Earlier this month, AIA North Carolina officially opened the Center for Architecture and Design (CfAD) in downtown Raleigh. Over five hundred people attended the ribbon cutting and toured the inaugural exhibition on the Appalachian State University's entry to the 2011 Solar Decathalon. The facility includes a gallery, multi-purpose room, conference room, a library, and a cafe (see photos here). According to the architect, Frank Harmon, "This is a really bold gesture. It’s been done in the midnight of the recession, as a gesture of faith and of belief in what we do as architects." Learn about the AIA NC Center for Architecture and Design.

On the theme of new architecture centers, the Palm Springs Art Museum just announced its plans to open a Center for Architecture and Design in 2013. Read the preliminary details about the Palm Springs Center.

AAO welcomes new organizational member the District Architecture Center in Washington D.C.

This month, we've collected a sampling of reviews on AAO members' exhibitions:
AIA NY Center for Architecture "Change: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East, 2000 - Present" in the International Business Times
Chicago Architecture Foundation "Loop Value: The How Much Does It Cost? Shop" on ABC7
Harbourfront Centre "Big Enough?" in The Globe and Mail
SPUR Urban Center "Safe Enough to Stay" in the San Francisco Chronicle

Since 2002, ArchNewsNow has provided thousands of readers with a daily email update on what's happening in the world of architecture and design. We talked with the founder and editor, Kristen Richards, about how she selects content, the role that she's played to connect the architecture community around the globe, and where she sees ANN going in the next ten years. Congratulations to Kristen on the success of ANN. We're grateful for her hard work (she's covered over 46,000 news links in the last ten years!) and thrilled that she is the editor of our A+DEN Watercooler newsletter for AAO members interested in design education.

Read our interview with Kristen Richards of ArchNewsNow.

American Architectural Foundation, Director, Mayors' Institute on City Design
Architecture for Humanity, Director of Operations; Program Manager
Chicago Architecture Foundation, Director of Individual Giving
National Trust for Historic Preservation, Director of Business Operations, Finance & Marketing
Seattle Architecture Foundation, Program Director
Urban Green Council, Programs Manager
Van Alen Institute, Program Director

Last month, we mentioned the book Writing About Architecture. Architecture criticism was also the topic of a recent panel discussion put on by the AIA NY Center for Architecture and the Architect's Newspaper. How is the field changing? There has been declining coverage on celebrity architects in favor of a renewed focus on cities and urban context. And can critics make things happen? As Paul Goldberger said, "Ultimately, we have the impact of creating a broader, more literate constituency for architecture." It's what we are all trying to do.

Read the highlights from the program "Architectural Criticism Today"

What should we be teaching our children about architecture? This debate is currently raging in the United Kingdom, after education secretary Michael Gove created a list of the top 30 places that students should visit. He enlisted English Heritage to formulate the list, and none of the sites are more recent that the Second World War. Architects and academics have reacted, saying that modern and contemporary architecture is just as important in teaching the story of the country. The former chief of CABE argues in favor of teaching modernism, saying that "young people [are] motivated to care for places they both understood and could shape."

Read about the debate in UK design education: heritage or modernism?

On March 30, all Facebook brand pages will be automatically switched to a new standard page design. Is your organization's page ready? Although some of us will miss the option of making a default landing tab, there are advantages to the new layout. The timeline function, for example, provides an opportunity for organizations to tell their history in a visually engaging way. Did you know that posts with images generate two times more engagement? Learn how to take advantage of the the visual layout with these tips on everything from selecting your cover image to planning your overall content strategy.

Read "Resources for Mastering the New Facebook Timeline."

In April, the Architecture & Design Film Festival is coming back to Chicago. Architectural Digest editors worked with the Festival's founder, Kyle Bergman, to put together a list of must-see design documentaries from the last ten years. Bergman's picks include Charles & Ray Eames: The Architect and the Painter, Unfinished Spaces, and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. How does this list compare to film screenings that your organization has hosted, or is considering?

Browse the list of "Must-See Design Documentaries."

We thought we'd close this month's newsletter with some eye candy. Spanish photographer Victor Enrich takes photos of cityscapes and manipulates them to create an "architecture" free of the constraints of science and function. The power of his renderings lies in the realism of his technique, and the fact that what he creates is almost plausible. After studying architecture at the university, Enrich turned to this meticulous methodology for expressing his sense of humor and social commentary.

Take a look at a building that unzips, a vertical highway, balconies eerily reminiscent of french fries, and more from the mind of Victor Enrich.