies that don't have the funds or means to purchase land, offering short term leasing opportunities.

According to John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press, Detroit may soon be removing one of its downtown freeways, the I-375, and converting the trench-like road into a more pedestrian friendly surface level street. The change could be a boon to residents of nearby areas such as Lafayette Park and Eastern Market, which were cut off when the road was built in 1964, and follows a wider trend of cities removing freeways in order to regenerate downtown areas. The city government is currently working with major stakeholders to investigate the potential effects of the change, with a proposal due for summer 2014. You can read the full article here.

Correction: The HOK-team has been appointed to appraise the options for refurbishment and has not yet been commissioned for the work itself. 

In the wake of the destruction of Typhoon Haiyan, architects were asking: "couldn't we have avoided this?" Technically, yes. But while the opportunity to build better exists, such measures are often expensive - and in poverty-stricken areas like the Philippines - cost-prohibitive. A recently published article by Carey Dunne on Co.Design breaks down why disaster-proof construction is such a complex challenge.