| Hello and welcome to Bloomberg’s weekly design digest. I’m Kriston Capps, staff writer for Bloomberg CityLab and your guide to the world of architecture and the people who build things. This week the modernist landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg died at 93. Sign up to keep up: Subscribe to get the Design Edition newsletter every Sunday.  Photographer: Dave Burk Anyone who’s visited Disneyworld knows that the best architecture in the park isn’t Cinderella’s Castle — it’s the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, better known as the Epcot Center. Based on the work of geodesic dome god Buckminster Fuller, and designed by the Wallace Floyd Design Group with Simpson Gumpertz and Heger in 1979, the great big modernist golf ball reflects the Disney company at its most optimistic: visionary yet accessible. In the 1980s and ‘90s, the Walt Disney Company leaned into the goofiness of Postmodernism. The company’s headquarters in Orlando, Florida, features a power-clashing mismatch of crazy colors and playful patterns, designed by Arata Isozaki. Michael Graves’s designs for the company in Burbank, California, push the cartoonish line even further with a sorceror’s hat and dwarf caryatids. So it might seem surprising — perhaps even refreshing — to see the House of Mouse take a sleek approach for its New York corporate headquarters. It shouldn’t come as a shock, exactly: As Alexandra Lange writes, there’s no animation happening inside the Robert A. Iger Building, designed by SOM with interiors by Gensler. Instead, with its jade terra cotta exterior, the building gives off an adult vibe suited to a major Manhattan media company. Going as far back as Epcot, adult sophistication has always been one of Disney’s strong suits. High interest rates, rising costs, labor shortages — all of these factors continue to conspire against architects. Design firms surveyed by the American Institute of Architects continue to report soft business conditions. The latest survey results indicate a persistent decline in billings. This is the 11th consecutive month in which surveyed architects have seen the value of their contracts decline. The news for architecture firms has been grim for the better part of 2 years. Not since summer 2023 have surveyed architects reported an increase in all three categories (inquiries, contracts and receipts). And since then the number of contracts and inquiries have also stalled out. It’s a challenging environment for architecture firms all over the country. After several weeks of less-bad news in the Midwest, South and West, all three regions as well as the Northeast reported declining billings. There’s no single sector bearing the thrust of the pain, either. Architecture firms who specialize in multifamily residential, commercial and industrial projects all report lower billings. So do firms with diverse portfolios. When business slows down, architecture firms reach deeper into their backlog, devoting more staff to ongoing projects. But as that backlog begins to evaporate, firms have little choice but to turn to layoffs. Since the recent business peak in June 2023, architecture firms have shed about 4,100 positions, according to the AIA. For the moment, spring appears to be far off. Design stories we’re reading | Alex Bozikovic profiles the firm LGA, which is designing a missing-middle housing template for the Canadian federal government. (The Globe and Mail) Edwin Heathcote reviews a dramatic new porch-style entrance by Kengo Kuma for the Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon, Portugal. (Architectural Review) If you need me I will be lurking in this abandoned Hudson Valley cistern revamped by MASS Design Group. (Architectural Record) Opponents of a plan to build housing on the site of the Elizabeth Street Garden in New York haven’t given up yet. (The Architect’s Newspaper) | 
