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What are the important places, the places that define who you are?

In 1969, when my father was at war overseas, my mother and I were on the front porch of our 1910 Bungalow in Kansas. The wind pushed my toys over the edge and into the grass. My mother was leaning on the railing, talking quietly to our neighbor. I crawled across the painted wood and reached through the rail and felt the soft tops of the wheat-colored grass.

In 1970, I walked into a dark bedroom and stood at the foot of my Grandfather’s bed. I reached through the rail to touch the top of the quilt my Great Grandmother had made. I watched the quilt rise and fall with his breathing.

In 1971, I placed my hands and feet on opposite sides of the door casing at my Grandmother’s house. As soon as the “grown-ups” were paying attention, I climbed to the top of the frame and reached up to touch the ceiling.

more places from coffee with an architect after the break

Weysen & De Baere Architects shared with us their design for an apartment building in Flanders, Belgium which includes four units and an office on the ground floor. The construction site exists of two parcels, lying back to back, each with its own entrance from the street. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Iwan Baan, who has photographed many well-known architectural works, many which have been featured on ArchDaily, recently shot the Hiroshi Senju Museum, designed by Tokyo based architect Ryue Nishizawa who won the Pritzker Prize in 2010 and is known for his works of various scales throughout Japan.. The museum opened in October 2011 and possesses around 100 works by Hiroshi, a Japanese painter known for his large scale waterfall paintings. More photos of the museum can be viewed after the break and the complete photoset in Iwan’s website.

As we have shared previously on AD, Washington DC’s National Mall – America’s most visited national park with over 25 million visitors a year- is undergoing a total restoration. The $700 million project will be the first major renovation in over 35 years, and will focus on three sites of the Mall: Union Square, Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument Grounds, and the Constitution Gardens. During an intensive three part competition, the jury first evaluated scores of portfolios to select up to eight designers per site; conducted team interviews to narrow the site designers to five; and finally, during Phase Three, the jury will hold a design competition for each site. We have just been notified by Weiss/Manfredi and OLIN that their team has been chosen to develop two of the three sites; no small feat for a competition that began with over 1,2000 designers. The multidisciplinary team of architecture, landscape and planning designers will develop proposals for both the Monument Grounds and the Constitution Gardens. We are excited to see what the team will develop, and we will keep you updated on the other Phase Three finalists and their proposals as we hear more.

Danish practice 3XN is the architect behind ‘Green Solution House’, a new experimental conference center and hotel, where everything is adapted to the circulation of nature and where guests will get an idea of how it feels to live in a world without waste. Located on the Danish island of Bornholm, it is designed and developed in accordance with the principles of Cradle 2 Cradle®. This means that all materials used in the building are either fully recyclable or biodegradable. Hence, the building design takes on the ambition to eliminate the concept of waste. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Architectural Dialogues is a film by Sasha Waltz shot in the unconventional setting of three museums and cultural centers: Neues Museum in Berlin designed by David Chipperfield Architects in collaboration with Julian Harrap, MAXXI National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome designed by Zaha Hadid and the Jewish Museum in Berlin designed by Daniel Libeskind.

More on the film with trailers after the break!

Aberdeen City Garden Trust has announced Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) as winner of the international design competition that will transform the center of Aberdeen. The New York City based firm will be working with the Scottish practice Keppie Design and Philadelphia landscape architects OLIN. The “rich and varied” shortlist included Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Foster + Partners, Gustafson Porter, Mecanoo, Snøhetta & Hoskins and West 8. After an extended run-off between DS+R and Foster + Partners, the Aberdeen City Garden competition will be DS+R’s first major win in a European design competition.

Continue reading for more!

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The Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has announced their victory in an international competition to design the Greenland Group Suzhou Center in Wujiang, China. The 358-meter tower’s efficient split-core configuration demands a double-take, as the “curved, tapered form unifies the office, hotel and residential uses within a single volume.”

Continue reading for more!

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Special thanks for Adam Goss from Spirit of Space for sharing this great clip of Harvard GSD “Waterline” studio led by Phil Enquist of SOM. When ArchDaily visited Chicago, our team had the chance to interview Enquist and gain some insight to his urban design and planning strategies, especially, the Beijing Central Business District and his Vision for the Great Lakes. This latest studio is a collaborative think tank of architecture, planning and landscape architecture students analyzing the Chicago River as a way to capitalize its potential to serve as a recreation, education, and transportation component of the city. Currently, the river is neglected and its presence is often ignored; yet, the students of Harvard are attempting to “rethink what the River means to the City” by questioning the existing relationships between River and City, and the public’s persepective and awareness of the river. Enquist’s multidisciplinary team is working to understand the issues of the river at large and by developing a larger, zoomed out, framework, smaller interventions can truly fuse to become a cohesive citywide system. We enjoyed listening to the students and seeing their passion for the river and its potential for Chicago, and we hope you enjoy the video, as well. Let us know what you think about the studio in the comments below.

Since the beginning, it has been very interesting to discover how, despite the fact that we have reached such an advanced state of urbanity (meaning the way we produce our more or less shared space), it is still possible to scrape the bottom of the barrel and find residual urban spaces, with enormous, unexpressed potentials. In a world where design contaminates every possible field of technical knowledge and theoretical thinking, landfills still represent and exceptional void of intentions. The strategy of the Active Edge by 2A+B embodies Grønmo’s landfill as an urban organism able to constantly re-produce its own components (soil, landscapes, trash) and the relative network of socioeconomic processes behind it. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Young dutch designer Jólan van der Wiel has been announced as the winner of the Contest for young designers at the imm cologne fair.

