(Courtesy Petersen Automotive Museum)

The Pedersen Art Museum made headlines recently for what the Los Angeles Times characterized as a plan to sell off “a third of its 400 classic cars” to finance a major renovation and “put more emphasis on motorcycles and French vehicles…passions that match the tastes of the museum’s new leadership.” That leadership was not amused and has fired back with a statement intended to set the record straight.

“The collection has now reached over 400 pieces. Not only are we unable to showcase all of the vehicles, but maintaining and keeping that many cars in running order is virtually impossible,” wrote museum board chairman Peter Mullin and co-vice-chairman Bruce Meyer in an open letter posted to the museum’s website. “We are culling the collection for the first time in nearly 20 years, selling cars that can easily be procured on loan or vehicles that were never intended for exhibition.” The only vehicles that are being sold, according to Mullin and Meyer, are those “that we have in multiples or are not in show-worthy condition.”
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The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture and The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture are inspiring sourcebooks for the ages, but as with many authoritative, lushly illustrated volumes, it is impossible to fit them in one’s pocket, unless one has very special pants. Fear not, culture-conscious traveler, because Phaidon has just released The Phaidon Architecture Travel Guide App, an iPhone- or iPad-ready resource that’s yours for $3.99 from the iTunes store. With some 1,500 projects from 840 architectural practices (cherrypicked from both atlases), the app can be browsed by location, project, practice, and building type. Plus, the bookmarking options make it easy to create a “To See” list of architecture marvels around the globe. And travelers, take heart: no Wi-Fi or 3G is required to run the app.

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige [at] mediabistro.com

The University of Chicago doesn’t want for distinctive architecture. The campus is home to buildings designed by everyone from Eero Saarinen and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to Rafael Viñoly and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, whose 184,000-square-foot Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opened last year. And in a few years, some 800 undergrads will get to live (and eat) in a dorm designed by Chicago’s own Jeanne Gang.

The university has selected Studio Gang Architects to design a major new residence hall and dining commons on the north end of the UChicago campus. The firm will work with Mortenson Construction on the project, which is expected to open in 2016 and will shoot for LEED Gold certification. “We are excited to develop our design that focuses on creating vibrant student communities within the residence halls, connected to a series of new, active public green spaces and environments,” said Gang in a statement issued Tuesday. Read more

Alexander Calder and Jean Prouvé get a joint close-up in an exhibition at Gagosian Paris. Organized with Galerie Patrick Seguin, “Calder | Prouvé” mixes the biomorphic mobiles and stabiles of the former with the smooth yet strong furniture and architectural projects of the latter. Born three years and an ocean apart, the two met in the early 1950s, became pen pals (although we’re pretty sure they didn’t use that term), and later collaborated on the steel base of “La Spirale,” Calder’s mega-mobile for UNESCO HQ in Paris. Gagosian has created this virtual tour of the exhibtion, on view at its Le Bourget space through November 2:

Santiago Calatrava is a whiz with bridges and transit hubs—his latest is Italy’s Stazione di Bologna e Reggio Emilia AV Mediopadana, a high-speed train station that debuted last month and allows passengers to zip to Milano faster than you can say “Stazione di Bologna e Reggio Emilia AV Mediopadana”—but did you know that he is also an accomplished painter, sculptor, and designer of things that cannot be categorized as infrastructure? The full, undulating, cantilevered spectrum of his talents will be revealed in the pages of Santiago Calatrava, coming this fall.

The new book is an Assouline production, which means that while there will be text (in this case, by Christina Carrillo de Albornoz Fisac, who will consider Calatrava’s references, influences, and inspirations) but it will only come into focus after you’ve spent hours ogling the lush, sure-to-be-full-bleed illustrations—all 180 of them. Of course, that’s even assuming that you can bring yourself to unwrap the hand-bound edition, which will come tucked inside a shiny box (pictured) designed by Calatrava himself.

Fontastic graffiti, stencilled on a wall in Guelph, Ontario.

“The plague of Times New Roman is the unspoken disease of our age….[S]urprisingly, given a visual training, some architects have fallen victim to the plague. Times New Roman is often incised into new buildings in major cities, unrelated to the essence of their architectural character. Before the TNR outbreak, beautiful signage was normal, whether a take on a classic of architectural typography, or a font pushing the progressive zeitgeist of the building style. Those were the old times. Now a 1930s newspaper font is a default setting for monumental inscription. It’s one that we must switch off.”

