Prss Release: 'Weekly we collect the ten posts of the past week that we think are cool, interesting, thought provoking, funny or which are worth publishing for any other reason we come up with (or not). We put these posts in a clean readable lay-out with the appropriate credits to those of who's content we publish.' / photography by Joakim Eneroth / Bakgard, an architecture weblog / Architectural Scholar, more architecture, from a (mostly) academic viewpoint / Paris, New York, Shanghai, a gallery at tmn.

We've been taken to task by Gunpowder Magazine for our dismissal of the luxury magazine industry, accused of not understanding aspirational living. The point here is not that we don't understand aspiration - far from it - but that it seems that the majority of luxury magazines speak directly to the converted, concerned not with broadening horizons but with reinforcing the existing status quo. They're not aspirational in the traditional sense, because their readers don't need to aspire to anything. We didn't mean to be bitchy, but the contemporary luxury magazine has a finely targeted readership - check out a few rate cards. Unlike newsstand-based consumer magazines, the luxury magazine is rarely bought but stumbled over at the country club, private jet terminal or boutique hotel, a freebie for the largely undeserving. Our lament is therefore that given the presumably limitless funds, broad horizons and charged ambitions of the intended readership, why is the content and aesthetic on offer so relentlessly predictable?

Every credit to Gunpowder for being the only publication to take issue with what we wrote and respond, indicating that they're not simply cutting and pasting from the LVMH press wire. Still, we believe the sector is a missed opportunity. It is sad and ironic that 'luxury publishing' has become an aspirational market sector, the most prestigious genre to be part of. It's certainly understandable, but in a less commodified era, before brands became the cross-cultural titans they are today, art and culture was where it was at for innovative publishing. Consider a magazine like Verve, published from 1937 to 1960. Contributors included Matisse, Braque, Bonnard and Rouault, Giacometti, Joyce, Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Original copies of Verve are now highly sought after, for good reason, and the name has been adopted by an Indian magazine. It's unlikely that such a publication would be allowed to exist today. Verve's relentless, uncompromising emphasis on contemporary arts and their aesthetics was not an easy approach to take, certainly from a practical and economic standpoint. From the NYT: 'The cover of the issue dated ''Summer 1940'' was once again by Henri Matisse, and once again Matisse made color and form dance for him as they danced for no one else. (Twenty-six print runs were needed to get the colors right, by the way.)' Verve was luxury publishing before the term existed, yet it directed its readership towards new experiences, new art and art direction, abstraction and literature, not gilded objects and sybaritic stopovers. Given the amount of money that lubricates the luxury industry, is it too much to hope for a contemporary successor that breaks free of the self-imposed strictures of the genre?

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Breuer before and after, the IKEA-led compromise that saved a chunk of the original building. At NY10536 / the Fantastic Contraption, an online physics-based game. See also Phun, a '2D physics sandbox' and - a thing from the near future - levelHead, a 'spatial memory game' by Julian Oliver (video), Little Computer People meets PixelChix / Procrastineering, more techno toiling and special projects.

The Growlery, a weblog / Just Cool, collating the vapourware and design speculation rampant online / Zero-Waste blog has a more tangible sense of thing-ness to it / the Daily Grail, which currently leads with today's big story in cryptozoology, a Bigfoot corpse (unveiled and instantly debunked) / finally, a skateboarding/slo mo/explosion mash-up at Buck Macabre / i like takes a trip to The Horniman Museum / Slothrop, a weblog.

Camenzind Evolution's office for Google in Zurich is rather old fashioned in its embrace of the dotcom boom workspace aesthetic - all pods, slides, fishtanks and transplanted objects. The architects have a public Picasa gallery of the project, so you can see zoom into the image of the library and see that it has been stocked with ersatz books / more zero authenticity dwellings (ZADs): The Shire of Bend, in Oregon / Building Minnesota, architecture blog.

I am rich, neat. at wrong distance / Heathrow's Terminal 5 fights back / an animated apartment building, analogue version and digital version / remembering The Face magazine, via magCulture / Constructivism - the ism that just keeps giving / The Daily Figure. Oh to have such a command of the line.

Good to see the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony up at The Big Picture, still the widescreen version of the weblog world / the teeming void on the Olympic opening ceremony: 'The other none-too-subtle message of the opening ceremony was about technology, and specifically LEDs' / the new US Embassy complex in Beijing / the freshly glazed CCTV is genuinely remarkable, although the artifice will no doubt increase / as Olympics galleries go, this one seems to have a fairly blatant non-sporting agenda / underground Beijing / Waiting for George, our Beijing story at tmn.

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