This week, we left the building. We waved a big goodbye to the assembled crowds, thanked the staff, and after one farewell stroll around the grounds stepped into the waiting helicopter—and flew away. We appreciate your support, and we’ll see you again. Click through for our exit music.

It isn’t Friday, but let’s get a little happiness up in this rainy joint. Behold, The Murray Hill Song, discovered via the good people at Flavorwire. Because nothing brings us back to that thrill of a first career like a ditty dedicated to our very first neighborhood.

This week, it was all about a few strangers picked to live in a house and find out what happens when people stop being nice—and start getting real: featuring Barry Bergdoll, Andrew Blum, April Fools, and a Leprechaun. The doors are swinging closed even as we speak on the inaugural Edificial competitial competition, so send us your work! But first, take a chill pill with Friday’s architectural video. This week, it’s the greatest rapist chauvinist two-dimensional non-character architect of all time—Howard Roark.

This week, we dialed M for Murder and asked to speak to William McDonough, Karim Rashid, magazines, disaster—and much, much more! Don’t forget: The Competitial is on, and you should have your submissials into us by Friday, repeat, Friday, not this Sunday as previously announced. It’s still not much time, so get cracking. But now it’s time to take it all home Friday-style with our weekly dose of mindless entertainment. This week: What’s short, stocky, and architectural? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

You ever get that nagging feeling that design these days is just a bit too unconstrained, too free-floating, too whatevs, dude, it’s awesome so it’s awesome? Being of orderly nature and rigorous nurture, we’ve been getting a little confused around Edificial HQ with the surge in viewpoints like transdisciplinary design and interactive design and integrational design and perfume design and design design and design-is-puppies and design-is-how-you-drink-your-coffee and design-is-the-end-of-Battlestar.

As we always learn on the internet, we are not alone. The U.S. National Design Policy Initiative is there to watchdog where we sleep, to have power where we have movable type. And they’re asking for videos of CEO’s (what-what) talking design policy. Despite our best skepticisms, we had to stop when we stumbled across this sphene of a design definition, delivered by Policy Policer Dori Tunstall:

Design is what translates human values such as sustainability, innovation, delight, ease of use, even sublime beauty into things and experiences that people can see, hear, taste, touch, smell.

And we’re out. Been trying to come up with a definition for this here universe we spiral around in for years, and Tunstall’s got at least one. What Tunstall doesn’t have, and Core77 does, is a more populist approach (and we’re back to square whatever-you-want-it-to-be), inviting just about anyone to come up with a National Design Policy (Video). Taking action towards moving forward in the direction of an initiative-type questions get asked. Let’s all help them have better answers. It’s spring, after all. Let’s put one back in our steps.

Star Search — U.S. National Design Policy video [Core77]
U.S. Design Policy’s Necessity viral video campaign launches [U.S. National Design Policy Initiative]

This week, we put on our man pants and did the man dance with Philippe Starck, Peter Smithson, Graydon Carter, and Tony Danza. We learned the true meaning of Christmas—but more importantly we learned the meaning of our inaugural Edificial competition, “All the Lonely Architects”. Oops! There goes your next two weekends. By way of consolation, we present your Friday video: this week, a cheery segment on landmines sent our way by edifavorite MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli. Next week, we’ll show off these UNICEF stickers, just to make it a trend.

This week, we enjoyed Pink Floyd, pondered breakups, grudgingly joined the Myface, and marveled as a flurry of replacements stepped in. It’s so lonely without Ian today, though, that there’s only one thing that’ll remotely begin to cheer us up. And so, we leave you, this sad and desolate Friday, with a glimmer of laughter. Behold Mister Glasses: Episode 3.

This week, we took lance in hand and galloped after artists, interns, icons , and Ada. But now it’s Friday and we must needs hie hither to yon Grand Concourse, an event for the which we will furnish details Monday; in parting, we leave you as always with a video. This one is in Spanish but its message—of hope, of change, of architectural parody—is one we can all understand.

This week, we had close encounters with dizzy spells, southerners, Italians, and ourselves. Thanks are due to—aw, heck, e’rybody, we reckon. And now, as ever, let us entertain you with our Architectural Friday Film Follies. Ladies and gentlemen, your mystery guest this evening is…

This week, we went toe-to-toe against fake magazines, phony architects, false prophets, ersatz croissants, and design beyond reach. Thanks are due to Will Bostwick for fighting the good fight while Eva stared at the floor and mumbled incoherently. And now, as always, a dash of architectural entertainment to send you sailing into the warm sea of the weekend: This time, from the mind of the marvelous Mitch Magee, it’s episode the second of “Mister Glasses”—the continuing tale of a modernist architect who’s lost his mojo.

Mister Glasses [I Let My Fists Do the Talking]

This week, we faced off against fake architects, Cola Wars, romantic hullabaloo, and crippling inner-ear imbalances. Special thanks to Stephen Zacks, only recently returned to free-lancing (as who hasn’t?)—we’ll be seeing more of him, we hope. To carry us away, here’s the funniest goddamn design video you’ll watch this week. Jump into the future, via the past.

The American Look, 1958 [Internet Archive]

The latest in mental prosthesis: MIT is putting the internet where it always wanted to be—all over the place. The Institute’s Media Lab has developed a device to project web data (flight boarding times, sports statistics, architecture tabloids) from an internet-accessible cell phone onto any surface with just the wave of a hand. TED conferees got a chance to gawk at the “Sixth Sense” gadget, pioneered by the lab’s Fluid Interfaces group. Here’s how it works: You want to know the time? Describe a circle with your fingers, and allakhazam! the device worn around your neck (or, as likely, in your pocket protector) picks up the motion and an image of a clock appears instantly on your wrist. See it in streaming video after the jump, or wait a couple years and watch it on your girlfriend’s back. (It’s like Minority Report, only with fewer murders and more dorks.)

TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense [Wired]

Contact is the answer, is the reason, that everything happens—including this re-post of an archival video from Edificial’s test blogging days, in honor of our first week on the air. This Friday and every Friday, we mean to bring you the best in architectural entertainment/mindless glee. Step into the Wayback Machine and get your mind blown, son.

… er, February. Never mind. Since we omitted our customary weekend video send-off the other day, we’re posting it now. It’s Friday on Monday! Sontag on Johnson! Big-time building docu-drama does boffo box office. Watch and learn.

As an addendum to their yearly Design Awards issue, Wallpaper* asked Kanye West, one of their six judges, to talk about winner—for, hold on to your butts, Best New Domestic Appliance—Marc Newson’s stove for Smeg. And about his thoughts on design, generally. Which, he explains with typical Kanye fervor, “gotta be like a balance.”

Learn it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the future of “smart” architecture. Choke on it, Adam Greenfield! (Um, but click through first.)

Someone did this. We’re not certain who. But we mean to find out—before they strike again. Après le jump, le déluge…