-Jonathan Foyle, CEO of World Monuments Fund Britain, in the Financial Times

(Courtesy United Nude)

This just in: Zaha Hadid collaborates with Rem Koolhaas! No, not that Rem Koolhaas—his nephew, Rem D. Koolhaas. Also a trained architect, this Koolhaas is the creative director of United Nude, the futuristic shoe company he founded in 2003 with Galahad Clark (of the Clark’s shoemaking Clarks). United Nude’s Möbius strip-inspired heels, angular wedges, and carbon-fiber construction have always had a distinctly Hadidian vibe, and so their latest collaboration seems both entirely appopriate and a long time in coming. Behold the Nova, a striated, cantlivered creation launched this week at L’Eclaireur in Paris.

“Our collaboration with United Nude reinterprets the classic shoe typology,” said Hadid in a statement issued today, “pushing the boundaries of what is possible without compromising integrity.” With a 6.25-inch heel (or heel-shaped void, as they case may be), the shoes are a feat of injection molding, hand molding, and rotation molding. The upper part involves metallic chromed vinyl rubber (in black, rose gold, or silver) and, lest the word vinyl make you twitchy, is lined with luxe nappa leather. Then there’s the hidden platform and heel (fiberglass) and the outsole (rubber again). Ready to buy? United Nude is accepting pre-orders via e-mail, but act fast: only 300 pairs—100 per color—are being made. The bad news: they’re $2,000 a pair. The good news: your Christmas shopping for Daphne Guinness is as good as done.

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Party over here! And by “here,” we mean the outdoor courtyard of MoMA PS1, where CODA has erected “Party Wall,” a flexible pavilion that will provide shade, seating, water, and conversational fodder to crowds attending performances and other summer happenings at the Long Island City art space. The Ithaca-based experimental design and research studio, established in 2008 by Caroline O’Donnell, bested four other finalists—Leong Architects, Moorhead & Moorhead, TempAgency, and French 2D—to win this year’s Young Architects Program in New York (there are also YAP competitions in Chile, Istanbul, and at MAXXI in Rome).

Even before you can discern that the towering steel-framed structure is clad in a wooden macrame of interlocking “bones” and “blanks” donated by Comet Skateboards (eco-friendly, bien sûr!), you squint at the porous facade and ask, “Wait, does that spell something? What does it say?” Exactly, party people! “In fact, it does not say anything in itself,” say the designers, “it says something only in relation to the ground and the sun, and even then, says little, except what it would like to be: a wall.”

The American Institute of Architects wrapped up its national convention last weekend in Denver, and along with a keynote address by Architecture for Humanity co-founder Cameron Sinclair, delegates enjoyed an insider’s tour of the Daniel Libeskind- and Gio Ponti-designed buildings of the Denver Art Museum, got their copies of Combinatory Urbanism signed by Thom Mayne, and paused between sessions to enjoy scoops from Little Man Ice Cream, located inside a 28-foot steel replica of an old-fashioned milk can. There was also an election: Elizabeth Chu Richter, the CEO of Richter Architects in Corpus Christi, Texas, emerged victorious in her bid for the 2015 presidency of AIA. “I’m hoping that my leadership will help bring the AIA into a more member-focused future, building greater public engagement and understanding, while also refining the Institute’s leadership structure and operation focus,” said Richter, a member of the AIA National Board of Directors representing Texas. She’ll begin her term as first vice-president/president-elect in 2014.

(Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects)

“I just think that at this stage, all form of travel should be slightly more advanced. The adverts should be nicer, the way you get to [airports] should be better, the way you check in, the people should be–well, they can’t change people, but, you know, they should wear better uniforms, they should give you better food, everything. I mean, you know, tragic, a salad on British Airways, it’s a killer. I don’t know where they found this petrified green…forgetting about the service, every time I take a British Airways flight, I lose my luggage.”

-Zaha Hadid in an interview with Fortune‘s Stephanie Mehta on Monday in London at the magazine’s Most Powerful Women conference.