Walker building designers Herzog & de Meuron are among 12 architecture firms—including SANAA and Rem Koolhaas’ OMA—competing to design the Nobel Center in Stockholm, home to the Nobel Prize.

Japanese architect Toyo Ito, featured in the Walker’s 1986 show Tokyo: Form and Spirit, has won this year’s Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most presigious honor. The 71-year old is best know for his Sendai Mediatheque, a seven-story glass box completed in 2001.

For its Ai Weiwei show, According to What?, the Hirshhorn presented its catalogue content two ways—as a $40 book or a $5 magazine. “The result was over 9,000 magazines sold, far more than the number of catalogues that usually sell for any given show.”

Nicholas Felton—featured in our touring exhibition Graphic Design: Now in Production—has released his 2012 “annual report.” A visual datamine of his personal life, this year’s verson was created using a custom iPhone app.

Thirteen art/design institutions from the Walker and the MIA to MoMA and CooperHewitt are collaborating on a new Tumblr site that searches for an “American aesthetic.” Today’s entry: Wim Crouwel’s 1967 typeface New Alphabet.

Geoff McFetridge—who designed the art now going up on construction fencing outside the Walker—unveils a new project, a decanter for Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey featuring his iconic hands imagery. The hand-blown bottles are part of an edition of 75.

Come for the jokes, stay for the applied design: MoMA curator Paola Antonelli matched wits with Stephen Colbert Wednesday, highlighting objects from a vase made by bees (through “slow prototyping”) to Massoud Hassani’s landmine-exploding “dandelion.”

Photographing both Supermax prison complexes and suburban developments from the air, Christoph Gielen began noticing “striking” similarities in planning forms, which raise questions about the idea of “prisons as our new mass housing.”