The editors of PROJECT invite you to celebrate the release of Issue Three at common room, 465 Grand St., New York, NY, this Wednesday, April 9 from 7pm to 9pm. PROJECT investigates the possibilities for developing a a critical position in contemporary architecture. Publishing both visual and written work, the goal of PROJECT is to provide a platform for disseminating ideas.

The Architecture Lobby has released a seventy-question survey that seeks to gather a broad range of data about architectural work--from firm standards and policies to worker satisfaction--which will provide open-source information about the realities of architectural labor in the US. We will publish the results in the coming months; in the meantime you can aid in the project by taking The Architecture Lobby survey here (open through April).

Developers Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC) and Greenland Group have decided to realize SHoP Architects’ original plan to top Brooklyn’s Barclays Center with a 130,000 square foot green roof. Though the design was first disregarded due to budget cuts, the developers have deemed it necessary to enhance the marketability the Atlantic Yards’ three residential towers - the first is currently underway - and dampen the noise from loud concerts. Little details have been released about the green roof’s design, however rumor has it that it might not be open to the public as it was originally intended.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has been chosen to design a new teaching and learning facility for Barnard College - Columbia University’s world-renowned liberal arts college for women. The selection committee chose SOM after deeming them the best candidate in three categories: “a history of creative and innovative architecture,” a proven recorded on similar academic projects, and “an internal commitment to woman’s leadership reflected by women holding key roles in the firm.”

In this interesting article in the New York Times, Allison Arieff highlights the often unconsidered importance of sound in architecture (outside of theaters and museums at least). She profiles the work of Acoustic Engineers at ARUP who have begun to work inschools and hospitals, taking into account the effects poor sound environments can have on us in our everyday lives. You can read the full article here.

Next Month, the Mackintosh School of Architecture (The Glasgow School of Art) will host its first International Symposium for Social and Humanitarian Architecture, ‘Clean Conscience Dirty Hands’, in the new Reid Building by Steven Holl Architects. The symposium focuses on the limited resources intrinsic to the provision of social and humanitarian architecture and the impact of such scarcity on the ability of organisations to ‘harness’ the learning from each built project through documentation, discussion and dissemination. As such, it seeks to provide both a locus and a forum for like-minded organisations engaged in social and humanitarian building projects, in order to capture and disseminate good practice in both a UK-based and overseas context.

International and award-winning speakers representing a multitude of organisations, including MASS Design Group, TYIN Tegnestue, Architecture for Humanity, London Metropolitan University, Peter Rich Architects and Orkidstudio will gather to discuss a range of ideas relating to one of the three topics broadly covered by the symposium:

Gasp! What provokes this reflex that leaves one short of breath? More than just a sudden turn of events, for discourse to move from gossip to scandal there have to be stakes. Reputations, profits, and history-by-the-winners are on the line. 

UPDATE: The results from the Elite 8 have been announced, and the time to vote for the Final Four has arrived! Do you think "Less Is More" should take the crown? Voting's open until Friday afternoon (EST).

In honor of the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament, Dallas-based architecture firm Good Fulton & Farrell has created an “Arch. Madness” tournament to crown the Best of Architecture. "The tournament pits 64 of the greatest in architecture stereotypes, culture, tools, and ideas against each other. From things architects like, to misconceptions people have about architects (or undeniable truths), this will be a fun way to determine what is the best thing (or most ridiculous thing) about the architects we work with every day." The winner will be crowned on April 8th.CLICK HERE to vote for your "Arch Madness" champion now!

UPDATE: Deadline for submissions extended to April 14, 2014!

Submissions are invited for the 2014 ACADIA 'DESIGN AGENCY' conference at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California on October 20-25, 2014. Architects, designers, fabricators, engineers, media artists, technologists, software developers, hackers, researchers, students and educators and others in related fields of inquiry are invited to submit proposals.

Fabergé's Big Egg Hunt, the world's largest egg hunt (according to their site), launched today in New York City. Over 200, three-foot tall eggs have been hidden across the city as part of a charity event; you can download a free smartphone app to try and locate them yourself. Architecture enthusiasts may want to head out to Soho & Hudson Square, where eggs designed by Grimshaw and Morphosis have been hidden, or the Upper East Side to find Zaha Hadid's. All of the eggs will be on display in Rockefeller Center from April 18 through 26.

Stephen Chung's new PBS show Cool Spaces! hopes to engage the general public’s perception of design by "demystifying" contemporary architectural practice. You can tune in to the hour-long premier tomorrow (April 1) as Chung investigates the sports and performing arts spaces of Moshe Safdie (Kauffman Center for Performing Arts), HKS (Dallas Cowboys Stadium), and SHoP (Barclays Center).

The Faculty of Architecture at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences will host a lecture series on Japanese architecture. The program will start April 8 with Junya Ishigami and will continue until June 24 with lectures by Shin Takamatsu & Takeshi Katagiri, recent Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban, Ryusuke Kojio, Sou Fujimoto, Hitoshi Abe and Hiroaki Kimura.

Critical Shifts is a one-day, student-organized symposium dedicated to exploring the ongoing transformations of critical practice in architecture. The event brings together a diverse group of practitioners in order to investigate how their work (which often combines the activities and approaches of curation, editing, writing, design, teaching, and research) can begin to trace a nuanced map of the fieldʼs current critical terrain.

The latest Future Trends Survey, published by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), indicates an "all-time high" for architects' workload with "confidence levels about future workloads continuing to rise." The February report shows +41 in the Future Trends Workload Index, up from +35 in January, with the highest balance figures coming from London (+54) and Scotland (+60). The optimistic report suggests that there "still appears to be significant spare capacity within the profession," noting that many practices actually under-employed in the last month.

You've never seen Manhattan quite like this: Metropolis Magazine's Komal Sharma takes a look at "Little Manhattan", a sculpture by Yutaka Sone which renders the famous island in 2.5 tons of solid marble. The power of the artwork lies in the play with scale: the initial impression of a huge marble block contrasts with the tiny, intricately detailed skyline forming a mere skin on top; the subsequent realization that this skin corresponds to the familiar vertical city brings you to a more complete understanding of Manhattan's scale. You can read the full article here.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the recipients of its 2014 architecture awards. Recognized as an architect who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art, Massimo Scolari was awarded the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture - a $20,000 award whose laureates include Peter Zumthor and this year’s Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban.

See who else was awarded one of the Academy’s prestigious architecture awards, after the break...

In this delightful article on Metropolis Magazine, Christopher Hawthorne recounts his meeting with Deborah Sussman, the one-time protégé of Charles and Ray Eames whose work breaks the boundaries between graphic design and architecture. From her collaboration with Frank Gehry to her iconic designs for the 1984 LA Olympics, Sussman has come to define a curiously Californian style. You can read the full article here.

Revista Unidade recently announced their international competition "The Unknown Porto". The main goal is to convert an industrial ruin into a service station, serving the national road of Portugal.