Brought to you by Studio-due, Luce/Light explores four contemporary buildings of concrete, iron, water and glass that share a unique and indissoluble relationship with light. The Italian buildings featured are Fabrica by Tadao Ando, Il Cubo Nero (The Black Cube) by Silvia Dainese Studio + dns dsn, the Nardini Grappa Distillery Bolle by Massimiliano Fuksas and Memoria e Luce (9/11 Memorial) by Daniel Libeskind.

The program promoting and supporting young architecture organized by MAXXI Architettura together with MoMA/MoMA PS1 in New York and CONSTRUCTO of Santiago in Chile has announced UNIRE/UNITE by Urban Movement Design as winner of the 2012 Young Architects Program (YAP) MAXXI in Rome. Following MAXXI’s first successful summer installation named WHATAMI by stARTT, Urban Movement Design now has the opportunity to reinvent the MAXXI piazza with an interactive installation featuring a long and sinuous band of wood and grass that encourages a playful bond between the building and its users. This proposal was selected over four other shortlisted contestants who where chosen by an Italian jury.

Both UNIRE/UNITE by Urban Movement Design and WENDY by HWKN (HollwichKushner) will be inaugurated in the MAXXI piazza and the courtyard at MoMA PSI in June 2012, along with an exhibit showcasing the fifteen design proposals from the finalists.

Continue reading for more information on this years MAXXI winner, UNIRE/UNITE.

ArchDaily announced the winning proposal for the 2012 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) earlier this month. In order to bring you full coverage of the annual competition, we are featuring the other four creative designs that competed against HWKN’s Wendy. Ibañez Kim Studio (Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim) proposed a Mechanical Garden that enjoyed a unique partnership with artists and engineers in Philadelphia.

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This June 3, 1956 clip of the Long-running CBS game show What’s My Line? has been making its rounds on the internet for quite sometime now. As it just recently popped up on Dwell’s twitter feed, we knew it must be featured on ArchDaily for our readers who may have not seen it yet, as it is a classic and features the 89-year-old “World Famous Architect” Frank Lloyd Wright. Just as any good architect would do, Wright critiques the poor acoustical qualities of the space as a blindfolded all-star panel (such as Arlene Francis and Peter Lawford) attempts to guess his professional title.

President Obama attended the official ground breaking ceremony of the National Museum for African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) on February 22, commemorating this milestone for the Smithsonian Institution’s new museum on Washington’s National Mall. The Tanzanian-born, London-based architect David Adjaye serves as Lead Designer for the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup (FAB) team that was selected by the Smithsonian Institute back in 2009 in the international competition for the design of the nation’s new prestigious building.

The President began his brief remarks by stating, “As others have mentioned, this day has been a long time coming. The idea for a museum dedicated to African Americans was first put forward by black veterans of the Civil War. And years later, the call was picked up by members of the civil rights generation -– by men and women who knew how to fight for what was right and strive for what is just. This is their day. This is your day. It’s an honor to be here to see the fruit of your labor.”

Continue reading for more information on the project and a video of President Obama’s speech.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat ( CTBUH) has launched The Skyscraper Center – a comprehensive resource for data and information on all buildings taller than 200 meters, whether they are completed or currently being developed. Detailed profiles and images reveal each towers global and regional size-ranking, as well as the projects latest updates and data. For example, recently completed Al Hamra Firdous Tower by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill ranks first in its city and national ranking, second in its regional ranking and is the thirteenth tallest building in the world.

“The new site builds on our database compiled through 40 years of research and adds valuable new functions, new information and extensive assets for both professionals and non-professionals exploring the world of skyscrapers,” said Timothy Johnson, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

LivingHomes has just announced the launch of their first well-designed, affordable and sustainable prefabricated home known as C6. Starting at $179,000, the home is nearly half the cost of most other LivingHomes models and includes 34 tons of carbon offsets. It is the first to achieve LEED® Platinum and feature Cradle-to-Cradle inspired materials.

C6 was designed by the architects of LivingHomes in collaboration with Make It Right, a nonprofit founded by Brad Pitt and renowned architect William McDonough to build 150 Cradle to Cradle inspired LEED Platinum homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. A portion of the proceeds from each C6 will help support the efforts of Make It Right. Continue reading for more.

The young architectural studio Urbanplunger was recently awarded third prize in the international competition to design a Night Club Hotel in the dense city of Hong Kong. Their proposal consists of a uniquely suspended building structure described as an “architectural parasite” that leans on neighboring buildings in order to elevate itself above ground. Read on for more.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has selected the internationally acclaimed Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger as the Royal Gold Medalist of 2012. Hertzberger established his firm Architectuurstudio HH in 1958 and since has made significant contributions to the world of modern architecture. He is not only an architect, but a teacher and published writer. Hertzberger has won a great many competitions, has been made an honorary member of several cultural bodies and has been awarded international architecture prizes, both for individual projects and for his oeuvre as a whole. Continue reading for more information on Hermam Hertzberger and the video above.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has been selected as winner of an international design competition with its Beijing Bohai Innovation City master plan that illustrates a new model of compact, environmentally enhanced urban design.

