Italian artist Matteo Pericoli convinced 63 notable and prominent New Yorkers including Stephen Colbert, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Junot Diaz (seen above) to permit him to illustrate the window views from their homes or offices for his new book “The City Out My Window.” Am I the only one that thinks only Baryshnikov could get away with describing his view as “It’s one of New York’s most beautiful buildings, but it looks better at night … like a woman.”

Blurring the line between fiction and reality, Mark Bennett created detailed, if not slightly obsessive blueprints of domiciles belonging to various fictional characters and families, such as Batman’s mansion to Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s bedrock to Lucy and Ricky Ricardo’s home. The blueprint of Jeanie’s lamp is also quite a trip.

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If the name Julius Shulman doesn’t immediately ring a bell, what about names like Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, or Mies Van der Rohe? Julius Shulman documented them all. But he did more than just take pictures of famous buildings.

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When a structure breaks down in many parts of Africa (mud and straw don’t last forever), the inhabitants build a new one nearby without tearing the old one down or making use of its parts. In Las Vegas, casinos only a decade old are imploded to make way for something bigger, grander and most importantly, new. Everyone has their own methods, but, in general, they all involve too much waste. What if there was a way we could update and reuse old buildings, “bringing new life and function to existing structures?”

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Earlier this summer I shared news that UK’s TOP GEAR host James May was building a house made entirely of Lego bricks. Well construction has gotten underway. Here’s a fun photo gallery update of the impressive progress so far. Maybe I was thinking a little too big and unrealistic when I heard the original announcement; I was a wee bit disappointed that it cheats with a wooden frame.

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Blogger Guboogi’s friend Terri recently moved to Brooklyn and found herself that coveted New York City apartment, “a sweet loft with high ceilings and a ton of open space.” In fact, she has so much extra space, she’s decided to bring the backwoods experience into her apartment by building two life size cabins inside the loft! She’s documenting the progress of these cabins on Flickr. I think Dwell Magazine will come knocking on her door any minute.

Who says architecture is just about buildings? To European design studios Feld72 and Raumlabor, architecture is a more loosely defined term that encompasses all aspects of social and urban interaction. Take the traffic jam project, in which members of Feld72 rode on motorscooters in between lanes of slow-moving traffic, handing drivers activity packs stuffed with items like balloons and squirt guns which they could use to interact with other drivers on the road. While shooting neighboring cars with streams of water would definitely never fly in the US, Feld72’s experiments with space get much more complicated, like the Million Donkey Hotel, located in a small town near Napoli. The term hotel is also used loosely. It’s more of a temporary, multi-purpose space located in one of the many abandoned buildings in Europe. Like most of these projects, it’s difficult to define exactly what it is, but then again, where’s the fun in that?

Popular UK auto show TOP GEAR (and admittedly one of my favorite shows as well) presenter James May has more than three million Lego bricks and is asking for the public’s help this Saturday, August 1 in building a full size two-story house made entirely of Legos for his BBC series TOY STORIES. As marketing gimmicks go, this is top shelf.

Although maybe not evoking quite the nostalgia as Cameron’s house from FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, which briefly ignited the blogosphere after news of its sale, another movie house located on 59 Orient Avenue in Brooklyn, New York is on the market. Kate Winslet’s character Clementine’s apartment from ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is currently for sale, albeit unfortunately in less than spotless condition.

My pal, the talented illustrator Steven Guarnaccia, has a new book out. The Three Little Pigs is an illustrated fable about, you guessed it, three little pigs. But, being Steven, these aren’t just any pigs. They’re Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry, the three most famous modern architects.

The architects, um, I mean, pigs, do everything they can to keep their houses of glass and steal from being blown away. It is a charming tale, with fantastic illustrations, obviously, as Steven is the chair Parsons’ Illustration department. The book is a perfect way to teach kids about design and it’s also perfect for all those mid-century modern obsessed adults out there too.

Back in early February 2009, fireworks during the finale to the annual Spring Festival/Chinese New Year celebration sparked a fire that quickly “engulfed one of the Chinese capital’s most architecturally celebrated modern buildings.” The nearly completed 32-story, 241-room Mandarin Oriental Hotel was designed by famous architect Rem Koolhaas.

James Fallows points out over at The Atlantic Monthly that the burned out hotel still stands in Beijing looming over the city like something out of the dystopic future of a science fiction novel. Fallows writes, “Sometimes structures in big Chinese cities appear — or disappear — practically overnight. Other times, they sit for a very long period in limbo. I’m not sure of all the reasons why the hotel has this frozen-in-time aspect, but it’s startling whenever I see it.”