As we published yesterday, iconic Chinese artist, designer, and dissident, Ai Weiwei has just had his architecture design firm shutdown by the Chinese government. But this scuffle is only the latest of Weiwei’s many brushes with Chinese law. Seemingly since birth (“I was born radical“), Weiwei has been mixing art and politics to speak out against censorship in his country. Which is why he is the subject of a fascinating new feature-length documentary by Alison Klayman: ”Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.”

As the documentary description explains: “Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.”

While working as a journalist in China, the director, Klayman, gained unprecedented access to Ai while filming. Since being released, the documentary has gained many accolades, including the Sundance 2012 Special Jury Award for Spirit of Defiance.

You can find out more about the documentary, including if it’s playing at a theater near you at its website. And you can keep updated on Weiwei’s struggle at the Never Sorry Facebook page and on Twitter, @AWWNeverSorry

Screenshots from the trailer of “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” after the break…

After 81 days of detention without cause, a year-long travel ban extended for claims of internet “pornography,” and a $2.4 million dollar fine imposed for supposed tax evasion, Ai Weiwei has now been accused by the Chinese government of failing to re-register his architecture design firm, Fake Cultural Development Ltd.

By Andrew Hawkins

From the author of the popular post, “So You Want to Own Your Own Architecture Firm,” Andrew Hawkins, we bring you his latest: “Architecture Decay.”

As an architect I am interested (and have always been) in the way in which buildings are put together. To me, at times, the actual process in which a building is constructed is more interesting than the final product. Not to say the final product is not interesting to me, after all that is the intent of my design, but I find much enjoyment in the process that follows the end of my designing and brings my creation into the physical world. At certain stages of the construction, the completed portion of work produces very visually appealing imagery. (At least to this architect)

With that in mind I also enjoy the opposite process: the deconstruction of buildings. And this main fascination stems from the photo above. My obsession really revolves around the slow decay and atrophy of buildings over time due to lack of care. Also the way in which nature can destroy a building over time or in an instant is a study of architecture itself.

More examples of #ArchitectureDecay, after the break…

The results are in!

After publishing our 10 Best Apps For Architects, getting your comments, and then polling your votes on Facebook, we are finally ready to introduce our new (and improved) list: The 4 Apps every architect should download now! And we mean now. Trust us.

Find out the 4 contenders who stood out from the pack (and a full list of other awesome Apps) – after the break…

UPDATE: Thank you all for sharing your favorite Apps! We took the 10 Apps that received the most votes and polled them on our Facebook page. We’ll be publishing the results later on, but, for now, a big Congratulations to the 5 recipients of our Prize: Kalyan Basetty, Mica Nickson, Azra Kapic, Matt Iden, and Nick Gentile!

We’ll be contacting you later today with your codes for (iPhone), [steel HD] (iPad), and The META Calculator - brought to us by our friends at The Mobile Engineer. Congrats!

Last week, we asked our Facebook Fans to suggest the best Apps for architects so we could put together a list of the 10 Best Apps For Architects. But while a few great Apps got featured, tons of other great Apps got skipped. ArchDaily reader ArchNYC, for example, commented “how is morpholio, Paper, or i-Rhino 3D not on this list? they are incredible apps.” Reader Anna responded: “Agree 100% ArchDaily should consider a second list.”

Well, you spoke, and we listened. We’re going for Round II. But, this time around, we want to know: What Great Architecture Apps Did We Miss?

And we haven’t even gotten to the best part. The folks at The Mobile Engineer, creators of our App , will give 5 lucky commenters a Promo Code – either for (for iPhone) or [steel HD] (for iPad) – for FREE. Not bad, eh?

So, just register to let us know your favorite Apps (iPhone or Android) in the comments below!

It’s hard to imagine Le Corbusier – the bespectacled legend of 20th century Modernism, known for his ultra-clean aesthetics – as living in the everyday, messy world that we all inhabit. Which is why the Fondation le Corbusier‘s decision to display rare color photographs of Le Corbusier is such a treat for us all.

The photographs were taken for the magazine Paris Match in 1953 by Willy Rizzo, a fashion photographer better known for his shots of 1950s stars and starlets. The images depict the then 66-year-old Corbusier in various spots about Paris: the Musée National d’Art Moderne, his apartment, in front of a blackboard (sporting a sketch of Unité d’Habitation).

