Dezeen Wire: Swedish furniture retailer IKEA is to build an eco-housing development next to London's Olympic park in Stratford. A spokesman for IKEA has claimed that the 1,200 home scheme featuring its own water power plant, school, health surgery and nursery will be "the newest and most interesting development in the whole area" - London Evening Standard
Dezeen Wire: a tower on the site of the United Nations' campus in New York by Pritzker Prize winning architect Fumihiko Maki that has been on hold since 2004 has been given the green light to continue development - The New York Observer
Maki's proposal for a long, narrow 35-storey tower on the same site as buildings by Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier was stalled by political arguments between the U.N. and the City of New York. The design will now need to undergo alterations ahead of a planning application and is due to break ground in 2013.
Dezeen Wire: architecture critic Jay Merrick lauds the forthcoming exhibition Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-35 at the Royal Academy in London and explains how the bold, fragmented imagery of this period has influenced contemporary architects from Zaha Hadid to Rem Koolhaas - The Independent
Merrick delves into the historical circumstances that informed the revolutionary approach to creativity of artists and architects such as El Lissitzky, Alexandr Rodchenko and Vladimir Tatlin, stating that "in a world awash with 'iconic' architecture, nothing comes even close to radiating the raw potency of this truly revolutionary form."
Dezeen Wire: architects including Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Foster + Partners and Snøhetta have submitted plans to a controversial competition that proposes the transformation of a Victorian public gardens in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Models of the six shortlisted entries were unveiled at a public exhibition yesterday but Andrew MacGregor, secretary of the protest group Friends of Union Terrace Gardens, condemned the designs as an “absolute abomination” and said there would be rolling public protests by supporters who want to keep the gardens as they are - The Scotsman
Dezeen Wire: American architect Frank Gehry has said that "people are asking good questions" about his divisive design for a memorial to America's 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The proposal features large metal tapestries hung from 80-foot-tall columns and set in a landscaped park. At a presentation to fellow architects at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington on Tuesday evening, Gehry insisted that concerns voiced by the public and Eisenhower's grandchildren about the concept and scale of the project would be taken on board ahead of a planning application on 1 December - The Associated Press
Dezeen Wire: The New York Times claims that Antilia, the 27-storey house in Mumbai owned by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, is still acting as a pricey pied-à-terre, with Ambani's family choosing to spend their time in a more modest 14-storey converted apartment block in the south of the city - The New York Times
Dezeen Wire: in a review of the new Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London by Stanton Williams Architects, Suzy Menkes of the New York Times admires the combination of glass, open spaces and reuse of the exiting building, claiming they make the campus "seem inviting and all-embracing," and adding that "the meld of heritage and modernity seems a particularly British combo." - The New York Times
See our story about the new campus on Dezeen here.