The winning proposal centers a new environmentally friendly district along the high-speed rail line, linking the national capital to the port city of Tianjin while leveraging the economic and lifestyle assets of the Beijing-Tianjin corridor. The city expansion will bring 17.6 million square meters of mixed-use development, with a focus on providing a premier headquarters location for advanced industries in the dynamically growing Bohai Rim, a region that already accounts for more than a quarter of China’s GDP.

Continue reading for more.

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Tonight, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) Studio-X NYC welcomes Fast Company’s Greg Lindsay and the Institute for the Future’s Anthony Townsend for the first of a new series of events focused on the “smart city”.

“Lindsay and Townsend are calling the series “X-Cities,” where X marks the spot at which information technology and mega-urbanization converge. In this first session, the pair will lay out their respective cases for the top-down, intelligent design of “smart cities” versus the bottom-up evolution of crowd-sourced “civic laboratories.” Is information technology a real tool for city-building? And, if so, what is its bright and/or scary future?”

This event will begin at 6:30PM at 180 Varick Street in New York. It is free and open to the public. No RSVP is required. Continue reading for more information.

Brightly colored confetti and sequined samba queens covered the newly renovated Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, marking the beginning of the 2012 world-famous annual Carnival. Designed by Brazil’s legendary architect Oscar Niemeyer, the Sambadrome was originally constructed during the first government of Leonel Brizola (1983 – 1987) in an effort to provide Rio with an urban facility that would serve as the permanent location of the traditional spectacle of the samba school’s parade. Inaugurated in 1984, the Sambadrome is also known as the Catwalk Professor Darcy Ribeiro out of respect to the man who moved the parade to its current site. Continue for more.

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As a young architect and recent graduate of Kansas State University, Nicholas Kreitler shares with us five important recommendations for every graduate entering into the “real world”. Please feel free to add your recommendations in the comment section below.

Every school has a dif­fer­ent way of teach­ing their stu­dents, some take an approach focused on the­o­ry, some do it on prac­ti­cal experience and some try to take a bal­anced approach. Each of these have their advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, but I’m not look­ing to dis­cuss the cur­ricu­lum. I’d like to dis­cuss some of the things that were left out. Some­times there are just things that only real world expe­ri­ence can teach you. Now I am far from know­ing every­thing, if I know any­thing at all, but I have a seen a few glim­mers of hope on the hori­zon and that con­tin­ues to keep me moti­vat­ed. I have found that we are all search­ing for our place in this ever chang­ing world and a lit­tle advice is never a bad thing.

ArchDaily announced the winning proposal for the 2012 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) earlier this month. In order to bring you full coverage of the annual competition, we are featuring the other four creative designs that competed against HWKN’s Wendy. Virtual Water, a collaborative design brought to you by UrbanLab, endrestudio and Method Design, formally manifests what is hidden in plain sight: RAIN. The project reveals and plays with thousands of gallons of summertime rainwater that would otherwise be discarded from the PS1 courtyard.

Virtual Water refers to water hidden in everyday products. A pair of jeans, for example, has a 3000 gallon Virtual Water footprint because 3000 gallons of water are consumed in the various steps of its production chain (growing the cotton, dyeing the fabric, etc).

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ArchDaily announced the winning proposal for the 2012 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP) earlier this month. In order to bring you full coverage of the annual competition, we are featuring the other four creative designs that competed against HWKN’s Wendy. AEDS’s (Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio) proposal creates a 21st century urban oasis in the fabled courtyard of PS1. The design encourages visitors to meander through a maze-like field of objects, enticing them to take up different paths, creating distinct experiential moments. This anti-monumental, anti-plop art approach is acutely attuned to both the human scale and the elemental senses.

For perhaps the first time, the entire courtyard will be activated throughout the day and long into the night, inspiring a voyeuristic curiosity, a desire to explore and inhabit hidden “moments.” A stream of water carves a path between the objects, stitching together three main spaces defined by the experiences of Water, Mist and Vegetation. At night, diffused light is fragmented through the digitally fabricated patterns that perforate the surface of the objects.

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RIBA President Angela Brady discusses design in 2012 with British architect Richard Rogers. Together, they discuss the important issues surrounding housing and cities, both agreeing that “intensification is critical”. Homes built within a compact city are said to be five times more efficient than those built outside the city. This realization is an important fact that should guide government officials, builders and architects to work together towards more intelligent and beneficial growth patterns.

The controversy surrounding Frank Gehry’s proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial has just reached new heights as the Chicago Tribune’s Blair Kamin has recently published a 1,500-word essay, written by the influential neo-traditionalist architect Leon Krier, that bashes Gehry’s proposal and ideology. Krier calls Gehry a “greatly confused artist” who’s “style is a century old” and “seems “innovative” only to the ignorant”. Kier continues to claim the commission who appointed Gehry’s design “shares his [Gehry’s] intellectual confusion and distaste of classical Washington D.C.” Continue reading for more.

The votes are in and 72 per cent of the citizens in Isny im Allgäu (Bavaria, Germany) have vetoed Peter Zumthor’s design for the new city gate commonly referred to as the “glass underpants”. As the Swiss architect is famously praised for his context-sensitive and timeless designs, the people of Isny initially felt “lucky” to have Zumthor design for their town. They had high hopes for their very own Steilneset Memorial – the Norwegian city of Vardo’s beloved installation that has brought a surge in tourism – but ultimately were disappointed. Continue reading for more.