In her Fast Company article, Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan explains that these images give us a glimpse of the man behind the myth: “Even the way we talk about him now, as Le Corbusier, refers to an idea as much as a person. Captured 12 years before he drowned in the Mediterranean at his beloved summer home, Rizzo’s photographs give us a glimpse of the pre-sainted man–aka Charles-Édouard Jeanneret.”

The photographs will be on display at the exhibit “Le Corbusier by Willy Rizzo” at Le Corbusier’s Maison La Roche, in Paris, until December 15th.

Story via Fast Company, Photos Willy Rizzo

Check out more images of Le Corbusier, after the break…

Kickstarter, a site based on the seductive idea of “crowdfunding” – in which consumers collectively invest in a product in order for it to become reality – has taken on a life of its own. From straightforward consumer products (like a cool watch) to creative projects (Roman Mars’ radio show) and even to large-scale Urbanism projects (including an entire riverwater pool), Kickstarter has evolved to finance ever more complex, ambitious, and risky endeavors.

But are there limits? Can you harness the purchasing power of the public to “crowdfund” anything? To, say, design/build a city?

Well, if Colombia’s BD Bacatá building, the first ever crowdfunded skyscraper, is anything to go by – the answer would seem to be yes.

More images of the first ever crowdfunded skyscraper, BD Bacatá, after the break…

To commemorate Chile’s Bicentennial, President Sebastián Piñera Echenique has developed the “Legado Bicentenario” (Bicentennial Legacy) program to create, revitalize and consolidate public spaces/buildings of great urban/cultural importance to Chile. As part of this program, the President has decided to revitalize Santiago’s Civic Quarter, particularly Bulnes Avenue (Paseo Bulnes) and the area around it.

The Housing and Urban Development Ministry has therefore launched the “International Public Competition: Master Plan for the Bulnes Urban Axis” and is calling for urban design / architectural proposals to complete, update and revitalize Bulnes Avenue and its surroundings. The goal of this initiative is to develop a Master Plan for the area, located in the heart of the Municipality of Santiago, and revitalize its public spaces to create a suitable abutment at the southern end of Bulnes Avenue.

The First Prize Winner will receive about USD $50,000.

More info, after the break…

As we’ve reported over the last two months, efforts have been underway in Arizona to preserve the David Wright House, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “ most innovative, unusual and personal works of architecture,” from demolition by developers. No intact Wright building has ever been intentionally demolished, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy (FLWBC) has been hard at work to make sure this one isn’t the first.

Design Corps and SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design) have released the latest installment of SEEDocs, their series of awesome, mini-documentaries that highlight inspirational stories of award-winning public interest design projects.

While June’s doc featured an incredible community garden in New Orleans, designed/built with help from the Tulane School of Architecture’s Tulane City Center, this month focuses on the revitalization of an abandoned, abestos-ridden school in Manheim Park, a low-income, neglected neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri.

Check out more images and info about this empowering project, after the break…

One day, Andrew Blum‘s internet stopped working. He called a repair man, who told him that, quite simply, a squirrel had chewed on his internet.

Videos

In the frenzy leading up to the iphone 5′s anticipated release last week, we asked our Facebook Fans the best thing about their smartphone (when it comes to their professional lives at least).

The answer was overwhelmingly in favor of one key feature: the camera. From snapping shots on-site to taking photos for inspiration (or just to remember later), the ease of having a camera in your phone has made your lives that much easier (and Apple fans rejoice, as the new iPhone 5′s stand-out new feature is its souped-up camera, now with low-light and panorama modes). Many also mentioned the handiness of having email, maps, and a compass always at hand.

But apart from these standard features, we also got tipped to some really useful Apps that are changing the way you work. We’ve (not very scientifically, we’ll admit) compiled them into a top 10 list…check after the break to see which Apps made the cut!

“Spain used to be a sexy, fit and energetic country. Envy, inferiority complexes, greed, arrogance and pride soaked it in fat. It is currently suffering from moral obesity.” That was Architect Manuel Ocaña’s incendiary take on the current state of his home country, one of the hardest hit by the Recession due to its extraordinary pre-Crisis construction boom (a.k.a “the mother of all housing bubbles”).

For this week’s edition of our Recessionary Interviews series – in which we talk to Architects across the globe surviving the Recession - we decided to get one final perspective from the Iberian Peninsula. We chatted with Spain’s Josep Ferrando, of Josep Ferrando Bramona Architecture, who told us how the economic bust has shifted focus from public works towards an architecture of “re”: rehabilitating, re-structuring, re-inhabiting.

