Not Me! The architect of record for the much beleaguered Xanadu mall in New Jersey went on the record with northjersey.com. David Jansen said the garish colors weren’t his idea. It appears  he was called in to save the day after David Rockwell washed his hands of the multi-billion dollar debacle. Rechristened the American Dream @ Meadowlands the project got a fresh infusion of cash from the Mall of America and NJ State taxpayers are kicking in $200 million in low interest financing (that’s almost as much as state will have to pay the Feds for canceling the Hudson Tunnel Project). The project got so out of hand that The Times sponsored a contest for readers to reimagine Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”, aka – Xanadu.

Don’t shoot! Architectural photographer Grant Smith is mad as hell. After taking a photo of a London church he was surrounded by a bunch of bobbies who thought he was a terrorist. Unbeige reports that on World Press Freedom Day the photog took his grievances to the street. He and dozens of other shutterbugs descended on London City Hall wearing signs proclaiming, “I’m a photographer not a terrorist.”

Freudian Facades. The Wall Street Journal reports that the “real cutting edge of architecture has to do with the psychology of buildings.” The august paper interviewed a few scientists about how space design can effect worker productivity. For accuracy and focus, confined spaces painted red work well. While creative types benefit from high ceilings, lots of windows and bright blue walls. Maybe, but sometimes a room is just a room.