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MVRDV designs a new landmark for #Taipei a la #NewYork's #TimesSquare. The twin towers' vibrant #façade appears like a real-life #game of #building #blocks. Check out the story here…

Schulen Fernandes, the much-talked-about protégé of fashion guru Wendell Rodricks believes in wearability beyond the ramp. Is this new kid on the block going to give us some pragmatic high fashion? Read her interview with indiaartndesign.com to find out…

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners. Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they're offering no apologies. "We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That's what it's gonna take," Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily. The last time Brown, 73, called the Detroit police, they didn't show up until the next day. So she applied for a permit to carry a handgun and says she's prepared to use it against the young thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity. "I don't intend to be one of their victims," said Brown, who has lived in Detroit since the late 1950s. "I'm planning on taking one out."

Well, it turned. The police bureau is starting to crack after six weeks of Occupy Portland. And one picture, right here, crystallizes the precise moment when it happened. During a choreographed effort to pull a few dozen protesters out of the Chase bank branch outside Pioneer Square, part of today's hundreds-strong N17 day of action, Portland police officers resorted to a decidedly more muscular show of force in a clash watched by TV cameras and rush-hour commuters earlier this evening. Suddenly all the fun-the dance parties, the union songs, the peaceful arrests earlier on the Steel Bridge and at Wells Fargo-was for naught. Tromping in with mounted officers, they pushed marchers who had gathered on the sidewalks along SW Yamhill into the street-forcing them to block MAX trains, something no one was doing until the heavily armored riot squad showed up-and then poked and, for the first time, pepper-sprayed the marchers. Significantly, some of the spraying came after protesters had clearly retreated to the opposite sidewalk. (In another odd shift, there also was no federal-court-required verbal PA warning that chemical munitions would be deployed-a hallmark of every other mass police action to date.) Meanwhile, at almost the very same moment, Police Chief Mike Reese was on TV blaming Occupy Portland for his officers' inability to respond to a rape victim for three hours today. Consider that tantamount to a declaration of war. Reese's point? Officers are tired and have been too distracted to do their main jobs: responding to actual crimes. It was an attempt to spin sentiment against the movement, which seems to be attracting adherents. Even the O today said the movement is "building momentum" and said the average age of some 34 arrestees earlier today was 50-not a bunch of young, anarchists/punks/hoodlums/hippies/road warriors etc. But that might come back to haunt him, judging by a wave of outrage on Twitter and elsewhere among those who noted that it

December 9th, 02005 - Sam Harris"The View From The End Of The World"This is an audio only presentation. This talk took place in the Conference Center Golden Gate Room, San Francisco. Quote: With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response? Harris began with Christianity. In the US, Christians use irrational arguments about a soul in the 150 cells of a 3-day old human embryo to block stem cell research that might alleviate the suffering of millions. In Africa, Catholic doctrine uses tortured logic to actively discourage the use of condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS. "This is genocidal stupidity," Harris said. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics. In the US, 22% of the population are CERTAIN that Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years, and another 22% think that it's likely. The good news of Christ's return, though, can only occur following desperately bad news. Mushroom clouds would be welcomed. "End time thinking," Harris said, "is fundamentally hostile to creating a sustainable future." Harris was particularly critical of religious moderates who give cover to the fundamentalists by not challenging them. The moderates say that all is justified because religion gives people meaning in their life. "But what would they say to a guy who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard? The guy digs out there every Sunday with his family, cherishing the meaningthe quest gives them." "I've read the books," Harris said. "God is not a moderate." The Bible gives strict instructions to kill various kinds of sinners, and their relatives, and on occasion their entire towns. Yet slavery is challenged nowhere in the New or

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

Designer Mamoru Maeda of SEMBA Vietnam creates an earthy oasis with a resort-like-feel on the ground floor of an apartment block in the midst of the bustling city of Ho Chi Minh, giving residents much to look forward to when they think of using their pool facility. Check out this oasis in a concrete jungle…

Ar. Sanjay Puri infuses socio-cultural sensitivity in his sculptural forms to design a 15-storey apartment block in Ranchi; in the wake of the city's new wave of urbanization. Check out the story and leave us your views…

@sanjay-puri-architect uses angular forms and colour blocking to create a symphony in concrete. Check out his latest outing - a hostel for GLA University in Mathura…

Make in India Week saw a lively workshop on the survival of Indian traditional arts & crafts in the digital era, conducted by India Art n Design (dot) com. Check it out here…

@lego-group commemorates the 150th birth anniversary of #Ar.FrankLloydWright with the launch of the iconic @guggenheim-museum model in its Architecture series. Check it out here…

Ar. Anika Mittal Dhawan from mold design studio stresses on the importance of feel-good activities to alienate periods of creative drought. Check out what she has to say about his "go-to therapists…

"I believe that design is fuelled by inspiration and motivation, but the journey is incomplete without discipline," says Ar. Rupande Shah as she tells us how she overcomes her creative roadblocks in IAnD's special feature #MyGotoTherapist

The mind works in different ways; and both, construction, and deconstruction contribute significant take-aways from moments of creative sterility… Check out what rejuvenates Ar. Nandini Somaya Sampat, Director, Somaya & Kalappa Consultants, Mumbai