Get Ferrando’s take on the state of Architecture in Spain today, after the break…

When the Twin Towers came down 11 years ago (almost to the day), the world was struck numb. Even New Yorkers, who felt the trauma rumble through their veins, couldn’t get past the initial disbelief: how can this be happening? How can something so big, so invincible, actually be so vulnerable?

Hundreds of comments have been hurled at Renzo Piano’s “Shard,” the massive, reflective skyscraper that hulks over the London skyline – it’s big, no, huge; it’s out of the context of its Victorian neighborhood; its exclusive price tag could only be footed by Qatar royalty (as it is) – but few, beyond writing off the tower as a symbol of arrogance or hubris, have stopped to consider its impetus.

For that, we must look at the Shard in the context of 9/11. Only then can the Shard be understood for what it is: the amplification and perfection of the glass tower Piano began in post-9/11 New York, a utopian vision that stands defiantly in defense of the city itself.

Yesterday, Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic for The New York Times, unleashed his anticipated take on this year’s Biennale. Usually, we find ourselves almost perfectly aligned with Kimmelman’s socially-oriented perspective (in fact, we lauded his approach in “The Architect Critic is Dead“); this time, however, we found ourselves almost entirely at his opposite.

In our Editorial, “The Most Political Biennale Yet,” we contend that “Common Ground” represented a stepping stone in the Biennale’s evolution: it revealed an unprecedented engagement with reality and reflected, for the first time in any substantial way, architecture’s movement away from “starchitecture” and towards urbanist solutions. Was it perfect? No. But it was engaged.

However, Kimmelman’s take suggests that all that progress simply wasn’t enough. In fact, the exhibits we cite as evidence of the Biennale’s progress, Kimmelman cites as exceptions in a festival still overly obsessed with architecture’s big names.

What do you think? Was this Biennale very political, or not political enough? Was Kimmelman too harsh? Were we too forgiving? Or are we both off-base? Read on for a few select quotes from our Op-Eds, and give us your opinion in the comments below.

Of all the critiques of this year’s Biennale, there was one that was particularly hard to miss: “This event is an expensive danse macabre. In truth it is all hollow, arduous, exhausting, bleak and boring. It is no longer about lively discussion and criticism of topics in contemporary architecture, but rather about empty, conservative charged with feigned meaning.”

Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Wolf D. Prix came under fire for this attack (especially when it was realized he didn’t even set foot at this year’s Biennale). And yet, had he written this critique for any other Biennale, he wouldn’t have been so far off. The Biennale is, after all, an expensive affair of prosecco-filled parties and, often, inaccessibly esoteric exhibits.

Prix hedged his bets that this Biennale, with its fluffy-sounding name, “Common Ground,” would be just like its precedents. Unluckily for Prix, it wasn’t. In fact, it was probably the most politically-engaged Biennale yet. But its Gold Lion winners, including an informal settlement and post-Tsunami shelters, have made some architects ponder what has never been pondered of a Biennale before:

Was this year’s Biennale too political, after all?

The Recession has provoked a variety of responses – disillusionment, frustration, woe. For those not inclined to wallow, however, it has also provided ample time to reflect on (and, if you’re Manuel Ocaña, rip apart) pre-Recession society.

In our Recessionary Interviews, we talk to architects living and working where the Crisis has hit hardest. Last week, we spoke with architect Luis Pedra Silva, who offered us a realistic, and yet optimistic, take on the state of architecture in Portugal.

This week, on the other hand, we bring you an outlook more incendiary than optimistic. Manuel Ocaña, the controversial Spanish architect behind the Manuel Ocaña Architecture and Thought Production Office, is far from impressed with how his home country has handled its economic boom and bust. “Spain,” he says, “used to be a sexy, fit and energetic country. Envy, inferiority complexes, greed, arrogance and pride soaked it in fat. It is currently suffering from moral obesity.”

More on Manuel Ocaña’s take on Spain, including why Spanish architects are no better off than Vampires (or, worse still, MacDonalds employees), after the break…

It’s official. The iPhone 5 will be unveiled on September 12th. While we all anxiously await to find out what it will be like (rumors include a longer screen, two tone color, and redesigned earbuds) - we at ArchDaily are wondering what it will mean for Architects around the world.