Using a magnetic plastic compounds, magnets and simple gravity, Jólan gives birth to the Gravity Stool, an expressive piece of furniture that is like a frozen moment of physics exposing the forces in action. You can see the full process on the above video by Miranda Stet.

The Gravity Stool thanks its unique shape to the cooperation between magnetic fields and the power of gravity.

Departing from the idea that everything is influenced by gravitation, a force that has a strongly shaping effect, I intended to manipulate this natural phenomenon by exploiting its own power: magnetism. The positioning of the magnetic fields in the machine, opposing each other, has largely determined the final shape of the Gravity Stool.

The main idea behind AME, the first concept by Wesh for a business incubator, is to re-create a small world where different companies can develop themselves and get bigger, with all services provided. The design questions the future of small companies in the periphery of the city for the next 20 years. How can a building enable many companies, each having their own singularity and size, to get along together and evolve? AME is all about wrapping plenty of entities into a bioclimatic greenhouse. For a monthly subscription, each company has its own space, which can be extended or reduced thanks to the company development. More images and architects’ description after the break.

Over an area of almost 150 hectares in the locality of Andermatt, the year-round tourist resort Andermatt Swiss Alps is being built. Hotels as well as apartments, an 18-hole golf course and a sports center will provide housing and recreation for up to 3000 guests. Despite the substantial size of the resort, the main goal of Holzer Kobler Architekturen is to create a sustainable, high-quality tourist experience. More images and architects‘ description after the break.

The RIBA just launched the 2012 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship award, open to students of all RIBA-accredited architecture schools in the UK and abroad.

Today, the President of the Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, and the 13th International Architecture Exhibition Director, David Chipperfield, met at Ca’Giustinian with the representatives of the 41 countries participating in the exhibition, including representatives of Kosovo, Kuwait and Peru for the first time. David Chipperfield announced the theme of this year’s Biennale is to be Common Ground. Continue reading for more information.

David Chipperfield states, “I want this Biennale to celebrate a vital, interconnected architectural culture, and pose questions about the intellectual and physical territories that it shares. In the methods of selection of participants, my Biennale will encourage the collaboration and dialogue that I believe is at the heart of architecture, and the title will also serve as a metaphor for architecture’s field of activity.”

Continue reading for more.

Through our interview program, I’ve had the chance to meet with some of the world’s most renowned architects, while creating a moment to share their views about the profession with our readers.

It’s our eight selection of previously featured refurbishment projects and we’re still featuring some of the best ones we published back in 2009! Check them all after the break.

Khan house / drdh architects drdh architects sent us this house with a long previous story. Speculatively built by 19th Century developers, it has been adapted and distorted over time to suit circumstance – acquiring a single storey shop and basement, an extra storey, a cantilevered lavatory and a garage. Of more immediate concern was the basement, where the floor had been dug out and the corbels sheared off the party walls, to provide extra space (read more…)

Architect: Manuel Fonseca Gallego, Javier López , Ramón Pico Location: Ayamonte, Spain Colaborators: Visitacion Rodriguez Pastrana, David Caballor Bartolome, Gabriel Cuena Lopez Contractor: Bardera , S.L. Project date: December 1996 Total usable area: 394,63 sqm Total built area: 508,63 sqm Project Year: 2007 Photographs: Fernando Alda Calvo

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Earlier this week RIBA unveiled its results from the December 2011 Future Trends Survey. Andrea Klettner of bdonline reports that although the overall trend in architectural practices is a decrease in confidence over future workloads, female employees seem to be hit dispropotionately by the challenges the industries faces. RIBA’s Future Trends Survey also found that female architectural staff fell 4% since 2009 and that between January 2009 and its most recent poll, female architectural staff fell from 28% to 21%. This news only emphasizes the findings that Architects’ Journal discovered after conducting its first Women in Architecture survey which quizzed 700 women “about career challenges as well as sexual discrimination, children, pay and role models”.

Read more after the break.

Craig Hartman, FAIA, the Design Partner in SOM’s San Francisco office, stated, “We want to be part of the dialogue in LA – a tremendously important cultural and talent hub and a diverse design-centric city. With Michael, Paul and Jose leading our studio,” Hartman continued, “we will be part of the conversation and be able to collaborate meaningfully with colleagues and institutions that we’ve known for years.

Our Cebra book giveaway contest is over! Thank you all for participating, and kudos to all Cebra fans and architectural conoisseurs among you! We got some really interesting entries – so be ready for more events like this one, coming soon. The two lucky winners are Mike Delvalle and John Putre. Congratulations, you just got a new something for the library!

So I just asked a simple question. “Are there any Architecture terms or phrases that sound unintentionally ….. ummm… dirty?”

Yep, 12 hours later I had 150 responses. The internet is awesome. And, you guys are disgusting.

So, here goes, I’ll list the terms I have so far. In fact, I’ll even include a pdf you can print and post in the breakroom – (HERE >> architecturesoundsdirty).

Feel free to add more in the comment section down there, or you can tweet them with the hashtag #architecturesoundsdirty

Scheduling the hardware Nailing studs Pipe penetrations Fire-rated penetrations Thru-wall penetrations Undulating facades Undifferentiated wedge

Morris Architects shared with us their Houston Pavilion for the 8th China International Garden Expo in Chongqing, China, which is a showcase for a variety of landscape typologies throughout China and the world. The theme, “Better Garden, Better City”, promotes harmony between landscaped and built spaces. The City of Houston is one of thirty-two international cities invited to participate in the Expo. Morris Architects partnered with SWA Group to design the Houston Pavilion. More images and architects’ description after the break.