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Zaha Hadid architects unveil their design for a pioneering new institute and genocide memorial in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, which will bring together a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library. Read here...

Sensitivity in design nurtures the spatial and sensorial experience for diverse multi-functional programs - a postulate well-researched and explained by Ar. Shailesh Veera of SPIRIT as he speaks about the role of conscientiousness in institutional design. Check it out here…

Taktik Design raises the bar of institutional interiors with this school in Canada. Check it out and leave us your views...

The design of the new Al Jazeera UK headquarters breaks the mould of the 'black box' studio and re-imagines how broadcast facilities are designed. Tell us what you think of this

Genetically Capitalist? The Malthu- sian Era, Institutions and the For- mation of Modern Preferences.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2011) - Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to demonstrate this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered adults is expanding.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is well into its second week of operation, and is now getting more attention from media as well as from people planning similar actions across the country. This is a promising populist mobilization with a clear message against domination by political and economic elites. Against visions of a bleak and stagnant future, the occupiers assert the optimism that a better world can be made in the streets. They have not resigned themselves to an order where the young are presented with a foreseeable future of some combination of debt, economic dependency, and being paid little to endure constant disrespect, an order that tells the old to accept broken promises and be glad to just keep putting in hours until they can't work anymore. The occupiers have not accepted that living in modern society means shutting up about how it functions. In general, the occupiers see themselves as having more to gain than to lose in creating a new political situation - something that few who run the current system will help deliver. They are not eager for violence, and have shown admirable restraint in the face of attack by police. There may be no single clear agenda, but there is a clear message: that people will have a say in their political and economic lives, regardless of what those in charge want. Occupy Wall Street is a kind of protest that Americans are not accustomed to seeing. There was no permit to protest, and it has been able to keep going on through unofficial understandings between protestors and police. It is not run by professional politicians, astroturfers, or front groups with barely-hidden agendas. Though some organizations and political figures have promoted it, Occupy Wall Street is not driven by any political party or protest organization. It is a kind of protest that shows people have power when they are determined to use it. Occupy Wall Street could be characterized as an example of a new type of mass politics, which has been seen in

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

When we study Marx in my graduate social theory course, it never fails that at least one student will say (approximately), "Class struggle didn't escalate in the way Marx expected. In modern capitalist societies class struggle has disappeared. So isn't it clear that Marx was wrong and his ideas are of little value today?" I respond by challenging the premise that class struggle has disappeared. On the contrary, I say that class struggle is going on all the time in every major institution of society. One just has to learn how to recognize it. One needn't embrace the labor theory of value to understand that employers try to increase profits by keeping wages down and getting as much work as possible out of their employees. As the saying goes, every successful capitalist knows what a Marxist knows; they just apply the knowledge differently. Workers' desire for better pay and benefits, safe working conditions, and control over their own time puts them at odds with employers. Class struggle in this sense hasn't gone away. In fact, it's inherent in the relationship between capitalist employer and employee. What varies is how aggressively and overtly each side fights for its interests.

It's hard to think of another time when there has been such a gulf between intellectuals and activists; between theorists of revolution and its practitioners. Writers who for years have been publishing essays that sound like position papers for vast social movements that do not in fact exist seem seized with confusion or worse, dismissive contempt, now that real ones are everywhere emerging. It's particularly scandalous in the case of what's still, for no particularly good reason, referred to as the 'anti-globalization' movement, one that has in a mere two or three years managed to transform completely the sense of historical possibilities for millions across the planet. This may be the result of sheer ignorance, or of relying on what might be gleaned from such overtly hostile sources as the New York Times; then again, most of what's written even in progressive outlets seems largely to miss the point-or at least, rarely focuses on what participants in the movement really think is most important about it. As an anthropologist and active participant-particularly in the more radical, direct-action end of the movement-I may be able to clear up some common points of misunderstanding; but the news may not be gratefully received. Much of the hesitation, I suspect, lies in the reluctance of those who have long fancied themselves radicals of some sort to come to terms with the fact that they are really liberals: interested in expanding individual freedoms and pursuing social justice, but not in ways that would seriously challenge the existence of reigning institutions like capital or state. And even many of those who would like to see revolutionary change might not feel entirely happy about having to accept that most of the creative energy for radical politics is now coming from anarchism-a tradition that they have hitherto mostly dismissed-and that taking this movement seriously will necessarily also mean a respectful engagement with it. I am writing

A studied play of custom-designed artificial lighting flirts with an optimized use of natural available light in the remodelling of this courthouse. Check out the feature and leave us your views...

When the best of technology is combined with heightened aesthetics, results are always stupefying. Check out the new Abu Dhabi mosque with its light-transmitting concrete façade and leave us your comments…

Design Forum International (DFI) designs tea-leaf shaped blocks for Assam Government's new Directorate Complex in Guwahati.

Kanchan Fagwani of Kinteriors eclectically picks on Indian Classical as the thematic to endorse this new Bharatnatyam Academy in Mumbai.

The Next Level expansion project of the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark is collaboration between architects SHL and renowned American artist, James Turrell; it proposes to define a new experiential art-architecture idiom. Check out the recently revealed design and concept and leave us your views...

Mecanoo-led renovation will give New Yorkers a completely new Mid-Manhattan Library by end of 2019! Check out the new features on the anvil.

Keeping pace with contemporary times, Architect Yukio Asari of Love Architecture Inc. substantiates his belief that 'time' and 'space' for revisiting the dead should be transcendent and beyond human knowledge by designing an ossuary in Japan. Check it out and leave us your views on the subject…

Philippe Barriere Collective uses hybrid architecture to chisel the Mahmud mosque in Tunisia as a testimony to merging the strengths of both - local artisanal strengths and Computer Aided Drawing. Check out the feature and leave us your comments…

Electronic music buffs get an especially architectured concert hall! Check out concert hall specialists Herault Arnod Architects' design for La Belle électrique in Grenoble city, France