When Joshua Aidlin was a freshman in college studying architecture, he brought a project home to show his father, who was then the head of the sculpture department at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

When lighting designer Hervé Descottes began work on Jean Nouvel’s concert hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, the project was well under construction, and the architect even had another designer’s lighting scheme in hand.

Last month, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) released the results of its 2015 Diversity in the Profession of Architecture survey and the numbers tell a grim—and unsurprising—story: the profession doesn’t look at all like the society it serves.

On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past.

MASS Design group is used to working in remote places. Building schools or health centers where there were none and training local labor is practically written into its DNA.

In 2005, architects Jianxiang He and Ying Jiang were working on the Guangzhou Baiyun International Convention Center, a project by the Chinese-government-run CITIC ADI and its design partner, Belgian firm BURO II.

Chicago's Next Generation The inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial (October 3, 2015 through January 3, 2016) is a global event. With over 60 firms or studios featured—representing more than 30 countries across six continents—it is also drawing attendees from all over the world. Titled The State of the Art of Architecture, the exhibition, curated by Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima, reaches beyond the national conversation to generate a larger discussion about the future of the built environment.

A show of Polish-born architect Ania Jaworska’s work is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), running in tangent with the Biennial through January 31, 2016.

 The firm’s 2011 speculative project Farmland World is a chain of agro-resorts-cum-theme parks that allow guests to work on a real farm. For its contribution to the Biennial, Design With Company (Dw/Co.) is entering its own late—very late—scheme for Chicago’s Harold Washington Library Competition, which was held in 1987. 

Paul Preissner, 41, recently made a couple of round, flat-pack tables out of mint-colored Corian. “It was the cheapest way of producing furniture with one of the most expensive materials,” says the architect, who was experimenting with the process to help out a friend who runs MakeTime, a company that lets designers share time on computer numerical control (CNC) machines.