1. Apparently Amy Winehouse’s father was unhappy with Jean Paul Gaultier’s catwalk tribute to the late singer, which took place last night in Paris. “We’re proud of her influence on fashion but find black veils on models, smoking cigarettes with a barbershop quartet singing her music in bad taste,” he reportedly told The Sun. “It portrays a view of Amy when she was not at her best, and glamorizes some of the more upsetting times in her life. That’s upsetting for her family.” [via NME]

2. After meeting Radiohead at a music festival in Poland, minimalist composer Steve Reich is planning to premiere a new work at London’s Southbank Centre that is based on two of the band’s songs, “Everything In its Right Place” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place.” Look for the piece to debut in March 2013. [via P4K]

3. Lana Del Rey has purchased the rights to the 2010 album that she recorded back when she was still Lizzie Grant, and she’s planning to re-release it this summer. [via Vulture]

4. A new $803 million complex designed by starchitect Renzo Piano that is supposedly “broadly reminiscent of the Acropolis” is set to go up on the site south of Athens that was home to the 2004 Olympics. The ambitious project will include a national library, opera house, and a 42-acre park. [via The Architect's Newspaper]

5. Live Earth founder Kevin Wall is helping to launch the inaugural Tadasana Festival, a new three-day yoga event that will take place in Santa Monica over Earth Day Weekend. Along with over 100 yoga classes and workshops, the festival will feature performances by world music artists like Karsh Kale, Hassan Hakmoun, Cheb i Sabbah, and Vishal Vaid. [via Billboard]

Bonus Buzz: NASA’s Incredible New High Resolution Photograph of Earth

With the rise of starchitect culture in recent decades, there has been a subsequent rise in the number of museums designed by celebrity architects. (It was believed that if a big name was behind a building, it would attract more attention, and in turn, visitors. Makes sense.) Click through to check out 10 of the most eye-catching modern museums on the planet — including a few that are still currently in progress — and we think you’ll see why it works.

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Controversial Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is infamous for his sculptural portrayals of Pope John Paul II being felled by a meteorite and a childlike Hitler kneeling and praying, as well as a performance piece at the Museum of Modern Art, where he had an actor don a giant Picasso head and engage visitors. Although it’s been seven years since the 50-year-old Pop-conceptualist has had a solo show in America, Cattelan has been busy in Europe, as witnessed by the survey show of recent works at the Menil Collection in Houston. Integrated by the artist into the museum’s collection of medieval and modernist works, the show presents a dialogue between the present and the past that ironically comments on religion, politics, and art history.

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Despite the clunky moniker, we read with interest as The Independent UK rattled off the seven — count ‘em, seven — relevant starchitects in the world, contrasting them with commercial building firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. SOM is a workhorse firm (established in 1936) that has put up major projects from Dubai to Beijing including five of the ten tallest buildings in the world — in other words, America’s first “super practice.” What SOM hasn’t hammered down is the je ne sais quoi of its flashier architectural contemporaries. A primer on the heavy hitters after the jump.

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“I don’t feel like I look like the other perfect little pop singers. I think I’m changing what people think is sexy.” Immortal words from Lady Gaga, 2009′s poster child for avant-garde pop and the Ambassador of No Pants Land. Surrounded by a latex-clad coterie nicknamed Haus of Gaga (loosely modeled after Warhol’s Factory), Gaga’s remarkable wardrobe is like architecture from outer space. So what cutting-edge designers and architects might the Lady be referencing? Our speculations after the jump. Read More »

Books: David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address [via NYT]
Dance/Opera:  Tune in for Bach, get sports scores? [via The Awl]
Design: Great battles in architecture [via Guardian]
Film: Why Kevin Smith’s Superman movie went bye bye [via Boing Boing]
Music: An NYU alum we’ll claim — Nyle, “Let the Beat Build” [via Gawker]
Television: FOX to air Lie to Me instead of Obama’s speech [via Variety]
Theatre: 9 to 5 sweeps the Drama Desk noms [via HR]
Visual Arts: Renzo Piano’s new Art Institute wing a big “f you” to the economy [via Chicago Tribune]
Web: Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview [via McSweeney's]

Every so often, one of our friends will turn to us and say something like “I really don’t know anything about architecture…but I like that building.”

To which we develop critical apoplexy and argue, as we have in various forms since at age twelve discovering the ineffable thrill of good architecture on a summer trip to Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp that no one should ever have to know anything about architecture in order to like — or dislike — a building. Anyone can be a critic. But what makes a good critic?

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